Ocean exploration is a dynamic and exciting field. New discoveries and explorations, advances in technology, and important findings in deep-ocean science happen every day. The items on this page capture some of the big news in ocean exploration, not just at NOAA, but around the field. The stories posted represent just a snapshot and the list here is not intended to be all encompassing; posting of links does not constitute specific endorsement of a story or news outlet. Check back regularly to stay on top of the ever-changing world of deep-ocean exploration or visit the archive for past stories.
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November 4, 2024 | NPR
How did life start on Earth? The answer is a big scientific mystery scientists are actively investigating. After talking with many scientists, host Regina G. Barber found that an abundance of water on Earth is most likely key, in some way, to the origin of life — specifically, in either deep sea hydrothermal vents or in tide pools.
October 26, 2024 | Mashable
A deep sea robot is exploring remote underwater canyons. And the biodiverse sights are astonishing. On a 55-day expedition off the Chilean coast, scientists aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute's 272-foot exploration vessel, Falkor (too), are dropping a high-tech remotely operated vehicle into the dark depths. It's here, in a region where tectonic plates collide, earthquakes rumble, and methane and chemicals seep from vents, that isolated ecosystems can flourish.
October 24, 2024 | ASU News
Oceans are vital to sustaining life on Earth, as they produce over half of the oxygen we breathe and play a crucial role in regulating the planet's climate. They also support a diverse array of marine ecosystems that provide food, livelihoods and recreational opportunities for millions of people worldwide.
October 23, 2024 | Smithsonian Magazine
The discovery of worms and snails confirms that these still-mysterious, dark hotspots of life extend beyond what’s visible above the crust.
October 17, 2024 | The Guardian
Newly ‘discovered’ underwater topographical features are paving the way for nation states to exploit previously untouched marine resources.
October 16, 2024 | CNN
Scientists have uncovered communities of animals such as tube worms and snails living in volcanic caves beneath the seafloor, revealing a previously unknown but thriving ecosystem.
October 14, 2024 | Miami Herald
Off the coast of American Samoa, an active underwater volcano towers above the seafloor, its upper crater the site of a four-year eruption. Following the formation of a 1,000-foot lava cone between 2001 and 2005, the Vailulu’u site was investigated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s underwater robot Pisces V.
October 14, 2024 | IFLScience
A chance encounter with a deeply mysterious cephalopod known as the whip-lash squid has been captured on camera some 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) below the sea's surface in the Tonga Trench.
October 12, 2024 | The Guardian
The US scientist on being the first Black woman to descend to Earth’s deepest point, ignoring career advice – and what really happened to the Titan submersible.
October 4, 2024 | News4JAX
If you look up in the sky, all you will see is a blue sky or a night sky, but from a telescope, you might get a glimpse of the satellites orbiting Earth. In recent months, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has teamed up with NASA and SpaceX to launch satellites into orbit to examine our oceans better.
October 3, 2024 | SciTechDaily
The ocean’s twilight zone is iron-deficient, limiting bacterial growth and affecting carbon storage. New findings show high siderophore levels in deeper waters, indicating a broader impact on marine biogeochemical cycles and necessitating further study.
October 2, 2024 | All At Sea
In October, NOAA, in collaboration with the University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center and additional partners, will conduct a groundbreaking mission in the Gulf of Maine. The mission will test the simultaneous remote operation of two DriX uncrewed surface vessels to map and explore the seafloor.
October 1, 2024 | Providence Business News
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-backed research effort will continue to operate out of the University of Rhode Island for at least the next five years, the university announced late last month.
September 28, 2024 | Deeper Blue
The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project has announced that it is teaming up with artificial intelligence ocean exploration pioneer SeaDeep. The new partnership aims to be able to leverage SeaDeep’s expertise using AI in exploration to complete the Seabed 2030 Project of mapping the entire planet’s seabed by the end of the decade.
September 26, 2024 | KCAW
During the second year of the “Our Submerged Past” expedition, the team used the SUNFISH® autonomous underwater vehicle to explore submerged caves and rock shelters discovered during the first year of the project.
September 19, 2024 | NOAA Research
New research published today shows that using data collected by deep ocean robots, called Deep Argo floats, combined with historic data from research vessels has increased confidence that parts of the global deep ocean are warming at a rate of .0036 to .0072 degrees Fahrenheit (.002 to .004 degrees Celsius) each year.
September 19, 2024 | IFL Science
Stupendously rare footage of a bigfin squid, known for its alien-like appearance and unbelievably long tentacles, has been captured in the dark depths of the Pacific Ocean.
September 19, 2024 | IFL Science
Antibiotic resistance is a major health concern. We now have several harmful microbes that have evolved into versions unaffected by common treatments. To find new antibiotics scientists are looking further afield, including in the ocean.
September 19, 2024 | CNN
When a dive center in a flooded quarry near Bristol, in the UK, was suddenly shut down in early 2022, many recreational scuba divers were left scratching their heads.
September 18, 2024 | Scientific American
A strange sound dubbed “biotwang” was first heard bouncing around the Mariana Trench 10 years ago, and scientists have finally figured out where it comes from.
September 18, 2024 | Oilfield Technology
The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project has announced SeaDeep, an innovative company dedicated to transforming ocean exploration through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), as its newest partner.
September 17, 2024 | Science
The ocean is vast and it might seem easy to get lost if you are a creature just 1 millimeter long. However, tiny shrimplike crustaceans called mysids are able to use their sense of smell to find their way back to the deep underwater caves they call home, a new study suggests. The finding adds to the list of marine creatures, including salmon, known to use chemical cues to navigate.
September 16, 2024 | NOAA
NOAA and Esri, a global leader in location intelligence, will create the prototype for a one-of-a-kind, fully interoperable open data platform to provide equitable, actionable and ready-to-use ocean and coastal data for decision makers and communities. The platform will leverage NOAA’s massive stores of world-class data with Esri’s geospatial technical innovations and capabilities to help users address critical issues, with information tailored to their needs.
September 16, 2024 | Newsweek
A picture of the Titan submersible wreckage was shown at the bottom of the ocean, The Sun reported, as a hearing on the implosion revealed some of the last messages sent by the crew.
September 11, 2024 | Honolulu Star Advisor
A vessel dedicated to exploring the unknown parts of the ocean is docked this week at the Port of Hilo for the first time as the crew and scientists prepare for the next part of their expedition.
September 11, 2024 | Vice
In the deepest parts of the ocean there’s no sunlight, temperatures hover just above freezing, and the pressure is so intense it’s like having 100 adult elephants laying on top of your body. Yet, at these depths live some of the most extraordinary creatures ever discovered.
September 11, 2024 | Big Island Now
Kayla Harpe was a proud mama Tuesday evening, posting a photo of the painting her son created Tuesday afternoon, commenting on Jennifer Andrea’s post in the in the East Hawai‘i Events & Activities group on Facebook sharing NOAA Ocean Exploration’s reminder about “Pilina Kai Lipo: Connecting to the Deep Ocean.”
September 3, 2024 | CNN
A team of NASA rocket scientists is developing autonomous underwater robots able to go where humans cannot, deep beneath Antarctica’s giant ice shelves. The robots’ task is to better understand how rapidly ice is melting — and how quickly that could cause catastrophic sea level rise.
September 2, 2024 | Newsweek
An iconic piece of the Titanic has broken off from the ship and collapsed onto the ocean floor, according to a research team that conducted its first expedition to the wreckage in 14 years.
August 29, 2024 | Eos
A novel laser-equipped probe is collecting measurements of deep-sea geochemical environments that once seemed impossible to gather, pointing the way toward future explorations of other ocean worlds.
August 29, 2024 | Earth.com
During a deep sea expedition off the Alaska coast, scientists discovered a shiny object that some are calling a “golden orb” nestled two miles beneath the ocean’s surface, glinting against the dark backdrop of the seafloor.
August 28, 2024 | Mashable
Scientists discovered a giant underwater mountain. And it's teeming with deep sea life. An endeavor aboard the Falkor (too) — a 363-foot (111-meter) research vessel operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute — has returned vivid imagery from its latest exploration mission around a variety of seamounts, including in the Nazca Ridge, located some 900 miles off the coast of Chile.
August 22, 2024 | Business Insider
A group of scientists are looking for clues about the origin of life in a massive chunk of rocks they pulled up from deep below the seafloor. In the pitch-black waters at the bottom of the Atlantic is a vast array of hydrothermal vents and hot springs that, some scientists hypothesize, offer a similar environment to where life may have blossomed on Earth billions of years ago. The region is called the Lost City, and it has been a hot spot of scientific interest for decades.
August 22, 2024 | Phys.org
How will global warming impact marine ecosystems? This is a critical question when addressing future climate change. Sustained climate change may have a particularly large negative effect on one of the smallest lifeforms in the ocean: phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is essential for maintaining balance in the marine food chain, so population shifts can result in substantial effects throughout the food chain.
August 22, 2024 | IFL Science
We all know the ocean is full of deep dark surprises and wacky-looking creatures – and sometimes, we get to enjoy those animals in the moments that humans and sea creatures cross paths. While it might not go well for some, one snorkeler has recorded her magical experience with a sea hare in Mexico.
August 20, 2024 | The Guardian
Without plankton, the modern ocean ecosystem – the very idea of the ocean as we understand it – would collapse. Earth would have no complex life of any kind.
