World Hydrography Day – 21 June 2015
Our seas and waterways – yet to be fully charted and explored
On 21st June each year the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) celebrates World Hydrography Day. World Hydrography Day is the opportunity to public awareness of the vital role that hydrography plays in everyone’s life.
The theme for this year’s World Hydrography Day, which is also the 94th anniversary of the establishment of the IHO, is:
“Our seas and waterways – yet to be fully charted and explored”
The theme for the World Hydrography Day 2015 concentrates on the fact that much of the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters remain unsurveyed and is intented to raise public awareness that, for example, there are higher resolution maps of the Moon and Mars than for many parts of our seas and coastal waters.
This year’s theme also provides the opportunity to encourage innovative supplementary data gathering initiatives to help obtain more useful depth data. This includes crowd-sourcing using existing ships and ship’s equipment, and developments in the analysis of satellite imagery in areas where the water is clear enough. These methods cannot replace highly accurate and thorough hydrographic surveys using specialist ships and equipment, but they can provide useful depth information where otherwise we have none.
View the HNHS World Hydrography Day poster.
