The territorial claims related to the Law of the Sea Convention continue to make news. A recent Arctic sea floor map created by the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) puts the continental slope off Alaska more than 100 nautical miles farther from the U.S. coast than before.
Instead of the previous 200 nautical mile limit from the coast, the Law of the Sea Convention extends sovereignty to the foot of the continental slope. While certain geological criteria and scientific data must be submitted, this is a more arbitrary boundary that has already launched a number of mapping expeditions.
The Arctic mapping expedition, conducted between Aug. 17 and Sept. 15, 2007 aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, employed sophisticated echo sounders to survey this relatively unexplored region, providing much finer-grained data and images than existed previously. The data are available at http://www.ccom.unh.edu.