August 18, 2024 | Forbes
Space exploration often takes center stage in both fiction and non-fiction, which make it easy to forget that one of the most mysterious and largely unexplored frontiers lies much closer to home. Our oceans, which cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, remain an enigmatic and vital component of our planet’s ecosystem. Oceanxplorers, a new documentary series from National Geographic, invites us to dive into the deep and discover the secrets of the oceans like never before.
August 9, 2024 | Marine Technology News
The STEM Lander is a small free vehicle intended to introduce curious students to marine technology and ocean exploration. The basic unit drops to the seafloor up to 100-ft deep taking video images, then releases a weight to become buoyant and float back to the surface. A flag helps locate the lander on the surface. Submerged time is under 15 minutes.
August 8, 2024 | Live Science
The sea surface temperature around the Great Barrier Reef this year is the hottest it has ever been in 400 years, posing huge threats to the coral reef ecosystem in the area.
August 7, 2024 | Popular Mechanics
At a conference in June, physicist Joao A. B. Coelho of the French Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory presented a project that shares a fair amount of DNA wit Twister’s Dorothy: a big group of spherical artificial eyeballs that may help us detect featherlight neutrino particles from under the ocean. These ‘eyeballs’ are encased in a sphere, and then those spheres are in turn encased in another sphere. Could a massive installation on the seafloor off the coast of Sicily help us pinpoint more of the universe’s mysterious (but plentiful) neutrinos?
August 7, 2024 | Science
Much of the ocean floor remains unknown territory, despite the best efforts of scientists—and James Cameron. What do underwater habitats look like? What sorts of animals are down there? And what impact are humans having?
August 6, 2024 | Scientific American
There are more than 500 species of sharks in the world’s oceans, from the 7-inch dwarf lantern shark to whale sharks that can grow to over 35 feet long. They’re found from polar waters to the equator, at the water’s surface and miles deep, in the open ocean, along coasts and even in some coastal rivers.
August 1, 2024 | Sacromento Bee
The only two Japanese ships believed to have been sunk directly off the U.S. coastline in World War II have been located by researchers scouring the seafloor off Alaska, East Carolina University in North Carolina announced in a news release.
July 29, 2024 | Sacromento Bee
Off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, shallow waters deepen as they meet the Atlantic Ocean. On the edge of the continental shelf, a 40-mile-long trench cuts into the ocean floor, creating a deep, submarine canyon.
July 25, 2024 | Maritime Executive
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) accumulates a vast amount of ocean survey data, and its research vessels travel to far-flung destinations that few people visit. Its capabilities are useful for a variety of civilian and defense purposes, and it is adding one more important mission to the list: finding and honoring lost American servicemembers from past wars.
July 26, 2024 | Nature
Analysis of high-resolution climate models reveals a substantial reduction in global oceanic kinetic energy under global warming. This reduction of oceanic kinetic energy is mainly due to weakened mesoscale eddies in the deep ocean.
July 24, 2024 | Wired
Researchers believe they have discovered oxygen being produced 4,000 meters below the sea surface, and think polymetallic nodules—the sought-after bounty of deep-sea miners—could be the source.
July 22, 2024 | Science News
In an unexpected twist, metal-rich nodules found on the seafloor are generating oxygen, new research suggests. This meager but steady supply of the vital gas may help support seafloor ecosystems in areas currently targeted for deep-sea mining, scientists say.
July 21, 2024 | Kauauʻi Now
A Hawaiian immersion program teacher from Molokaʻi set sail last week as a Science Communication Fellow in a deep ocean exploration expedition with the Ocean Exploration Trust. Gandharva Mahina Hou Ross, a kumu at Molokaʻi High School’s O Hina I Ka Malama program, joins Ocean Exploration Trust’s (OET) expedition to Jarvis Island, in the US Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, as part of a team of scientists and explorers.
July 15, 2024 | Business Insider
Abigail Adams, wife of the second US president, was born in 1744. It's entirely possible that there are Greenland sharks still living today that were swimming in the North Atlantic Ocean at the time.
July 14, 2024 | Big Island Now
Beachgoers and boaters in the Hawaiian Islands may have spied a large white vessel offshore in recent days. The ship wending its way through the blue waters of the tropical archipelago is Oscar Elton Sette – a 224-foot research vessel operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, now conducting the first Hawai‘i portion of the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program in five years.
July 12, 2024 | Business Times
The legendary oceanographer discusses her lifelong mission to protect the world’s oceans, the growing network of Hope Spots transforming marine ecosystems globally, and why it’s not too late to make a difference.
July 9, 2024 | Twin States News
USF and the Florida Institute of Oceanography crews prepped their new remotely operated vehicle Taurus for its first mission on Monday. The remotely operated vehicle - an ROV - can reach depths of two and a half miles, opening the door for exploration of some of the ocean’s most remote areas.
July 5, 2024 | Frontiers for Young Minds
From 200 to nearly 11,000 m (about 600–33,000 feet) below sea level and covering two-thirds of our planet, the deep ocean is Earth’s largest—and most critical—habitat. The deep ocean is very important to people for many reasons. For example, it provides foods that we eat, it balances Earth’s climate, and it is a wild unknown space for people to enjoy and explore. Despite its importance, the deep sea is the least explored area on our planet because it is so big, deep, dark, cold, and salty. Researchers need to use special tools such as ships and deep-sea robots to create maps, make new discoveries, and understand how the ocean works and how it affects people and the planet.
June 28, 2024 | Sci Tech Daily
For the first time, researchers from the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography have led an international team to directly measure the upwelling of cold, deep water through turbulent mixing along the slope of a submarine canyon in the Atlantic Ocean.
June 27, 2024 | Scientific American
In the ocean’s depths, seawater’s punishing weight would crush surface-dwelling species to a pulp. So how do ctenophores—squishy, see-through creatures with a body the consistency of Jell-O—thrive when they’re kilometers deep?
June 25, 2024 | Phys.org
About 183 million years ago, volcanic activity in modern South Africa unleashed an estimated 20,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ocean–atmosphere system over a period of 300 to 500 thousand years. Known as the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE), the lack of oxygen, or anoxia, in the water during this time caused a mass extinction of marine species.
June 17, 2024 | ABC News
The deadly implosion of an experimental submersible en route to the deep-sea grave of the Titanic last June has not dulled the desire for further ocean exploration, despite lingering questions about the disaster.
June 13, 2024 | Business Insider
Nestled next to a park and tucked inside an inlet, Wahoo Bay boasts a half-acre of glistening, shallow water in Pompano Beach, Florida, home to tropical fish and endangered seagrass. But below the surface, the mini marine sanctuary is also a test bed for underwater technology that may take researchers to literal new depths.
June 11, 2024 | CBS News
The wreck of the ship that famed explorer Ernest Shackleton died on more than a century ago has been found on the ocean floor off the coast of Canada, according to a news release from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
June 11, 2024 | Forbes
We need to know if ocean-based technologies to reduce carbon dioxide and climate risk are viable, safe, and scalable.
June 11, 2024 | Spatial Source
Challenger 150, which coordinates a global effort to map life in the deep-sea, has signed a memorandum of understanding with The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, an initiative dedicated to inspiring and coordinating the global effort to map the entire ocean floor by the end of the decade.
June 5, 2024 | Popular Mechanics
Humans spend nearly their entire lives on land, but the Earth we call home is really a water world. With 71 percent of the Earth’s surface covered by water, this expansive ecosystem has been difficult to study, and many animals of the deep ocean remain a complete mystery. One of the most spellbinding of these animals is the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni). When full-grown, this creature is about as long as a bus and weighs nearly 1,100 pounds.
May 24, 2024 | Universe Magazine
The solar storm in May 2024 turned out to be so powerful that its effects were felt even on the ocean bottom. Magnetic compasses used by Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) to monitor the ocean off the Canadian coast have recorded a significant distortion of the Earth’s magnetic field due to the huge flow of particles ejected from the Sun.
May 21, 2024 | Science Alert
Off the coast of Big Sur, California, deep beneath the waves, lies a mysterious landscape dotted by large holes in the clay, silt, and sand. Decades after its discovery, scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and Stanford University think they have figured out what is forming the field's curious pattern of circles.
May 21, 2024 | Fox 5 News
One of the largest migrations on Earth happens in the dark ocean every night, as tiny jelly-like organisms work together to emerge from the deep sea to the surface. Biologists think the ocean migration could inspire future robotic technology.
May 21, 2024 | Oregon Live
It always pays to keep one eye on the ocean and one eye on the sand when you’re walking along the beach at the Oregon Coast, a lesson reinforced by some Cannon Beach beachcombers who discovered a rare deep-sea angler fish known as a Pacific football fish (Himantoliphus sagamius) south of town on Saturday.
May 17, 2024 | Technology Networks
Climate change is putting countless marine organisms under pressure. However, jellyfish in the world’s oceans could actually benefit from the rising water temperatures – also and especially in the Arctic Ocean, as researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now successfully shown. In computer models, they exposed eight widespread Arctic jellyfish species to rising temperatures, sea ice retreat and other changing environmental conditions. The result: by the second half of this century, all but one of the species in question could substantially expand their habitat poleward. The ‘lion’s mane jellyfish’ could even triple the size of its habitat – with potentially dramatic consequences for the marine food web and Arctic fish populations. The study was just released in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.
