Boating Safety Tips, Tricks & Thoughts from Captnmike

On this date in 1807, President Thomas Jefferson approved an act to provide for surveying the coasts of the United States. NOAA has long honored Jefferson — but what of the legislators who saw the need, wrote the bill, and sent it to the president?

On December 15, 1806, Samuel W. Dana (CT) introduced a resolution instructing the House of Representatives’ Committee of Commerce and Manufactures to “inquire into the expediency of making provision for a survey of the coasts of the United States, designating the several islands, with the shoals and roads, or places of anchorage, within twenty leagues of any part of the shores of the United States.” Dana was joined in debate by Jacob Crowninshield (MA-2), the chair of the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures.

Samuel Dana (left) represented Connecticut in Congress from 1797 to 1821. Jacob Crowninshield, of the famed American maritime family, chaired the House Committee on Commerce and…

On September 15, 2016, President Obama designated the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean. The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument includes two areas: one that includes four undersea mountains, called “seamounts” – Bear, Mytilus, Physalia, and Retriever; and an area that includes three undersea canyons – Oceanographer, Lydonia, and Gilbert – that cut deep into the continental shelf. These sea features have monumental histories.

Coast Survey cartographer Leland Snyder used several data sources to create this map of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

Bear, Mytilus, and Physalia Seamounts were discovered by oceanographers with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and they were named for small Woods Hole vessels that began making forays into the deep sea in the 1950s. The Bureau of Geographical names does not know the origin of the name “Retriever Seamount,” but NOAA historian Skip Theberge thinks it was probably discovered and named…