Hydrographer

Water is nature’s hiding place. At first glance, it’s pretty boring. Flat, it’s blue, green, or maybe brown, punctuated, perhaps, by ripples, currents, and waves. Ultimately, though, it’s geographically monochromatic and monotonous — until you lift the lid, that is, and discover an entire landscape of hills, valleys, and even mountain ranges hiding beneath the surface.

As a Hydrographer, also known as a Hydrographic Surveyor, you uncover and expose the secret world of underwater geography by studying, surveying, and mapping the bottoms of rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Hydrographers are employed by government agencies, universities, and environmental research organizations, as well as private industry — for instance, oil, utility, shipping, and telecommunications companies. You spend your days setting up and then using special tools — geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS) software, sonar equipment, and physical depth finders — to collect data about underwater topography, as well as coastline features, water levels, tides, and currents. Using that data, you then create maps, as well as analyses about the causes and effects of environmental phenomena such as erosion, earthquakes, and climate change.

The goal of your work as a Hydrographer depends on whom you work for. Typically, though, your data is used to: plot safe currents and navigational paths for ships; locate natural resources, including oil; understand and predict geological activity; assist companies and governments with shipwreck recovery efforts; and protect and advocate on behalf of water resources and habitats.

Because you’re charting the geography of an undiscovered “water world,” you’re like a hydrological Lewis and Clark!