May 15, 2024 | Newsweek
A new species of crab was discovered living 3,000 feet under the ocean's surface, according to a new study. Researchers exploring the area in a submersible in March 2021 discovered the crab and collected a male specimen from some bamboo coral in the South China Sea. Upon closer examination, the team learned it had found a new species, depicting its characteristics in a study published in Raffles Bulletin of Zoology on May 3.
May 13, 2024 | Rhody Today
A University of Rhode Island oceanographer leading her first research cruise in the southern Pacific uncovered a surprise when her vessel looked below the waters in the Polynesian nation of Tonga.
May 10, 2024 | Phys.org
Scientists have discovered bioluminescence is actually pretty common among deep-sea shrimp, with a new study identifying 157 species that are believed to possess the ability to emit light. Some do it by vomiting luminous secretions and others through specialized light organs in their bodies. Some even do both.
May 8, 2024 | BBC
In 2010 four friends, carrying 32kg (71lb) worth of camera equipment, sunk beneath the waves of Sodwana Bay, off the east coast of South Africa. It was then that photographer, Laurent Ballesta stared directly into the eyes of a creature once thought to have died out with the dinosaurs – making him the first diver to photograph a living coelacanth.
May 1, 2024 | MBARI
A new mobile game launching today allows anyone with a smartphone or tablet to take part in ocean exploration and discovery. Welcome to FathomVerse. Now available for download on the App Store and Google Play, FathomVerse allows players to interact with real underwater images to improve the artificial intelligence that helps researchers study ocean life. The game combines immersive imagery, compelling gameplay, and cutting-edge science to inspire a new wave of ocean explorers.
May 1, 2024 | CBS News
Sinkholes don't just happen on land, they also happen in the ocean where they're known as blue holes. And now, researchers say they've found the deepest one yet on the planet – one so large that they can't even get to the bottom
May 1, 2024 | Phsy.org
The pace of discovery in the oceans leaped forward thanks to teamwork between a deep-sea robot and a human occupied submarine leading to the recent discovery of five new hydrothermal vents in the eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean.
May 1, 2024 | Eos
Millions of tons of plastic are entering the ocean every year. But where it all ends up is still a mystery. A new study estimates between 3 and 11 million metric tons of it are lying on the seafloor. That’s up to a hundred times the amount thought to be floating on the surface.
April 24, 2024 | Nature
Family tree of ‘octocorals’ pushes origin of bioluminescence back to 540 million years ago, when the first animal species developed eyes.
April 23, 2024 | The Conversation
Earth’s atmosphere maintains a constant level of oxygen, whether it is a wintry, rainy day or hot summer. Across the ocean, oxygen concentrations vary enormously between different places and over time. Sometimes oxygen levels change within the course of a day, while in some deep parts of the ocean, oxygen concentrations remain constant. In certain places, there’s no oxygen at all but life still thrives.
April 18, 2024 | Euronews.com
In this episode, we will discuss the Digital Twin of the Ocean. We explore the goals of this EU initiative and examine how it can aid in combating plastic pollution, saving endangered species like marine turtles, and protecting our harbours from meteotsunamis.
April 17, 2024 | Scientific American
Mixotrophs, which have characteristics of both animals and plants, could help blunt the effects of marine heat waves on ocean ecosystems.
April 15, 2024 | Newsweek
Over 50 brand-new species have been discovered lurking on an ocean ridge in the Pacific. These new species were discovered alongside over 100 other species of crabs, corals, sea urchins, squid, fish, corals, mollusks, sea stars, glass sponges and squat lobsters that were previously known to science but were not thought to live in this region of the ocean.
April 15, 2024 | CNN
It’s not just ocean heat that’s affecting marine life – new research shows extremely cold events are welling up and causing mass mortalities. And the same planet-warming pollution that’s driving the climate crisis is likely to blame for these “killer events” on the other end of the temperature spectrum.
April 14, 2024 | earth.com
A fascinating new discovery reveals that violent summer storms have a secret role in keeping things in balanced in the ocean.
April 5, 2024 | yTech
The quest for comprehensive knowledge of the ocean’s depths has taken an innovative turn with the introduction of a groundbreaking underwater robot developed by scientists at Zhejiang University in China. With its exceptional camouflaging abilities, this stealthy robot represents a significant leap forward in ecological preservation and efficient exploration.
April 4, 2024 | Marine Technology News
NOAA Ocean Exploration has announced its Ocean Exploration Fiscal Year 2025 Funding Opportunity and is soliciting proposals focused on either one of two themes.
April 4, 2024 | CNN
Ancient glass sponges. A Barbie-pink sea pig sauntering along the seafloor. A transparent unicumber hovering in the depths. These wonders are just an initial snapshot of fantastic creatures discovered 16,400 feet (5,000 meters) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in a pristine area that’s earmarked as a site for deep-sea mining of critical and rare metals. The natural resources are in high demand for use in solar panels, electric car batteries and other green technologies, among other uses.
April 4, 2024 | Geospatial World
The depths of oceans remain one of the last frontiers of exploration on Earth, harboring vital resources and critical ecological systems. Traditionally, two types of uncrewed vehicles are used to explore the deep sea.
April 3, 2024 | The Weather Channel
Imagine an ocean vaster than all the water on Earth's surface combined hidden 700 kilometres beneath our feet. This is the mind-boggling discovery scientists at Northwestern University have unveiled, shaking our understanding of where Earth's water comes from.
April 1, 2024 | NRDC
Earlier this year, scientists, led by Dr. Derek Sowers, published a comprehensive map of the world’s most expansive cold-water coral mound province.
March 27, 2024 | Sci News
Scientists aboard the research vessel Atlantis have discovered five new deep-sea hydrothermal vent sites on the seafloor at 2,550 m (1.6 miles) depth. The venting fluids are all hotter than 300 degrees Celsius (570 degrees Fahrenheit).
March 24, 2024 | Yahoo!
Some were fabled vessels that have fascinated people for generations, like Endurance, Ernest Shackleton’s ship that sank in the Antarctic in 1915. Some were common workhorses that faded into the depths, like the Ironton, a barge that was carrying 1,000 tons of grain when it sank in Lake Huron in 1894.
March 22, 2024 | The Weather Channel
Canada’s vibrant Vancouver Islands were shook by almost 2,000 tremors in a single day earlier this month. And some digging around the coast has revealed that this isn’t a cause for concern, rather a profound geological process that involves the birth of a new ocean floor in the area!
March 22, 2024 | Newsweek
The Niijima island, a natural phenomenon that abruptly emerged from the ocean less than a year ago, has now vanished, according to the Japanese Coast Guard, underscoring the erratic nature of volcanic activity.
March 18, 2024 | IFL Science
With their extraordinarily long tentacles and elusive behavior, bigfin squids are arguably one of the most alluring animals of the deep sea. Sightings of live individuals in the wild are extremely rare, but an increasing number of observations have been made in recent years thanks to advancements in deep-sea exploration technology.
March 12, 2024 | NRDC
The ocean provides us with so much—including food, jobs, and recreation—but is under tremendous strain. Globally, two-thirds of the ocean has been significantly altered by human activity. Already stressed from decades of overexploitation and habitat destruction, marine life is now also struggling to adapt to a hotter, more acidic ocean brought on by climate change.
March 10, 2024 | The Guardian
When we climb on board the ship, the submersible is waiting for us on deck. It is sleek and gleaming and slightly comic, like a tiny spaceship. It has a banana-yellow deck and a huge, Jetsons-style cockpit contained within a transparent bubble: an acrylic globe that is perfectly clear and spherical, temporarily shrouded in a thick grey cover to protect the interior from super-heating in the Bahamian sun.
March 10, 2024 | New York Times
The findings, from the largely uncharted waters of Bounty Trough, show that “we’ve got a long way to go in terms of understanding where life is found in the ocean,” a researcher said.
March 8, 2024 | Trinidad and Tobago News Day
Diva Amon, 36, a world-renowned Trinidadian marine biologist, had some advice to share with young women worldwide on International Women’s Day. “Don’t compromise on those values that you hold dear. Stand by them. Preserving your self-integrity will allow you to believe in your actions and live with joy and a peace of mind.”
March 7, 2024 | Nature
DThe deep ocean is a whole world of alien mystery. Once you start diving deep, below the range through which sunlight can penetrate, whole ecosystems unfold, glimmering, glittering, and feasting in the darkness.
March 2, 2024 | PBS
Amid underwater mountains off the coast of Chile, scientists believe they’ve discovered 100 or so new species with the aid of a robot capable of diving more than 14,000 feet. Researchers say it demonstrates how the Chilean government’s ocean protections are bolstering biodiversity and providing a model for other countries. John Yang reports.
March 1, 2024 | New Scientist
When the faecal matter produced by plankton sinks, it carries carbon from shallow waters to long-term storage deep in the ocean – now, researchers want to make the stuff sink faster.
February 29, 2024 | E&E News
After measuring the size of nearly 1 million fish and sharks over a 14-year period, researchers concluded that the species grew larger in remote and protected locations, free from the interference of fishing. The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, used baited underwater video stations to measure the size of 823,849 fish from 1,460 species from 2006 to 2020.
