Isr. J. Earth Sci.; 57: 139–144DOI: 10.1560/IJES.57.2.139

© 2008 Science From Israel/ LPPLtd. 0021-2164/09 $4.00

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.E-mail: jkh1@012.net.il

The Israel National Bathymetric Survey: Northern Gulf of ‘Aqaba/Elat Poster

Aharon (Ronnie) Sade,a,b John K. Hall,a,* Gideon Tibor,b,c Tina M. Niemi,d Zvi Ben-Avraham,e Abdallah A. Al-Zoubi,f Gal Hartman,e Emad Akawwi,f Abdel-Rahman Abueladas,f and Gideon Amitc

aGeological Survey of Israel, 30 Malkhe Yisrael Street, Jerusalem 95501, IsraelbDr. Moses Strauss Department of Marine Geosciences, Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa,

Haifa 31905, IsraelcIsrael Oceanographic & Limnological Research, National Institute of Oceanography, Haifa 31080, Israel

dDepartment of Geosciences, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri 64110, USAeDepartment of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

fSurveying and Geomatics Engineering Department, Al-Balqa’ Applied University, Al Salt 19117, Jordan

(Received 25 February 2009; accepted 27 February 2009)

Sade, A., Hall, J.K., Tibor, G., Niemi, T.M., Ben-Avraham, Z., Al-Zoubi, A.A., Hartman, G., Akawwi, E., Abueladas, A.-R., and Amit, G. 2008. The Israel Na-tional Bathymetric Survey: Northern Gulf of ‘Aqaba/Elat Poster. Isr. J. Earth Sci., 57: 139–144.

Between 29 October and 21 November 2006, as part of the Israel National Bathymet-ric Survey (NBS), the IOLR’s R/V Etziona carried out a geophysical survey of the Israeli and Jordanian sectors of the northern Red Sea Gulf of ’Aqaba/Elat.

Multibeam bathymetric data were collected using a Kongsberg-Simrad EM1002 system with 111 beams operating at 96 kHz. Continuous digital high-resolution seismic reflection profiles were also acquired with a Geo-Resources Geo-Source 200 sparker system, and total magnetic field measurements with a Geometrics G-881 cesium magnetometer. In shallow water, side-scan sonar imagery was made with an Edgetech E-Sea Scan 800 system operated from the R/V Danny-Boy.

The resulting poster is inserted in this issue. One side shows the shaded hypso-metrically colored bathymetry merged with the SPOT V false color (vegetation shown in red) satellite imagery (2.5 m pixel resolution) from 31 July 2006. The texturized image is at 1:20,000 scale with UTM projection (Zone 36) and WGS-84 datum. Con-tour interval is 50 m. Contours outside the swath mapped area are based upon sparse soundings and some Hydrosweep data from Meteor Cruise 44, Leg 2. The back of the poster shows three-dimensional views of the mapped area as seen from the south, the east (towards Israel), and the west (towards Jordan).

BAcKGRouNd

The aphorism that “Data is the plural of anecdote” probably applies to the acquisition of hydrographic knowledge in the Gulf of ‘Aqaba/Elat up to the end of the nineteenth century. For the gulf has served as a southern gateway to the Levant since antiquity. Modern investigations of its hydrography began with the British in the mid-nineteenth century. Friedman (1968) has described in some detail the subsequent investigations in the gulf with numerous scientific

cruises. The first systematic survey was that of the Pola in 1895–1896 (Fig. 1), an Austrian transport that had a long and illustrious scientific career. Pola’s more than 740 km of track between 50 deep wire soundings outlined the gulf’s deep basins, and resulted in the first published maps of the bathymetry (as well as the magnetic field!).

140 Israel Journal of Earth Sciences Vol. 57, 2008

Fig. 1. Stations in the Gulf of Akaba during the 1895–1896 scientific expedition of the Austrian transport steamer Pola in the northern Red Sea. Around fifty sounding stations using a wire sounding apparatus delineated the major basins of the gulf. The track between stations is at least 740 km long. Figure taken from the Pola Expedition reports, located in the library at Stanford University, and obtained courtesy of Prof. Zvi Ben-Avraham.

