The vessel that is carrying out a new hydrographic survey to map and characterize more than 30,000 square nautical miles of federal waters off American Samoa is now in the territory.
The Ocean Guardian is being used by NOAA contractor NV5 to carry out the survey which is part of the US Department of Commerce’s implementation of the U.S. Offshore Critical Minerals Mapping Plan as defined by President Trump’s Executive Order 14285: Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources.
NOAA will use approximately $20M of fiscal year 2025 funding to produce publicly accessible maps, images and samples of the marine environment off the coast of American Samoa.
These products will serve to inform NOAA, other federal agencies and interested parties of the critical mineral deposits and relative prospectivity of the surveyed area.
NOAA says this effort will generate high-quality and transparent deep-ocean data that will help to increase the baseline understanding of the federal waters off American Samoa’s deep-ocean environment, and will stimulate further exploration, research and management projects, including activities related to deep sea minerals.
