Coffin to serve on GEBCO Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names

Mike Coffin will represent Australia on the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN). As a member of the subcommittee, the University of Maine marine geoscientist and research professor in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences will help define the guidelines used to name undersea features and consider proposed names of newly-discovered features. The SCUFN also maintains a digital gazetteer of the names, generic feature type, and geographic position of features on the seafloor. The subcommittee advances the work of GEBCO, the world’s foremost source of publicly-available bathymetry of the world’s oceans. GEBCO operates jointly under the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).