A. Sade et al. Israel National Bathymetric Survey 141

Fig. 2. The Gulf of Elat, after Hall and Ben-Avraham (1978). This figure, with the original LANDSAT Return Beam Vidicon (30 m) imagery, texturized using the 2000 SRTM (3” or 90 m) grids, shows the bathymetry obtained by the 1976 Ramona sur-vey (Ben-Avraham et al., 1979). This bathymetry has been overlain by the swath data from the DS-2 Hydrosweep multibeam sonar system used aboard the German research vessel F/S Meteor during Cruise 44 Leg 2 (12 March–7 April 1999) in the gulf. The Meteor swath grid is 30 m.

142 Israel Journal of Earth Sciences Vol. 57, 2008

The earliest surveys with modern echo-sounding, magnetics, and gravimetry were the day-long flirta-tion of the Vema, which obtained a piston core in June 1958, and a two-day-long foray by the NATO ship Aragonese, which obtained the deepest sounding of 1830 m in what is now the Aragonese Deep (Hall and Ben-Avraham, 1978). In 1970 an extensive Israeli sur-vey of the Straits of Tiran (Hall, 1975; Israel Ministry of Transport, 1974) resulted in the first detailed 50-m contour charts in the gulf, and the first such chart in the American portfolio, reproduced as Chart 62222 (U.S. N.I.M.A., 1996). The first seismic profiling was the extensive Israeli survey by the Ramona in 1976 (Ben-Avraham et al., 1979). The Ramona survey was followed in May 1977 by four days of seismic profil-ing and geophysical measurements by the Atlantis II (Cruise 93). The data from the Vema, Aragonese, Ramona, and Atlantis II cruises, as well as the Ti-ran survey, were used in the compilation of the first colored bathymetric map with then state-of-the-art satellite data (Hall and Ben-Avraham, 1978), which is the underpinning of Fig. 2. This bathymetric map was later reprinted using LANDSAT TM for the land (Hall, 2000).

The first multibeam work in the gulf was carried out between 12 March and 7 April 1999 during Cruise 44 Leg 2 of the F/S Meteor. The ship’s Atlas DS-2 15.5 kHz Hydrosweep system has 60 2.3 ´ 2.3° beams, spread over a 90° swath whose width is twice the depth. As this was primarily a biological cruise there was little emphasis on carrying out a careful hydro-graphic mapping. The coverage, perhaps 40% of the gulf and only in Egyptian, Israeli, and Jordanian wa-ters, is shown in Fig. 2. Ehrhardt et al. (2005) showed a small colored figure with the northernmost results. Shortly after this cruise, in August 1999, the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office’s survey vessel USNS Littlehales (T-AGS-52) carried out a detailed survey of the Jordanian coastline, producing two charts at scales of 1:5,000 and 1:10,000 of the Port of ‘Aqaba (van Norden and Kren, 2001). The multibeam system employed was a higher frequency Kongsberg-Simrad EM1002, identical to that used in the NBS survey.

THE SuRvEy ANd THE PoSTER

The survey between 29 October and 21 November 2006 was a USAID-MERC undertaking to make a de-tailed geophysical survey of the Israeli and Jordanian offshore in the northern gulf. Lacking an appropriate survey vessel, the multibeam-equipped R/V Etziona

was brought through the Suez Canal from the Medi-terranean. Thus the swath mapping was a welcome addition to the original survey plan.

The survey was successful due to the splendid international cooperation. The survey in Jordanian waters was accomplished by the Israeli crew pass-ing passport control at Elat port’s police station each morning at 8 AM, and then picking up our Jordanian crew for work in Jordan between 9 AM and 4 PM. Complete coverage was obtained in Jordan, except for the inshore area adjacent to King Abdullah’s palace, and by the ‘Aqaba Port jetties where large ships were berthed. In Israel the northern fish cages were off lim-its, as were the areas of the coral reef preserves, where we were repeatedly waved off despite the desire of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority main office in Jerusalem to acquire data up to and perhaps under the protected coral heads.

