The Floor of the World Ocean

The surface of the Earth, from a whole different perspective.

This spectacular visualization of the ocean floor was drawn on an elliptical equal-area projection by the talented Richard Edes Harrison and published as a supplement to the Annals of the Association of American Geographers in 1961. 1,400 copies were made available for sale by the organization. It is a reworking of an earlier map, also by Harrison, published in a 1959 edition of Fortune Magazine.

Despite several updates and the incorporation of the ‘latest available bathymetric data’, as noted in the lower left: “In view of our incomplete knowledge, the drawing incorporates a number of surmises – especially in the inadequately surveyed portions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.”

The image truly does represent one of the last ‘unknowns’ of terrestrial geographic knowledge – even today there are tracts of unsurveyed ocean floor. Rough topography is depicted pictorially, with the shaded areas representing ocean depths of three miles or more. Several data points provide specific measurements, with portions of the Mariana Trench reaching the maximum depth of 6.8 miles under the waves (excluding the misprint of 52 miles in the Tonga Trench).

As noted by my colleague Michael Jennings at Neatline Maps, the map was an important step in the cartography of oceanic research spearheaded by Drs. Bruce Hezeen and Henry Menard of Columbia University. Both are noted as invaluable contributors in the acknowledgments in the lower right.

Sources: Association of American Geographers; Neatline Maps;