February 28, 2024 | Caltech
Jellyfish can't do much besides swim, sting, eat, and breed. They don't even have brains. Yet, these simple creatures can easily journey to the depths of the oceans in a way that humans, despite all our sophistication, cannot. But what if humans could have jellyfish explore the oceans on our behalf, reporting back what they find? New research conducted at Caltech aims to make that a reality through the creation of what researchers call biohybrid robotic jellyfish.
February 28, 2024 | Phys.org
The exploration of oceanic resources through seismic methods necessitates precise seafloor geophone positioning. Traditional techniques, however, grapple with issues such as the influence of outliers, suboptimal use of precise observations, and the inefficiency of real-time data processing. These challenges undermine the accuracy and effectiveness of seismic exploration, hindering the ability to precisely locate underwater petroleum and natural gas reserves.
February 25, 2024 | SciTechDaily
Studying a rock is like reading a book. The rock has a story to tell, says Frieder Klein, an associate scientist in the Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
February 24, 2024 | Forbes
A research expedition exploring seamounts near Valparaíso, Chile may have found over 100 new species thriving across the Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges.
February 16, 2024 | The Weather Channel
NOAA Ocean Explorer recently updated its catalog of photographs of animals that live at the bottom of the ocean. Here are some of the most interesting new additions. To see more images.
February 14, 2024 | Phys.org
Corals searching for food in the cold and dark waters of the deep sea are building higher and higher mountains to get closer to the source of their food. But in doing so, they may find themselves trapped when the climate changes.
February 14, 2024 | The Inertia
Way back in 1987, a man named David Packard founded the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. In the years since, MBARI has made an extraordinary contribution to science. It has been 36 years of deep sea discoveries using remotely operated vehicles to plumb the depths of the sea. The researchers there have completed more than 7,300 dives and amassed over 28,500 hours of video. And in the 2-ish minutes above, they’ve compiled their most-loved moments.
February 13, 2024 | Scientific American
Researchers found that if melting glaciers shut down the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation pattern, the global climate could see major changes within just 100 years.
February 9, 2024 | Science Alert
While it's the reigning theory now, the road to acceptance was long and bumpy for plate tectonics, which describes how large portions of Earth's crust slide, grind, rise and sink ever so slowly across its sludgy mantle.
February 8, 2024 | New Scientist
Four new underwater mountains have been discovered in the high seas off the west coast of South and Central America. “The tallest is over one-and-a-half miles in height, and we didn’t really know it was there,” says Jyotika Virmani at the Schmidt Ocean Institute in California.
February 8, 2024 | Space.com
NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite has made it off the chopping block all the way to orbit. The nearly $1 billion PACE mission, which the Trump administration tried to cancel four separate times, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early this morning (Feb. 8) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
February 7, 2024 | Smithsonian Magazine
A controversial new study from the depths of the Caribbean Sea suggests that human activity has caused the world to warm more than originally thought.
February 6, 2024 | Popular Mechanics
A well-worn expression among oceanographers and others who explore the watery depths of planet Earth is that we humans “know the surface of Mars better than our ocean floors.” Covering more than 70 percent of the world’s surface, oceans are notoriously difficult to study—not to mention pretty inhospitable to any creatures sans gills.
February 1, 2024 | SciNews
Marine biologists aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor discovered at least four new species of deep-sea octopuses during two 2023 expeditions examining seamounts off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.
January 29, 2024 | Phys.org
A study published this month in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science reveals that disturbing the seabed, through activities such as trawling, could increase the scale and speed of climate change.
January 29, 2024 | NPR
New clues have emerged in what is one of the greatest mysteries of all time: the disappearance of legendary American aviator Amelia Earhart. Deep Sea Vision, an ocean exploration company based in South Carolina, announced Saturday that it captured compelling sonar images of what could be Earhart's aircraft at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
January 18, 2024 | Stony Brook University News
An international team of marine biologists including Oliver Shipley, PhD, of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University, has discovered a unique isopod, a form of crustacean, that has been formally identified as a new species of the genus Booralana from the deep waters of The Bahamas. The finding, detailed in a paper published in the journal Zootaxa, is another example that discovery of life in the oceans is far from complete. By uncovering the creature’s role in deep-sea ecosystems, scientists may be able to better understand ocean biodiversity.
January 16, 2024 | The Guardian
Large numbers of fungi have been found living in the twilight zone of the ocean, and could unlock the door to new drugs that may match the power of penicillin.
January 14, 2024 | Fox Weather
Maybe not yet ready for "So You Think You Can Dance," the deep sea cucumber doesn't have a classic dancer's body but doesn't let that stop it from busting a move. NOAA's Ocean Explorer recently caught this sea cucumber (Holothurian) while exploring and mapping the sea floor with an ROV off Kodiak, Alaska.
January 9, 2024 | Science
The United States has unveiled the results of a monumental undersea mapping effort that could add 1 million square kilometers of sea floor—twice the area of California—to its territory. In addition to enabling the U.S. to claim valuable geological and biological resources, particularly in the Arctic, the project has produced a wealth of seafloor data that are fueling a wide range of scientific advances.
January 13, 2024 | Science Alert
The mystery of strange pockmarks that dimple the floor of the North Sea has finally been solved. These mysterious depressions are not always, as had previously been thought, the result of methane seeping from beneath the seafloor sediment; rather, they're sometimes the mess left behind by porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) and sand eels (Ammodytes marinus) inhabiting the region.
January 4, 2024 | Live Science
A remotely operated submarine was collecting samples on a previously unexplored deep sea mountain when it scooped up a rare megalodon tooth. The gold-colored tooth, which is 2.7 inches (6.8 centimeters) long, was discovered more than 10,000 feet (3,090 meters) below the surface near the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, around 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) south of the Hawaiian Islands.
December 20, 2023 | Surfer Today
Humans live below sea level. But underneath the water that covers our planet, there's an impressive geomorphology comprised of trenches and abysses, ridges and canyons.
December 20, 2023 | Game Is Hard
Discover the fascinating world of underwater exploration with cutting-edge technology as underwater drones take us on a journey through the mysterious depths of the ocean.
December 17, 2023 | The San Francisco Standard
The Okeanos Explorer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deep-sea mapping ship—the only federal vessel solely dedicated to ocean exploration—has been finishing out 2023 working out of the Bay Area.
December 2, 2023 | IFL Science
There are sailors’ eyeballs to be found at sea, that is, if you know where to look. Fortunately not the result of any gouging injuries, these curious blobs are a type of algae called Valonia ventricosa, and they’re one of the largest single-celled organisms on Earth.
December 1, 2023 | Hydro International
In a collaboration among NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS), AUV manufacturer RTsys and subsea imaging technology manufacturer Arctic Rays, the NemoSens SwordFish is designed to revolutionize ocean exploration and research by enhancing NOAA's efforts to study and understand the seabed.
November 24, 2023 | Newsweek
Researchers have uncovered a massive underwater mountain that was previously unknown in the Pacific Ocean. The mountain, known as a seamount, sits around 13,100 feet below sea level and peaks at a depth of roughly 7,900 feet. Rising 5,249 feet above the ocean floor, the underwater mountain is roughly twice as tall as the world's tallest building—the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
November 21, 2023 | EE Times
The depths of Earth’s oceans remain one of the last frontiers of exploration on Earth, harboring vital resources and critical ecological systems. Traditionally, two types of uncrewed vehicles are used to explore the deep sea: remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), which are connected to a surface vessel via a communications and control tether and operated by pilots on-board; and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which are untethered and can travel underwater without requiring operator intervention. Both vehicles are promising tools for helping humans collect underwater- data collection—and for transforming sectors, including marine research, offshore industries, environmental conservation and even national defense.
November 15, 2023 | Reuters
The International Seabed Authority is working to set regulations for deep-sea mining as companies engaged in the clean energy transition clamor for more minerals. That transition will be a central focus at the United Nations’ COP28 climate summit in Dubai from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.
November 1, 2023 | Live Science
Footage filmed 1,225 feet beneath the ocean surface shows a goosefish strolling along the seafloor before turning its bulbous head and bulging eyes straight at the camera.
November 1, 2023 | Milwaukee Independent
Footage from deep in the Pacific Ocean has given the first detailed look at three World War II aircraft carriers that sank in the pivotal Battle of Midway and could help solve mysteries about the days-long barrage that marked a shift in control of the Pacific theater from Japanese to U.S. forces.
October 31, 2023 | Hydro International
From 21 October to 11 November, NOAA Ocean Exploration is leading expeditions aboard the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer off the coast of central California and within the boundaries of the proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. The primary objective of this expedition is to test the operation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) while gaining deeper insights into the biology and geology of the proposed sanctuary.
October 30, 2023 | Hydro International
In a pioneering project funded by Innovate UK, the development of a fleet of marine robots known as Squads of Adaptive Robots (SoAR) promises to reshape the landscape of ocean exploration. The innovative SoAR initiative has already demonstrated promising achievements in enhancing underwater missions and collaborative technologies and the potential to revolutionize offshore industries.
October 20, 2023 | Yahoo! News
While it has been established that marine heat waves are warming our oceans and causing great disruptions to marine ecosystems, new research has broadened our understanding of these occurrences.
October 19, 2023 | UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
The partnership marks the ocean exploration nonprofit’s latest effort to collaborate with global entities to advance ocean protection and preservation benchmarks worldwide.
