MULTIBEAM BATHYMETRY STUDIES IN THE BAHIA SEAMOUNTS REGION

Prior to a joint U.S. Naval Research Laboratory/Brazilian Diretoria de Hidrografia e Navegaçăo project begun in 1980 and called CENTRATLAN, there were no systematic scientific investigations over the Bahia Seamounts region. All of the seamounts had previously been discovered by chance, many of them by the German expeditions of 1925/1927 and 1938/1939 (Maurer and Stocks, 1933; Schumacher, 1957; Stocks, 1933; Stocks, 1939). These peaks were last published on GEBCO chart 5.12 (1978), which shows the presence of only nine seamounts in the area.