Microtopography of manganese crusts

Quantitative examination of the seafloor surface roughness will be necessary for any design of equipment intended for use in collecting surface deposits such as cobalt-rich manganese crusts or nodules. Furthermore, it is an essential prerequisite to the confident interpretation of returns from high frequency side-scan and other acoustic systems. The objectives of the project were to develop the capability at the University of Hawaii of generating high resolution (less than 1 cm horizontal and vertical) topographic models of the seafloor from 35 mm stereo photographs; to produce such models from existing photographs of cobalt-rich manganese crust deposits; and to optimize the configuration of the existing Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) camera system for stereo photograph collection and correlation of acoustic data with the photographic ground-truth. These tasks were accomplished and have also led to the development of a follow-on project (MMTC/OBD Project 1512) dedicated to the simultaneous acquisition of both optical and side-scan acoustic data for future accurate determination of seabed microtopography.