With a 300-level sedimentology exam just 30 hours away, I’m thinking of bathymetry and marine geology (since it was a rather large part of the course). There are two places that the complexity of bathmetry may be viewed online, if you’re of the geological persuasion, or just interested in cool data sets, then these may well tickle your interest.

Google Maps
Apart from having cool satellite pictures of thousands of broken aircraft and other weird captures, google maps’ satellite view has a global drained ocean map showing all major bathymetric features, which you can zoom to a resolution of about 500km x 500km. This is a fantastic resource for people like me, people interested in just having a look at what’s going on with plate tectonics, marine volcanology, but unfortunately, not marine sediment flows.
Here’s a few interesting spots to have a look at.

New Zealand volcanic fore arc and Kermadec Trench
This shows the Alpine Fault that runs along the “spine” of New Zealand transitioning through a boundary of obduction in the Kaikora region (bottom left), through to the subduction/volcanic arc system of the North Island where the Pacific plate subducts beneath the Australian plate. The largest white circle on the left half of the map is Mt Ruapehu, an active volcano which is good for snowboarding : )
If you scroll up following the Kermadec Trench (that’s the big, dark trough), you can see several strings of marine volcanoes forming in the back arc of the subduction system and moving their way towards the subduction zone. These marine mountains will all eventually be subducted beneath the Australian plate and some part of them will likely be erupted in the Taupo Volcanic Zone in the long running ocean basin recycling / top cooled convection system present on Earth.

Hawaii and the Emperor Seamount Chain
This reasonably zoomed out map focuses on the Emperor Seamount Chain, of which the Hawaiian islands are the most recent addition. This chain formed as the Pacific plate passed over a mantle hotspot. The chain is about 70 Ma in age, and a kink is visible about half way along, this occurred at approximately 45Ma, but it’s occurrance has so far defied explanation. One theory is that the Pacifc plate’s tectonic Euler pole (since tectonic plates are moving over a sphere, each pair of plate’s relative motion is considered as a rotation about a pole) shifted as the plate interactions changed over time. Another theory is that the hot spot has changed trend. no matter the reason, the change in direction is very sudden, geologically speaking.

Another interesting bathymetry detail of Hawaii is the flexural isostasy associated with the load the Hawaiian islands have placed on the lithosphere. Although not really visible, the Hawaiian islands’ great load on the lithosphere has caused the crust to bend, creating large trenches around the islands.

The Himalayas
This is just a nice view of the powerful left hook the Indian continent gave Asia at about 20-10Ma. Not really related to bathymetry, but still rather cool. The history and results of the collision are extensive and have been theorised to have effected the rain fall in Africa around the same time, and thus influenced the evolution of the human race. The subject is far too broad for me to cover here, just take a look : )

BathymetryX
This application is a more scientific look at the world’s bathemtry, and as with all scientific software, is much less user friendly than Google Maps. Though I can’t give you direct links to anything, I can direct you and offer the odd screen capture. Bathymetry X can zoom down to a resolution of 22^o, which is about 2442km by 2442km.

As I previously mentioned, Hawaii places a huge load on the lithosphere, bending it. If you zoom into Hawaii in BathymetryX, it is possible to see and take a copy of the image showing the dark blue, deep trench surrounding Hawaii. This is 5-6km deep in places, and shows just how heavy something the size of Hawaii is.

There’s much more to talk about, but I feel I’m rambling so I’ll leave it here. It’s just good to know that there’s so much collated information available for free to everyone, everywhere. Go the internet!