October 12, 2023 | Phys.org
The scientific community is taking a significant step toward establishing a consensus on the designation of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) from imagery data, as highlighted in the new article titled "Towards a scientific community consensus on designating Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems from imagery," authored by Dr. Amy R. Baco and colleagues and published in PeerJ Life and Environment.
October 11, 2023 | Live Science
Porous rock that formed during one of Earth's biggest volcanic eruptions absorbed so much water as it eroded that it created a huge reservoir over the eons, now buried deep in Earth's crust.
October 11, 2023 | Tech Explore
The ocean has always been a force to be reckoned with when it comes to understanding and traversing its seemingly limitless blue waters. Past innovations such as deep-sea submersibles and ocean-observing satellites have helped illuminate some wonders of the ocean though many questions still remain.
September 27, 2023 | USA Today
Scientists exploring the deep waters near the Hawaiian Islands spotted a rare "Dumbo" octopus about a mile below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The octopus was seen on an unnamed seamount in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument just northwest of Hawaii. Video was captured by the Ocean Exploration Trust and NOAA.
September 22, 2023 | Smithsonian Magazine
In June of 1942, thousands of American and Japanese forces faced off in the Pacific Ocean in a deadly World War II conflict known as the Battle of Midway. After four days of fighting, the Japanese were forced to retreat.
September 8, 2023 | Yahoo! News
A golden egg, or an alien, on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean? American scientists have discovered a mysterious dome-shaped specimen deep on the Alaskan seafloor, but nobody knows for sure what it is.
September 8, 2023 | People
A mysterious golden orb was found at the bottom of the ocean off of Alaska’s coastline — and it has scientists puzzled.
August 31, 2023 | Yahoo! News
A team of deep sea explorers visiting an extinct volcano found something resembling a golden egg 250 miles off the coast of southern Alaska. The discovery was made Wednesday, Aug. 30, as a NOAA Ocean Exploration team recorded video in “the deep abyssal depths of the Gulf of Alaska.”
August 29, 2023 | Phys.org
Researchers have isolated a new strain of marine bacteria with unique characteristics from the ocean seabed.
August 27, 2023 | The Globe and Mail
Even deep-sea species like the plainfin midshipman are feeling the heat of climate change, and ecologists are worried.
August 25, 2023 | Mirage News
Scientific exploration of the deep ocean has largely remained inaccessible to most people because of barriers to access due to infrastructure, training, and physical ability requirements for at-sea oceanographic research.
August 24, 2023 | Smithsonian Magazine
Two chroniclers of explorers, including one who profiled OceanGate’s Stockton Rush, reflect on what visiting the depths of the ocean can—and can’t—teach us.
August 23, 2023 | Scientific American
Thousands of deep-sea octopuses gather on the flanks of a seamount off California’s coast. But until recently, scientists weren’t sure why these otherwise solitary animals were congregating. New research suggests they are seeking warmth to help their babies hatch more quickly.
August 23, 2023 | The Guam Daily Post
A shark species that was previously thought to live only as far south as Taiwan was seen in the waters of Palau, thanks to a deep-sea camera system.
August 18, 2023 | Deeper Blue
The Ocean Exploration Trust has announced a new partnership with the Nippon Foundation-Nekton “Ocean Census,” a program dedicated to marine species discovery.
August 15, 2023 | BBC
Scientists have long listened to the ocean, but new technology is helping to piece together a far more complex picture of life beneath the waves. Here, BBC Future lets you listen in.
August 14, 2023 | Associated Press
For the team aboard the Okeanos Explorer off the coast of Alaska, exploring the mounds and craters of the sea floor along the Aleutian Islands is a chance to surface new knowledge about life in some of the world’s deepest and most remote waters.
August 10, 2023 | Yahoo! News
While it has been established that marine heat waves are warming our oceans and causing great disruptions to marine ecosystems, new research has broadened our understanding of these occurrences.
August 9, 2023 | Scientific American
An expedition using a deep-sea remotely operated vehicle has uncovered a hidden underground ecosystem below hydrothermal vents on the seafloor.
August 9, 2023 | Port of Seattle
A gigantic jellyfish floats deep in the ocean, upside down with her young brooding on her underside. A dumbo octopus inhabits the deepest ocean waters, flapping its ear-like fins as it forages for its next meal. There's a whole deep-sea world that has been largely inaccessible to humans for centuries. Modern remotely operated vehicles (ROV) and other technology allow scientists to investigate the deep-sea environment in areas that are too deep for humans to safely dive themselves.
August 3, 2023 | USA Today
Collection of images of gelatinous animals seen in the water column.
August 3, 2023 | Smithsonian Magazine
Collected from the deep waters off Puerto Rico, the species is a member of an enigmatic, and threatened, group of corals.
July 31, 2023 | Scientific American
Explorers of space and the deep sea face similar dangers, but some differences make one realm safer than the other.
July 28, 2023 | CBS News
It may look like something from a low budget science-fiction movie, but this underwater robot could help accelerate a high-tech future. The batteries that power electric vehicles are made from various metals, including copper, cobalt and nickel. The materials are also used to build solar panels, wind turbines and smartphones. While the metals can be used to develop environmentally-friendly technology, the mines where those materials are found are sometimes plagued with environmental or human rights concerns.
July 27, 2023 | Phys.org
Earth's oceans are a complex system of interconnected transport highways for heat, nutrients and the transfer of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and sea. Meridional overturning circulation is the process by which these key components move from the tropics poleward to the subtropics. Research has found that an increase in this circulation pattern can be beneficial as it results in the ocean storing more heat and therefore draws down global temperature.
July 24, 2023 | Live Science
By combining high-definition maps with sensors that detect changes in the water column, researchers have created a "centimeter-scale" picture of how currents and tides shape the Monterey Canyon.
July 20, 2023 | Miami Herald
A vast city of tubeworms has been discovered thriving in near freezing temperatures off the coast of Alaska, and some could be a few centuries old.
July 14, 2023 | Earth
The scientific community has discovered a new planet. It is located 245 light-years away from Earth and has been named TOI-733b. Its size is slightly less than twice the radius of Earth. It has a unique feature: its atmosphere.
July 10, 2023 | Science Alert
As life comes to an end, so too does life go on. This is true even in the benthic depths, where the bounty of a fallen whale carcass created and continues to support a mini ecosystem for decades after the whale's death.
June 24, 2023 | CNN
As humans, we seek to explore the unknown. This motivation, propelled by curiosity and the quest for knowledge, is why we venture beyond the familiar spaces of our everyday lives. The beginning of humanity was marked by migration. Many early humans began their trek out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago, eventually settling in just about every corner of the planet.
June 15, 2023 | Yahoo! News
Researchers cooed over a “smiley” snailfish they spotted during a deep sea exploration mission in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument on Wednesday, June 7, footage by the Ocean Exploration Trust and NOAA showed.
June 14, 2023 | IFL Science
For the first time, researchers have laid eyes upon a newly discovered species of “gelatinous predator” spotted in the light-deprived depths of the Pacific Ocean. Experts now believe this yet-to-be-described species of jellyfish may illuminate a deeper understanding of the enigmatic aquatic world from which it emerged.
June 13, 2023 | Science Friday
On June 27, talk to ocean scientists and ask your questions in a special ship-to-shore livestream from the ocean floor. Meet the crew of the E/V Nautilus as they explore the ocean floor live! Attendees can ask the scientists and engineers questions and learn more about life onboard the ship.
June 12, 2023 | The Guardian
Hanging over the side of the boat, Nahi El Bar Jiyed scoops up a jug of sea water, then carefully pours it into a large syringe. While the sample may seem ordinary, to the biologist it’s a trove of secrets: the DNA of every living creature swimming below.
June 8, 2023 | BBC
This World Oceans Day we are diving into the mysterious world of the deep ocean. For a long time scientists believed that life in the ocean depths was impossible. However, we now understand that the deep ocean is a rich, if somewhat alien, ecosystem of marine life.
June 7, 2023 | Yahoo! Finance
Bristlemouth, the first open ocean connectivity standard, has launched its Pioneer program during World Oceans Week. The Bristlemouth Pioneer program supports ocean innovators building marine applications and new technology. The program is a collaboration between strategic partners from across the public and private sectors: OceanKind, Office of Naval Research, Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, Builders Vision, Dalio Philanthropies, Aqualink, Ocean Discovery League, and Sofar Ocean.
June 7, 2023 | SETI Institute
On Friday, May 19, 2023, Impossible Sensing, along with a team of scientists and engineers from SETI Institute, NASA JPL, University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory and other institutions onboard Ocean Exploration Trust's Exploration Vessel Nautilus expedition, successfully launched InVADER Mission’s Laser Divebot into the deep waters surrounding Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll. This expedition, which is funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration and Research via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, marks the first time a high-tech laser laboratory has been integrated into ROV operations for in situ sensing and analysis – a true paradigm shift in ocean research and exploration.
June 6, 2023 | Deeper Blue
The Ocean Exploration Trust has announced its exploration plans for the 2023 summer season. This year, the trust’s Exploration Vessel E/V Nautilus will be looking into deep-sea habitats in the Central and Eastern Pacific. Also, the trust will aim to incorporate several new technological advances into its exploration activities.
May 19, 2023 | The Weather Channel
A team of deep-sea investigators used 3D mapping to create a digital twin of the Titanic like it’s never been seen before. The photorealistic model is made up of roughly 715,000 images. The result will allow engineers and scientists a better understanding of the true story behind the most famous disaster in maritime history.
