Today, I saw an episode of "Blue Planet", the one entitled 'The Deep'. And it got me to thinking:

Could military submarines assist in exploring the ocean floor? They could deploy an ROV and collect data. It's not like they're busy all the time, particularly the SSBNs.

Could this be possible?

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And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

Manned boats can only go so deep, but I expect the navy has an interest in mapping the ocean floor, so I imagine they do collect data at least in coastal areas. Whether they tend to share this data is a separate question.

Here is an unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV), aka Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS (REMUS).

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They can only go to so deep, then they hit the bottom and can't go any deeper.
I think you've forgotten Trieste.

For the subgroup of manned boats that is navy subs you're probably right.

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While it was military, the Trieste was a bathyscaphe, not a submarine - she didn't have her own propulsion system, AFAIK. But I had forgotten about her.

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"I have a cunning plan that cannot fail."
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If you look at pictures of her, you can see the propellers.
She couldn't move far and she couldn't move fast but she could move.

What separates the bathyscaphe from other submarines is that due to the pressures it operates at it can't refill its ballast tanks with air to get positive buyancy, so it has lead shot ballast it releases instead.

Remember that you specifically said "manned boats", not subs, though it was in reference to a question about subs.

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Yowza! Able to stand up to 16K psi (I wonder what it's limit is?) that thing has more structural strength than the average piece of rock. Wouldn't something like a piece of quartz crumble at that pressure?

Suppose I could go looking.

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It would if the pressure was applied unevenly, hydrostatic pressure wouldn't crumble quartz unless it had impurities in the form of cavities.

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It would be hard to imagine an uglier building that hadn't won a major architectural award.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Yes, I was being imprecise. In my mind boat = sub, from my navy days. I've been on a boomer (SSBN), but not a bathyscaphe. I don't think the former want to generally be anywhere near enough the ocean floor to explore it.

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"I have a cunning plan that cannot fail."
S. Baldrick

Hmm, quite the feedback.

Been reading "Blind Man's Bluff" recently. It seems the "fish" used on the USS Halibut would be ideal for exploring the ocean floor.

Also, seeing how for subs in the late sixties had a crush depth of about 2,000 feet, I say that leaves most of the continental shelf open to exploring.
For the abyssal plains, it seems ROVs from subs can be used.

Another idea; can an unmanned, unteathered vechile be used for sea exploration? Like a space probe?

__________________
I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid...and I went ahead anyway. - Crow T. Robot

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah