News and Updates
By ENS Tabor Smith and ENS Jacob Arnold
Fresh off a landmark 2025 season in which NOAA Ship Fairweather pushed further north than ever before, the ship launched the 2026 field season just 10 nautical miles from her home port of Ketchikan in southeast Alaska, surveying the approaches to the Revillagigedo Channel.
Continue reading “Hometown hydrography: Fairweather surveys the gateway to Alaska”
The members of the federal Interagency Working Group on Ocean and Coastal Mapping (IWG-OCM) are thrilled to announce the release of the first Standard Ocean Mapping Protocol (SOMP)! The SOMP is a standardized technical protocol for acquisition, processing, and archiving of ocean and coastal mapping data. It was developed in support of National Strategy for Ocean Mapping, Exploring, and Characterizing the United States Exclusive Economic Zone (NOMEC) goals and is built from existing standards and best practices developed by the ocean and coastal mapping community.