May 17, 2023 | Yahoo! News
A mysterious “noodly line” has been discovered rising from the seafloor off southern Alaska, like a giant finger reaching toward the surface, according to NOAA Ocean Exploration.
May 15, 2023 | The Guardian
A mysterious “noodly line” has been discovered rising from the seafloor off southern Alaska, like a giant finger reaching toward the surface, according to NOAA Ocean Exploration.
May 10, 2023 | Miami Herald
A towering seamount that rivals Oregon’s Mount Hood has been found on the Pacific Ocean floor off British Columbia. It stands at least 10,187 feet tall, with “at least” being a key phrase. NOAA Ocean Exploration mapped the site May 8, and the research team “did not quite capture it all, so the seamount is likely a bit taller,” officials told McClatchy News.
May 10, 2023 | USA Today
Imagine working aboard a research station on the ocean floor, watching sea creatures swim past, then venturing out to explore the ocean’s surface. Or being able to examine the impact of climate change on coral reefs from the windows of your undersea research station.
April 21, 2023 | The Conversation
When thinking of animals that live in the most extreme environments on Earth most of us probably don’t think of the snailfish. Its name may not hint at extraordinary physical capabilities but the snailfish has broken the record for living at the deepest ocean depths known to humanity.
April 19, 2023 | Science
The U.S. submarine fleet’s biggest adversary lately hasn’t been Red October. In 2005, the nuclear-powered USS San Francisco collided with an underwater volcano, or seamount, at top speed, killing a crew member and injuring most aboard. It happened again in 2021 when the USS Connecticut struck a seamount in the South China Sea, damaging its sonar array.
March 29, 2023 | Southern Fried Science
Most of the plastic that enters our oceans in unaccounted for. While large, charismatic macroplastics float on or just beneath the surface, making for dramatic scenes of vast swaths of garbage littering the sea, the bulk of the plastic in the ocean exists as tiny particles of degraded plastics that sink to the bottom, enter food chains, and accumulate not just in the ecosystem, but within the tissue of marine animals.
March 27, 2023 | OPB
In this monthly rundown from OPB, we feature the most interesting, wondrous and hopeful science coming out of the Pacific Northwest, from Jes Burns, creator of “All Science. No Fiction.” And remember: Science builds on the science that came before. No one study tells the whole story.
March 27, 2023 | The Guardian
For years industrial companies in southern California used the coast as a dumping ground for toxic chemical waste, including DDT. Decades later, scientists have found that the pesticide remains in high concentrations on the ocean floor and has never broken down.
March 23, 2023 | KPAX
This edition of A Wilder View takes a look at the biggest squid in the ocean, and they will make your jaw drop! While the giant squid is often the star of the show, our wildlife correspondent, Tanner Saul, reveals why they're not actually the biggest squid in the sea.
March 23, 2023 | The Hill
With only 21 months left in his current term, President Biden’s ocean conservation accomplishments still fall far short of his rhetoric and promises.
March 22, 2023 | Miami Herald
A mountain would seem to be a tough thing to miss, but a new one has been found off the coast of Northern California. The seamount, as underwater mountains are called, was discovered by a seafloor mapping drone and its shape is more like a giant tower than a mountain.
March 20, 2023 | Hakai Magazine
Plastic pollution is everywhere, from the tip of Mount Everest to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Wherever it goes, plastic has unexpected effects: it transports pathogens, strangles wildlife, and, sometimes, becomes habitat. But on the bottom of the Philippine Trench, 10,000 meters deep, plastic is reshaping life on the seafloor.
March 17, 2023 | Science News
The oceans of the world may be gradually shrinking, leaking slowly away into the Earth’s mantle. Although the oceans are constantly being slowly augmented by water carried up from Earth’s interior by volcanic activity...some process such as sea-floor spreading seems to be letting the water seep away more rapidly than it is replaced.
March 16, 2023 | NCAR & UCAR News
The 2013-2016 marine heat wave known as “The Blob” warmed a vast expanse of surface waters across the northeastern Pacific, disrupting West Coast marine ecosystems, depressing salmon returns, and damaging commercial fisheries. It also prompted a wave of research on extreme warming of ocean surface waters.
March 16, 2023 | Phys.org
Underwater waves deep below the ocean's surface—some as tall as 500 meters—play an important role in how the ocean stores heat and carbon, according to new research.
March 14, 2023 | Harvard Gazette
Researchers find 5 new species of hard-to-access creatures amid shortage of knowledge, concerns growing commercial interest may cause extinctions.
March 7, 2023 | Fox Weather
Researchers have recently explored uncharted territory off the coast of Alaska and California thanks to technology helping to map the ocean floor. Saildrone Surveyor, an uncrewed surface vehicle, spent 52 days scanning 10,000 square miles of the Aleutian Islands alone.
March 7, 2023 | Popular Science
A 191-foot-long sunken ship missing beneath the waves of Lake Huron for almost 130 years has been discovered nearly intact with the help of self-driving boats and high powered sonar imaging.
March 7, 2023 | Nature
An ocean-drilling research programme that has been the most successful and productive global geosciences collaboration for decades will come to a stark end next year. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on 6 March that it would retire its flagship JOIDES Resolution drilling vessel rather than extend operations until 2028, as many researchers had hoped.
March 6, 2023 | Astrobiology
Schmidt Ocean Institute launched today its newly refitted 110-meter global-class research vessel for use by scientists worldwide to dramatically advance marine science and push the frontiers of deep sea expedition.
March 5, 2023 | CNBC
More than 80% of the ocean remains unexplored by humans but could soon be mapped by autonomous underwater robots. But is that all unmanned submarines will be used for?
March 5, 2023 | UN News
Secretary-General António Guterres has congratulated UN member countries for finalizing a text to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, calling it a “breakthrough” after nearly two decades of talks.
March 3, 2023 | Science Alert
Mystery silica ejected in huge quantities from Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is powerful new evidence pointing to heat vents on the floor of a global ocean.
March 2, 2023 | Fox News
Researchers in Michigan have announced the discovery Wednesday of a "magnificently preserved" shipwreck hundreds of feet below the surface of Lake Huron whose location had "remained a mystery for over 120 years."
March 2, 2023 | Trinidad and Tobago Newsday
Dr. Diva Amon, marine biologist, researches the habitats and animals of the deep ocean, and how human activities impact them. She has participated in expeditions around the world and is a consultant on ocean policy. She is a founding member and director of the TT NGO SpeSeas and a scientific advisor at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at University of California, Santa Barbara. This is the first part of a two-part feature, adapted from an article published on the World Economic Forum’s The Agenda on July 21 2022.
February 24, 2023 | Nature
The potential of the mesopelagic zone (200–1000 m depth) to provide natural resources and ecosystem services is of increasing interest to a broad range of societal stakeholders. As this interest grows, divergent ideas about its current and future role in supporting human life are being expressed in scientific and public discourse.
February 19, 2023 | Associated Press
United Nations members gather Monday in New York to resume efforts to forge a long-awaited and elusive treaty to safeguard the world’s marine biodiversity.
February 15, 2023 | Fox News
Over a century after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution released never-before-seen footage on Wednesday of what was at one point the largest ship in the world.
February 13, 2023 | Nature
I am a marine geologist, interested in the study of deep time. In my field, we collect long sediment cores from the ocean floor, to reconstruct the oceans and climates of the past, looking for analogues of the current warming climate.
February 10, 2023 | Good News Network
As massive a project as it would see to be now, once upon a time humanity needed to formulate the theory of plate tectonics. That’s where perhaps the most influential cartographer of the 20th century, and of all human history besides, Marie Tharp came into the picture: hand-combining the hard data collected by colleagues into the first proof of the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics.
February 10, 2023 | Tech Xplore
The ocean covers more than 70% of the planet's surface and its expansive depths represent the largest living space on Earth. To understand the massive marine environment, scientists need research tools that can travel far and wide. Research vessels provide a critical platform for exploring the ocean. But going to sea on a research ship requires substantial resources. Institutions must invest in their own fleet and crew or rely on shared vessels, where demand greatly exceeds capacity.
February 9, 2023 | BBC
Expeditions to the depths of the oceans have revealed strange dark worlds bristling with species new to science – now the race is on to discover them.
February 9, 2023 | Miami Herald
A World War II battlefield frozen in time is hidden off the island of Guam, and a team of researchers has set out to find it and document what remains after 79 years on the Pacific Ocean floor.
February 9, 2023 | Maritime Executive
Ocean Exploration Trust is excited to announce the installation of a new Kongsberg Simrad EC150-3C 150 kilohertz transducer on Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus. This new sonar is mounted within the ship's hull and the EC150-3C is the first of its kind to combine an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) and an EK80 split-beam fisheries sonar into one instrument. The ADCP, which measures the speed and direction of currents at various depths underneath the ship will support safe remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) operations and provide data for improving oceanographic current models. The integrated split-beam echosounder is used to map and characterize features found within the water column, such as biology, scattering layers, and potentially bubble plumes.
