The topographic surface was compiled from multibeam data collected during two research cruises in 2019 with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology vessel R/V THUWAL, and the M193 cruise in 2023 with the R/V Meteor. Both datasets were acquired using a Kongsberg EM710 hull-mounted system; in the case of the M193 cruise, an EM122 system was also used. The data are from the northern Red Sea, near the Al Wajh carbonate platform off the coast of Saudi Arabia. The seabed topography was studied to investigate recent sedimentation processes and salt tectonics.The multibeam echosounder datasets used for compiling the topographic surface were initially processed onboard using QPS Qimera software for cleaning the bathymetric data. Final processing in the lab included artifact removal using the swath editor, slice editor, and 3D editor. For the M193 data, tide correction was performed using a station in Al Wajh (26.250°N, 36.433°E) from the GEOSA (Saudi General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information) online database. Sound velocity profiles (SVPs) were obtained through 12 CTD casts and one eXpendable Sound Velocity (XVS) probe, and loaded into the Kongsberg Seafloor Information System (SIS) software to correct ray tracing during the survey. Due to the extreme physical and chemical characteristics of the water column in the Red Sea, the SIS algorithm for SVP interpolation sometimes produced artifacts along the water column in the SVPs. To improve the interpolation of sound speed at the maximum depths in the study area, SVPs were processed using the Sound Speed Manager (Masetti et al., 2020), which incorporates a larger database of SVPs already collected in the Red Sea by KAUST. The calculated resolution of the topographic surface is 30 m and projected in WGS84. Water depth in negative values.

These data should not be used for navigational purposes.