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Despite many of years of mapping effort, only a small fraction of the world ocean's seafloor has been sampled for depth, greatly limiting our ability to explore and understand critical ocean and seafloor processes. Recognizing this poor state of our knowledge of ocean depths and the critical role such knowledge plays in understanding and maintaining our planet, GEBCO and the Nippon Foundation have joined forces to establish the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, an international effort with the objective of facilitating the complete mapping of the world ocean by 2030. The Seabed 2030 Project will establish globally distributed regional data assembly and coordination centers (RDACCs) that will identify existing data from their assigned regions that are not currently in publicly available databases and seek to make these data available. They will develop protocols for data collection (including resolution goals) and common software and other tools to assemble and attribute appropriate metadata as they assimilate regional grids using standardized techniques. A Global Data Assembly and Coordination Center (GDACC) will integrate the regional grids into a global grid and distribute to users world-wide. The GDACC will also act as the central focal point for the coordination of common data standards and processing tools as well as the outreach coordinator for Seabed 2030 efforts. The GDACC and RDACCs will collaborate with existing data centers and bathymetric compilation efforts. Finally, the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project will encourage and help coordinate and track new survey efforts and facilitate the development of new and innovative technologies that can increase the efficiency of seafloor mapping and thus make the ambitious goals of Seabed 2030 more likely to be achieved.

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[1] In August 1997, RRS Discovery cruise 230 (World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) section A25) ran a hydrographic section into Cape Farewell on the southern tip of Greenland. The closest approach to the shore was 2 nm in a water depth of 160 m over the east Greenland shelf. Analysis of the hydrographic data (conductivitytemperature-depth (CTD), vessel-mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler, and thermosalinograph) has revealed a current flowing southwestward, $15 km wide, 100 m deep, and centered $10 km offshore. We believe it to be driven by meltwater runoff from Greenland. This feature, which we call the East Greenland Coastal Current (EGCC), carries a little less than 1 Sv (10 6 m 3 s À1 ) with peak current speeds of $1 m s À1 at the surface. The center of the EGCC lies on a salinity front with maximum salinity contrast $4 practical salinity units (psu) between coast and shelf break and between surface and bottom. A spot value of freshwater transport is 0.06 Sv (1800 km 3 yr À1 ), which is equivalent to $30% of the Arctic freshwater gain. The presence of the EGCC and its continuity up the east Greenland coast as far as Denmark Strait is confirmed in satellite sea surface temperature images and surface drifter tracks. We estimate the sensitivity of its freshwater flux to changes in melt season mean surface air temperature to be >25% per 1°C.