February8, 2023 | Earth.com
When assessing the efficiency of the ocean’s biological carbon pump (BCP) that carries carbon from the surface layers to the deepest depths, few people consider the role of salps. This is probably because these creatures, also known as sea squirts, are mostly small, gelatinous and transparent, and their patchy distribution in the ocean makes them difficult to study. But they have certain characteristics that potentially make them potent players in the ocean’s carbon cycle. They may even play a significant role in mitigating global warming.
February 7, 2023 | Nature
The Sun gives life to our planet through its rays, and yet some fascinating lifeforms don't need light to live. Instead of using photosynthesis to store energy in their chemical bonds, some microbes rely purely on the oxidation of inorganic molecules like hydrogen to do the trick.
February 6, 2023 | CBC News
The federal government is investing more than $46 million over the next five years to see what's under Canada's oceans and develop protections.
February 2, 2023 | Smithsonian Magazine
During the Cretaceous Period around 100 million years ago, Earth’s oceans were nearly unrecognizable. Below the waves swam marine reptiles: lizard-like mosasaurs, long-necked plesiosaurs and gargantuan sea turtles. These behemoths lived alongside squid-like ammonites encased in tightly-coiled shells and a slew of bizarre fish.
February 2, 2023 | Science
Warming oceans are running short of oxygen, and the fiercest marine predators are already feeling the effects.
February 1, 2023 | The Conversation
Deep below the ocean surface, the light fades into a twilight zone where whales and fish migrate and dead algae and zooplankton rain down from above. This is the heart of the ocean’s carbon pump, part of the natural ocean processes that capture about a third of all human-produced carbon dioxide and sink it into the deep sea, where it remains for hundreds of years.
January 31, 2023 | Hydro International
Map the Gaps is cultivating and empowering a growing network of professionals, organizations and communities working together to create new ways for interacting with, understanding and protecting the seafloor. It helps to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in the ocean mapping community and provides access to discovery expeditions and leading technology.
January 31, 2023 | World Atlas
The deep sea, considered the Earth's largest habitat, reaches an average depth of more than 4000 m. Cold temperatures, darkness, high hydrostatic pressures, low oxygen concentrations, and food scarcity characterize the habitat of the deep sea. Moreover, no light penetrates the ocean waters at depths beyond 1000 m below sea level. Even at depths of 150 m below sea level, the light levels are reduced to 1% of the surface, which makes it insufficient to support photosynthesis. However, despite such extreme conditions, different faunal creatures live in the deep sea and have special adaptations that help them survive in the fathomless depths of the ocean. Much deep-sea fauna is still unknown and is yet to be discovered by scientists. The following article discusses some of these mysterious yet fascinating deep-sea creatures.
January 27, 2023 | NPR
The bottom of the ocean is a tremendously inhospitable place to live. It's dark, it's cold, and the pressure is fierce. But the creatures that have evolved to live there are wondrous.
January 27, 2023 | Science Alert
Close to the summit of an underwater mountain west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a jagged landscape of towers rises from the gloom. Their creamy carbonate walls and columns appear ghostly blue in the light of a remotely operated vehicle sent to explore.
January 26, 2023 | Marine Technology News
Oceans are full of sound. Waves, earthquakes and calving icebergs all contribute to the underwater soundscape. But so do human activities, and this can be a problem for marine life as it can seriously affect their physiology, behavior, reproduction and even survival.
January 25, 2023 | Eos
The seafloor is not as serene as it seems. In fact, it’s a busy, flexible hub of scientific activity.
January 21, 2023 | Astrobiology
Detection of extraterrestrial life would be an incredible discovery, revolutionizing humanity’s perception of life and providing us insight into how life begins and persists in various environments.
January 19, 2023 | World Economic Forum
Humans now have the ability to observe and understand the Earth’s surface with astonishing accuracy. Be it monitoring carbon emissions from a single source, documenting war crimes in conflict zones, or leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to detect wildfires, one could be forgiven for thinking we know all there is to know about our planet. Yet in reality, the majority of our planet, the ocean, remains a 'blue box' in comparison with our terrestrial environment.
January 19, 2023 | Newswise
Underwater imaging sonars are an essential technology for ocean exploration. Biomimetic sonars that are inspired from marine mammals such as dolphins are an emerging development in this field. A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Tropical Marine Science Institute (TMSI) has developed a dolphin-inspired compact sonar with a novel echo processing method that allows for clearer visual imaging underwater compared to the conventional signal processing method of visualising sound echoes.
January 17, 2023 | Bloolop
Flying Fish, a world-renowned producer of touring museum and science centre exhibitions, works with the world’s preeminent institutions to bring ideas, collections, and exhibitions to life through conceptualising, designing, fabricating, and travelling these exhibitions throughout the world.
January 17, 2023 | Business Insider
In December, Triton Submersibles announced that Bridgewater's Ray Dalio and Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron had each taken an equity stake in the company.
January 17, 2023 | Phys.org
Explosions from a sinking ship are among the unexpected sounds detected by 50 highly sensitive seismometers placed on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean as part of an international collaboration led by UCL researcher Professor Ana Ferreira.
January 15, 2023 | The Conversation
This idea has been repeated for decades by scientists and science communicators, including Sir David Attenborough in the 2001 documentary series The Blue Planet. More recently, in Blue Planet II (2017) and other sources, the Moon is replaced with Mars.
January 12, 2023 | Phys.org
A new study led by the University of Vienna in which the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) has participated reveals that fishes living in the dark part of the oceans (essentially below 200 m depth in the water column) would likely decrease in size with climate warming, which may have important ecological effects.
January 10, 2023 | San Fransico Examiner
Humanity now has another batch of (very) distant cousins — including a few who live nearby. Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences described 146 new species to science in 2022. The discoveries, the result of continued collaboration between about a dozen Academy scientists and international experts, were made across six continents and three oceans.
January 9, 2023 | Newswise
SUNY Geneseo’s Assistant Professor Mackenzie Gerringer and thirteen biology undergraduates and alums partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Ocean Exploration program to study the deep seas in an online classroom. Their project, partially funded by the National Marine Sanctuaries Foundation, focused on how to use deep-sea biology data in the classroom and its educational benefits. Gerringer’s students also produced unique research findings using NOAA data that may inform conservation efforts of deep-sea ecosystems. The project results were published this week in Frontiers in Marine Science.
January 4, 2023 | Eos
When the Cassini spacecraft first flew above the south pole of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, it did something no solar system explorer had done before: It took a shower. The craft zipped through plumes of water vapor and ice grains spewing from cracks in the icy moon’s surface. Cassini didn’t need to towel itself dry because the spray was thin. Combined with the craft’s earlier images, however, it provided strong evidence that a global ocean lies beneath the moon’s crust. Later analysis found hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and tiny particles of rock in the plumes, suggesting the ocean could contain all the major ingredients for life.
January 4, 2023 | Hydro International
NOAA and two of Australia's leading science agencies announced a formal agreement Tuesday to work together to advance Pacific Ocean exploration and mapping, a major priority for NOAA and of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
January 4, 2023 | Technology Networks
Seafloor video collected by a remotely operated vehicle off the coast of Puerto Rico indicates that an underwater landslide was not the cause of a devastating tsunami that hit the island’s west coast after a 1918 earthquake.
January 3, 2023 | Miami Herald
Researchers stumbled, uninvited, onto a strange party on the seafloor, video shows — but even more unusual, there appeared to be a strict dress code to attend. Light from a remotely operated vehicle reveals a “huge” crowd of sea urchins, gathered in the dark roughly 1,350 feet below the surface, all wearing “hats,” made of debris, on the tops of their dome-like bodies, video captured near the U.S. Virgin Islands shows.
December 22, 2022 | Seapower Magazine
Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Carlos Del Toro announced Dec. 21 that a future Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship will be named USNS Robert Ballard (T-AGS 67).
December 22, 2022 | ScienceNews
An entire ocean of liquid magma, or maybe a hot heart of solid metal, may lurk in Io’s underworld. The surface of Jupiter’s innermost moon is covered in scorching lava lakes and gored by hundreds of active volcanoes, some spitting molten rock dozens of kilometers high (SN: 8/6/14). Over the years, the moon’s restless, mesmerizing hellscape has attracted the attention of many planetary scientists (SN: 5/3/22).
December 20, 2022 | Business Insider
In the summer of 1997, scientists recorded a strange, loud noise originating from an area west of Chile's southern coast. They dubbed it "the bloop."
December 20, 2022 | Smithsonian Magazine
In case you’ve missed any of the biggest saltwater happenings, the National Museum of Natural History’s Ocean Portal team has rounded up the biggest ocean stories of the year here.
December 19, 2022 | CNET
I love a good ocean mystery, from a bizarre "yellow brick road" in the Pacific to "blue goo" in the Atlantic. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ocean specialists are revisiting some of the strangest things they've seen under the waves. They're still puzzling over three mysterious sightings.
December 17, 2022 | Mashable
An age of discovery is upon us. Big vessels, carrying robust robotic explorers and sometimes submersibles piloted by humans, embark on deep sea expeditions each year. This lightless realm remains a largely mysterious place, and just around 25 percent of the seafloor is decently mapped. Deep ocean missions are often considered the new exploration of little-known — or just never-visited — places on Earth.
December 16, 2022 | The Weather Network
Study highlights need to protect deep sea reefs, warning that the rapidly changing climate could have serious impacts on these important marine environments.
