What lies beneath

That big white boat going back and forth between Orient Point and Rocky Point in Long Island Sound isn't lost. And the people aboard aren't glued to binoculars keeping track of every fish you catch, nor are they spies working for some multinational energy corporation.

With specialized echo sounders, multi-beam and side-scan sonars, this boat's mission is to update Long Island Sound's nautical charts, some of which haven't been updated in more than 100 years -- like a section near the coast off Orient Point with huge underwater boulders that have never before been documented.

"We work up and down the East Coast, whichever channel needs to be done," Thomas Jefferson crew member Ensign Megan Nadeau said. "Some haven't been done since before 1900, which can be dangerous in navigation. We make sure the depths are the same."..[The Suffolk Times]