Two bathymetric maps were developed by the U.S. Geological Survey, one for the Chukchi Sea and Arctic Ocean, and one for the Aleutian Trench and Bering Sea. The 2 maps overlap near the Bering Strait. Bathymetric contours were generated from several published sources. It is unclear whether new soundings were collected for these maps. The northern map extends from Wrangel Island, Russia to MacKenzie Bay, Canada, and north to 76 N latitude. The southern map extends from Shelikof Bay, Russia, to the western tip of the Alaska Peninsula, USA, and south to 48 N latitude. Bathymetric contours are at 400 meter intervals with 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, and 200 meter contours added. Contours above 50 meters are rare, and never along the Russian coast. Hard-copy maps were published by the USGS in 1976 and digitized by the Alaska Science Center in 1997. In digital format, the 2 maps have been connected where they overlap in the Bering Strait.

Bathymetric contours were generated from soundings collected during surveys and cruises by the Hydrographic Office, National Ocean Survey, and Coast and Geodetic Survey. The region covered by the map is the Bering Sea Shelf from Bristol Bay, Alaska to the Gulf of Anadyr, Russia. Bathymetry is in meters at 10 m intervals, with 5 m supplemental contours. The digitized portion includes the Anadyr Gulf and Bering Strait in Russian waters (west of the Exclusive Economic Zone), to supplement digitized National Ocean Service maps of U.S. waters (Coastal Shelf Bathymetry of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas). The original paper map was produced by the Geological Society of America and published in 1974. The map is no longer in print from the Geological Society of America (3300 Penrose Place, Boulder, CO 80301) but may be available at natural resource agency libraries that include literature on Alaska and/or Russia. In 1997, the USGS digitized the bathymetric contours for research purposes.

The bathymetric map of the northern Bering Sea region, plate 1 of USGS Professional Paper 759-B, 1976, was generated using published National Ocean Service maps and an unpublished map from Univ. of Washington. The region covered by the map includes the eastern tip of the Chukotka Peninsula, Russia, east to the Seward Peninsula and northern Yukon Delta, Alaska, and south to St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. The portion digitized was west of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ, or Convention Line of 1867). Only the Russian side of the map was included in the coverage because better data were available for the U.S. side of region from the National Ocean Service, National Geophysical Data Center.

Single-beam bathymetry, gravity, and magnetic data along with DGPS navigation data was collected as part of field activity L-11-82-CS in Chukchi Sea, Alaska from 08/27/1982 to 09/16/1982, http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/l/l1182cs/html/l-11-82-cs.meta.html These data are reformatted from space-delimited ASCII text files located in the Coastal and Marine Geology Program (CMGP) InfoBank field activity catalog at http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/l/l1182cs/html/l-11-82-cs.bath.html, http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/l/l1182cs/html/l-11-82-cs.grav.html, and http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/l/l1182cs/html/l-11-82-cs.mag.html into MGD77T format provided by the NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center(NGDC). The MGD77T format includes a header (documentation) file (.h77t) and a data file (.m77t). More information regarding this format can be found in the publication listed in the Cross_reference section of this metadata file.

This coverage contains bathymetric contours for Aleutian Basin and Bowers Basin east of the 1867 Convention Line in the southwestern Bering Sea. Geographic extent of this file is: 51.7 : 62.0 N / -165.1 W : 170.0 E. Bathymetric contours range from 50 m to 6400 m. This coverage was used to display the bathymetry for the Atlas of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, Bering Sea, U.S. Geological Survey Misc. Investigations Series I-2053, 1991 (also known as the GLORIA survey). The map was published separately by Hall and others, 1989, U.S. Geological Survey Open-file Report 89-548.

Bathymetry data were collected in the Wainwright Inlet, the mouth of the Kuk River, and in the nearshore region off Wainwright, Alaska, in August of 2009. Bathymetry was measured with a single-beam echo-sounder (10 Hz 144 ODOM Echotrac CV-100) mounted on the stern of a small vessel and synchronized to a 145 Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) Global Positioning Systems (GPS). The depth is measured relative to approximate Mean Sea Level (see attribute accuracy report in this file for further details on the MSL), and depth values are meters below the water surface. The GPS sampling rate was 1 Hz with vehicle speeds maintained at less than 15 km/hour, resulting in a sample point resolution of 3-5 meters. Data are available in a single csv file.

Single-beam bathymetry data along with DGPS navigation data was collected as part of field activity K-4-82-AR in Arctic from 09/13/1982 to 10/10/1982, http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/k/k482ar/html/k-4-82-ar.meta.html These data are reformatted from space-delimited ASCII text files located in the Coastal and Marine Geology Program (CMGP) InfoBank field activity catalog at http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/k/k482ar/html/k-4-82-ar.bath.html into MGD77T format provided by the NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center(NGDC). The MGD77T format includes a header (documentation) file (.h77t) and a data file (.m77t). More information regarding this format can be found in the publication listed in the Cross_reference section of this metadata file.