To make the poster (Sade et al., 2008), a digital terrain model (DTM) was prepared of the entire area. On land, the 25 m Israel DTM grid (Hall, 1996) was used, and improved as needed near the shore. The area of swath mapping was gridded at 6 m spacing. The inshore interval between the swath-mapped area and the coast was interpolated to a 20 m grid by digitizing manufactured 1 m contours. In the area off Sinai, the depths (963 soundings) shown in the Jezirat Faraun inset of British Admiralty Hydrographic Office Chart 3595 (1922), plus derived contours, were used to pre-pare a 6 m grid of the island (also called Coral Island). Contours from a July 1987 survey by the R/V Trevos, which obtained single beam bathymetry, 3.5 kHz sub-bottom profiling, and magnetics were also used to complete the coverage (Ben-Avraham, 1990). These various grids, taken together, were then used to pro-vide texturized shading to the SPOT imagery using the Global Mapper® software. The shaded hypsometrical-ly colored relief of the swath data was supplied by IVS Fledermaus® software. The analysis of the multibeam data was carried out using CARIS® HIPS software.

This poster is the second in a series of posters derived from the Israel National Bathymetric Survey. The first was published in this journal as Sade et al. (2006a), and consisted of the compilations of bathym-etry for northern Israel (Sade et al., 2006b), and the acoustic backscatter (Sade et al., 2006c). Preliminary results from the Geocover® analysis of the gulf multi-beam backscatter have been used for the tectonic and sedimentary studies but have not as yet been printed for widespread distribution.

An interesting outcome of the survey was the loca-

A. Sade et al. Israel National Bathymetric Survey 143

tion of two shipping containers containing outdated explosives that had slipped off a barge in June 2001 while being offloaded from a ship in mid-gulf (Israel Ministry of the Environment, 2007). A thorough and expensive survey of the area of the sinking in over 200 m of water had been unsuccessful. A careful ex-amination of the clouds of the new multibeam sonar ‘hits’ revealed the two containers more than 100 m away from the supposed sinking site. Given the exact coordinates from this survey, an Israeli navy Scorpio ROV (remotely operated vehicle) landed between the two containers, now separated by about 50 m. One was intact and the other open with ordnance spilling out. Acoustic pingers were attached to the containers to assist future tracking and possible removal.

Publication of this poster makes a statement that de-tailed data exist for the areas shown. This will be impor-tant to reanalysis of the fault distribution in the head of the gulf with its potential impact on the seismic hazard of the infrastructure built on the broad Arava Valley. The data set is also available for infrastructural use in planning the inlet for any future Red–Dead canal.

AcKNowlEdGMENTS

The work was funded by MERC Award TA-MOU-05-M25-004. The data for the Meteor 44-2 cruise were made available by Horst Hecht of the German Hy-drographic Office via Norman Z. Cherkis of the U.S. Navy Research Lab. Dr. Semme Dijkstra at UNH-CCOM then kindly converted the proprietary Krupp-Atlas data format to x,y,z triads. The authors thank the crew of the R/Vs Etziona and Danny-Boy for their able assistance during the work at sea, and gratefully acknowledge the help given by numerous citizens of Elat and personnel of the Interuniversity Institute of Marine Sciences (IUI). The poster represents GSI Re-port GSI/03/2008, IOLR Report IOLR/08/2008, and MDSRC Report MDSRC/02/2008.

REfERENcES

Ben-Avraham, Z. 1990. The northern edge of the Gulf of Elat. Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, Earth Sciences Ad-ministration Report ES-4-90, January 1990, 28 pp.

Ben-Avraham, Z., Garfunkel, Z., Almagor, G., Hall, J.K. 1979. Continental breakup by a leaky transform: the Gulf of Elat (Aqaba). Science 206(4415): 214–216.

British Admiralty Hydrographic Office. 1922. Chart No. 3595 Harbours and Anchorages in the Red Sea. Inset chart, Jezirat Faraun, Gulf of Aqaba. From a sketch survey by Capt. R.S. Phipps Hornby R.N., assisted by

the officers of H.M.S. Diana, 1906. Partially re-sounded by Cmdr. J. D. Nares R.N. H.M. Surveying Ship ‘En-terprise’, 1918. With additions and corrections by Cdr. E.H.B. Becker R.N., H.M.S. ‘Endeavour’ in 1943. Natu-ral Scale 1:7,273. Reprinted June 1961.

Ehrhardt, A., Hübscher, C., Ben-Avraham, Z., Gajewski, D. 2005. Seismic study of pull-apart-induced sedimentation and deformation in the Northern Gulf of Aqaba (Elat). Tectonophysics 396(1–2): 59–79.

