ABSTRACT
This chapter first provides a brief review of many of the systems commonly used by the oceanographic academic community for sea floor mapping in the deep sea. Comparisons of system capabilities are then presented in two classes: theoretical resolutions predicted from physics and engineering design parameters of each system and practical resolutions based on actual observations from coincidentally located data. The types of information obtained from the instrumentation considered can be categorized as: sea floor depth such as bathymetry, acoustic backscatter character such as side-scan sonar, optical character such as photography and direct observations, and subbottom profiles such as low-frequency sonar and seismics. An ever growing number of systems designed for mapping the deep-sea floor are becoming available. Real-time swath mapping systems have replaced profilers as the tools of choice because of the ability to collect truly two-dimensional data sets. Two basic classes of bathymetric data systems exist: profilers and swath mappers.
