A strong majority of the ocean’s floor has not been mapped out in any meaningful way.
In response, an event oriented around the bottom of the ocean is coming to Victoria this autumn.
The 2025 edition of Ocean Floor Explore is taking place on the West Coast of Canada for the first time, October 26th through 29th.
Held in cities around the world since 2016, Ocean Floor Explore brings together explorers, investors, and ocean technologists during an event “designed to ignite the next era of ocean floor discovery.”
The event is powered by Map the Gaps, a global non-profit organization focused exclusively on ocean floor exploration.
Gaps in knowledge about what lies at the bottom of our world’s oceans often leaves conservation organizations, communities, explorers, and researchers in the dark and unable to access the data they need to support crucial projects and initiatives, according to the organization.
“Exploring the ocean floor is this generation’s version of the Space Race from the 1960’s,” posits Tim Kearns, Executive Director and Founder of Map the Gaps.
Kearns says ocean floor discovery is a mission “that we should embrace to help us
understand who we are, how our planet works and what future we can build.”
The annual event, he says, “is about bringing people together to imagine bold missions, align
funding, and create the partnerships needed to complete the last great exploration on
Earth.”
Map the Gaps is collaborating with Victoria’s Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technologies on the event.
“COAST is proud to be partnering with Map the Gaps to co-host this event where innovative
technologies and financing will be discussed to enable new commercial ventures and
further our knowledge of the oceans,” remarked executive director Jason Goldsworthy.
“Ocean Floor Explore brings together researchers, entrepreneurs, funders and policy makers to advance ocean exploration so that we can understand more about the planet we live on and how best to protect and nurture it,” he added.
Ocean Floor Explore will feature keynote presentations from industry leaders such as Victor Vescovo, an undersea explorer and retired U.S. Navy Commander who in 2019 became the first person to dive to the deepest point in each of Earth’s five oceans.
“I truly believe that the last, great exploration on planet Earth is to finally map our entire seafloor,” Vescovo stated.
He believes one critical tactic to mapping the seafloor is innovating more affordable methods.
“I look forward to presenting some of my own ideas on how to map the very different depths in unconventional ways, that hopefully will yield significantly less expensive ways to map the seafloor,” he said, believing the work is far more likely to be accomplished at a lower cost.
Deep-sea oceanographer Moronke Harris will also present at the event.
Harris is the founder of The Imaginative Scientist and works with the University of Victoria on extreme-environment research.
“We often hear that space is the final frontier, but the ocean is Earth’s next great leap,” she says. “The deep holds solutions to some of our greatest challenges; Exploring it sparks innovation, reveals the knowledge needed to safeguard our planet, and inspires us to imagine what’s possible when discovery and protection go hand in hand.”
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