Friedman, G.M. 1968. Geology and geochemistry of reefs, carbonate sediments, and waters, Gulf of Aqaba (Elat), Red Sea. J. Sediment. Petrol. 38(3): 895–919.

Hall, J.K. 1975. Bathymetric chart of the Straits of Tiran. Isr. J. Earth Sci. 24(3–4): 69–72.

Hall, J.K. 1996. Topography and bathymetry of the Dead Sea depression. Tectonophysics 266(1–4): 177–185.

Hall, J.K. 2000. Bathymetric map of the Gulf of Elat/Aqaba. Bathymetric compilation of Hall and Ben-Avraham (1978) set into a mosaic of two LANDSAT 5 TM scenes provided by Earth Satellite Corporation. UTM projection, scale 1:250,000, 70 by 90 cm laminated poster. Sheet 15 of a 16 sheet set prepared in honor of the Millennium. Geological Survey of Israel Report GSI/18/2000.

Hall, J.K., Ben-Avraham, Z. 1978. Bathymetric Chart of the Gulf of Elat. Colored bathymetric chart with 50 m contours, and state-of-the-art 30 m LANDSAT-3 Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) imagery for the land, from the ESA ground station in Fucino, Italy. Scale 1:250,000, Israel Grid projection.

Israel Ministry of the Environment. 2007. Report on the listing of Barge 10095 and the discharge of two contain-ers to the sea in the Gulf of Elat on 12.06.01. Marine and Coastal Division report dated 4 July 2007, 4 pp. (in Hebrew).

Israel Ministry of Transport, Department of Shipping and Ports. 1974. Bathymetric Chart No. 7, Strait of Tiran, Red Sea—Gulf of Elat (’Aqaba). 1:25,000, surroundings in meters, 50 m contour interval below 50 m depth, and 10 m contour interval above.

Sade, A.R., Hall, J.K., Amit, G., Golan, A., Gur-Arieh, L., Tibor, G. 2006a. The Israel National Bathymetric Sur-vey—a new look at the seafloor off Israel. Isr. J. Earth Sci. 55(3): 185–187. Posters by Sade et al., 2006b,c, included as an insert in issue.

Sade, A.R., Hall, J.K., Golan, A., Amit, G., Gur-Arie, L., Tibor, G., Ben-Avraham, Z., Hübscher, C., Ben-Dor, E. 2006b. High resolution bathymetry of the Mediterranean Sea off northern Israel. Laminated poster at 1:50,000 scale, 1 sheet, GSI Report GSI/20/2006 and IOLR Report H44/2006.

Sade, A.R., Hall, J.K., Golan, A., Amit, G., Gur-Arie, L., Tibor, G., Ben-Avraham, G., Ben-Dor, E., Fonseca, L., Calder, B.R., Mayer, L.A., de Moustier, C.P. 2006c. Acoustic Backscatter at 95 kHz from the Mediterra-nean Seafloor off Northern Israel. Laminated poster at 1:50,000 scale, 1 sheet, GSI Report GSI/20/2006 and

144 Israel Journal of Earth Sciences Vol. 57, 2008

IOLR Report H44/2006.GSI Report GSI/20/2006 and IOLR Report H44/2006.

Sade, A.R., Hall, J.K., Tibor, G., Niemi, T.M., Ben-Avraham, Z., Al-Zoubi, A.A., Hartman, G., Akawwi, E., Abueladas, A., Amit. G. 2008. Multibeam bathymetry of the northern Gulf of ‘Aqaba/Elat. Laminated poster at 1:20,000 scale, with 6 m multibeam DTM together with a SPOT Image scene with 2.5 m pixels, texturized using the 25 m DTM of Israel. Back is 3-D images of the multibeam bathym-etry of the northern Gulf of Aqaba/Elat, produced by IVS Fledermaus® with views to the north, west and the east.

GSI Report GSI/03/2008, IOLR Report IOLR/08/2008, and MDSRC Report MDSRC/02/2008.

U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency. 1996. Chart 62222, Strait of Tiran, Gulf of Aqaba. Mercator chart at scale 1:25,000 with 50 m contours over the full area of the chart.

van Norden, M.F., Kren, R. 2001. Rapid digital nautical charting for military navigation. U.S. Hydrographic Conference, 22–24 May 2001, Session VI—Electronic Charts/ECDIS I, 12 pp. See: http://www.thsoa.org/hy01/6_1.pdf