Bathymetry of the Western Australian Margin for MH370 Search

Geoscience Australia provided high-resolution seabed mapping data to support the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Bathymetry survey vessels spent months scanning the southern Indian Ocean sea floor with multibeam sonar, revealing many features for the first time. This dataset, last updated in March 2026, contains the detailed depth measurements and terrain visualizations from that effort.

Use Cases

• Modeling underwater terrain for navigation safety based on high-resolution bathymetry data.
• Analyzing seabed features for geological research based on newly revealed sonar scans.
• Visualizing ocean floor topography for search and rescue mission planning.
• Integrating sea floor depth data with other marine geospatial datasets.

Strengths

• Data was gathered over months at sea using multibeam sonar for detailed scanning.
• High-resolution data revealed many seabed features for the first time.
• Produced by Geoscience Australia, an authoritative national geoscience organization.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The primary format listed is HTML, which may not be the raw data format.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Months of scanning by survey vessels using multibeam sonar.

Time Range

Likely collected during the MH370 search operations (circa 2014 onward).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-25 15:44:00.114153

Geography

Southern Indian Ocean, specifically the western margin of Western Australia.