December 15, 2022 | Interesting Engineering
The oceans have enthralled humanity for millennia. Since the dawn of time, we have traversed the blue horizons in a quest for new nations and adventures. Throughout history, the oceans have been an essential source of survival, transportation, commerce, growth, and motivation.
December 15, 2022 | National Geographic
James Cameron is diving into the deep: this time, into the oceans of an alien world. The filmmaker and ocean explorer’s latest science-fiction epic, Avatar: The Way of Water, promises to transport viewers to the vibrant aquatic ecosystems of a world 25 trillion miles from Earth, with a documentary’s level of detail.
December 14, 2022 | The Guardian
Deep-sea viperfish have razor-sharp fangs so big they don’t fit inside their mouth, but they interlock in front of their jaws forming an inescapable, glassy cage. “When people think of deep sea fishes, the viperfish is one of the first things that comes into their mind,” says Yi-Kai Tea, a fish expert from the Australian Museum in Sydney. “They’re very charismatic, very iconic.”
December 9, 2022 | SciTechDaily
The deep sea holds more than 90% of our oceans’ water, but only around one-third of all fish species. Scientists have long assumed that the reason was obvious: shallow ocean waters are warm and rich in resources, making them an ideal environment for new species to grow and flourish. However, according to recent University of Washington research conducted by Elizabeth Miller, there were multiple eras in Earth’s early history when many fish preferred the cold, dark, barren waters of the deep sea.
December 7, 2022 | U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) released the following statement today on the inclusion of several major oceans provisions in the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The defense bill will accelerate maritime technology innovation, improve ocean and coastal mapping, protect marine mammals, and harden our defenses against pirate fishing, among other important provisions.
December 7, 2022 | New Scientist
A century and a half after HMS Challenger embarked on the first global survey of the ocean, some ideas from the era still linger. They urgently need to be left behind, says Helen Scales.
December 7, 2022 | Science
Eddies have been overlooked for too long. These turbulent swirls of water, ranging in size from a few kilometers to hundreds of kilometers across, peel off large ocean currents and mix heat and carbon dioxide into deeper ocean layers, like cream stirred into coffee. They are the most energetic feature of the ocean, critical to getting climate models right—but also largely invisible to satellites, except when they happen to sweep up a massive bloom of green phytoplankton.
December 2, 2022 | Science Alert
Our failure to decisively mitigate climate change is prompting researchers to examine more drastic approaches, like fertilizing the oceans to combat the massive excess of carbon dioxide in our air.
November 30, 2022 | USA Today
Hair-raising photos of newly discovered sea creatures that evolved to survive the world's deepest depths reveal an extraordinary look at life from the abyss.
November 29, 2022 | Yahoo! Finance
Global ocean exploration nonprofit OceanX announced today an expansion of its partnership with Black in Marine Science, the premier organization celebrating Black marine scientists, spreading environmental awareness, and inspiring the next generation of scientific thought leaders.
November 24, 2022 | Women + Sea
We may not think about it often, but our lives draw and depend on the ocean. More than 80% of all goods we consume are transported via the ocean, the ocean absorbs around 30% of the carbon dioxide that we release into the atmosphere and 17% of our food comes from the ocean. Our internet connection relies on submarine cables and we use cosmetics that include marine extracts, not to say about the importance of marine bacteria to produce tests to detect Covid-19.
November 23, 2022 | The Guardian
Self-camouflage is just one of the tricks of Brenner’s bobtail squid, a newly found species that is also helping research into microbes in the human gut.
November 16, 2022 | Science Daily
Measuring marine biodiversity with "environmental DNA" — an application of gene sequencing to environmental biology s—hould permit rapid assessment of changes in marine life. That makes environmental DNA (eDNA) a critical tool for managing our response to climate change. But eDNA only works well if key implementation steps are followed, according to a new study of the Los Angeles and Long Beach area published in the journal PeerJ.
November 14, 2022 | The Guardian
A shipload of scientists has just returned from exploring the uncharted waters of the Indian Ocean, where they mapped giant underwater mountains and encountered a multitude of deep-sea animals decked out in twinkling lights, with velvety black skin and mouths full of needle-sharp, glassy fangs.
November 14, 2022 | Daily Mail
A new world of weird and wonderful creatures has been discovered living near deep sea volcanoes in the Indian Ocean. Scientists from the Museums Victoria Research Institute returned from a 35-day expedition mapping the seafloor in Australia's remote Cocos (Keeling) Islands Marine Park last week. During their 6,800 mile (11,000 km) journey, they came face-to-face with a blind eel with gelatinous skin, and a hermaphrodite lizard fish with long sharp teeth.
November 11, 2022 | Newsweek
Deep in the ocean lives a ghoulish fish with huge and menacing, fang-like teeth. The aptly named common fangtooth fish (Anoplogaster cornuta)—sometimes referred to by its nickname "ogrefish"—inhabits deep waters all around the world, occurring at depths between 650 and 6,500 feet, although the species has been observed as far down as 16,000 feet. This makes it one of the deepest-living fish.
November 9, 2022 | The Guardian
Kitefin sharks (Dalatias licha) have been known about since the 18th century, but it was only in January 2020 that scientists saw them glowing in the dark for the first time. They are not the only bioluminescent sharks – roughly one in 10 species has that ability – but at up to 1.8 metres, kitefins are by far the biggest that have been found.
November 8, 2022 | Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
Newly released report identifies strategic priorities for ocean exploration and characterization to improve federal agencies’ understanding and knowledge of previously underexplored marine habitats and ecosystems.
November 2, 2022 | Outside
Travel to earth’s final frontiers is more possible than ever before, with exciting plans on the horizon. The question today isn’t whether you can actually get there anymore, but whether you can afford it.
November 1, 2022 | Newsweek
Scientists have recently announced a new black coral species thriving in warm temperatures. Teams with ocean exploration non-profit OceanX initially made the discovery in 2020 during an expedition in the Neom region of the northern Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.
November 1, 2022 | Forbes
“That’s the last one!” a voice called over the lapping of the ocean waves against the hull of the boat. He was referring to the biologging camera tag - one of seven - attached to the enormous tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) that was being prepped for release. Sweat beaded across the foreheads of the scientists as they high-fived one another, exhausted from both the hard work and the Bahamian sun. Rocking gently in the turquoise waters over the Great Bahama Bank, the boat tilted to the side as everyone leaned over to unhook the shark and watch her swim away into the blue.
October 31, 2022 | MSN
NOAA's Ocean Exploration Team shares what scary creatures are lurking deep down in the dark ocean floor.
October 30, 2022 | The Mirror
Scientists were astonished after they found a rare ‘warty’ octopus and ‘zombie’ sea sponge in deep sea footage. The video, which was captured by marine explorers in the US, showed two profoundly rare sights from underneath the ocean surface.
October 27, 2022 | Science Daily
A recently released set of topography maps provides new evidence for an ancient northern ocean on Mars. The maps offer the strongest case yet that the planet once experienced sea-level rise consistent with an extended warm and wet climate, not the harsh, frozen landscape that exists today.
October 26, 2022 | Sacromento Bee
Remains of an elaborate stone fish trap have been discovered on the seafloor off Southeast Alaska, and scientists say it proves Indigenous people occupied the region 1,000 years earlier than previously believed.
October 25, 2022 | Time
Seldom do we have an opportunity to stop an environmental crisis before it begins. This is one of those opportunities. The mining industry is on the brink of excavating the deep ocean, creating a new environmental disaster with irreversible consequences for our ocean and climate. We urgently need a deep-sea mining moratorium to thoughtfully assess the full impact before a new crisis is created.
October 21, 2022 | Newsweek
A creepy video captured during a research dive off the coast of Florida shows a deep-sea creature feasting on the head of a fish. The video was featured in the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Office of Ocean Exploration and Research's "31 Dives of Halloween" web series, which is highlighting a host of fascinating deep-sea creatures in the run-up to the popular holiday.
October 18, 2022 | Science Daily
A new collaborative effort between MBARI and other research institutions is leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate efforts to study the ocean.
October 16, 2022 | Interesting Engineering
Scientists on a mission in the Maldives have discovered a new ecosystem 500 meters deep in the ocean. The discovery is expected to result in enhanced safeguards for the marine life and fisheries in this special region, according to a press release published on Tuesday by Nekton.
October 16, 2022 | Earth.com
Snailfish are found in all of the world’s oceans, at depths varying from shallow intertidal to the deepest oceanic trenches. Of the approximately 400 identified species, 20 are known from the eastern Pacific, off the west coast of South America. Although the shallow-living species are relatively well studied, those that inhabit the deepest oceanic habitat, known as the hadal zone, are not well known.
October 14, 2022 | CNN
Black smoke appears to rise from chimney-like formations of the hottest and deepest known hydrothermal vents on Earth. Over the summer, Anna Michel was able to see them for herself — a few miles beneath the ocean’s surface. Michel, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, was part of a three-person crew aboard the submersible Alvin as it dove down to the Mid-Cayman Rise. Known as the Beebe Hydrothermal Vent Field, these vents exist on the ocean floor where two tectonic plates are separating about a half an inch (15 millimeters) per year south of the Cayman Islands.
October 12, 2022 | Popular Mechanics
Almost three-quarters of our world is covered in saltwater, and, on average, the ocean is about 12,100 feet, or 2.3 miles deep. But in certain places, the sea floor plummets to truly astonishing depths.
October 12, 2022 | Popular Science
Today, there are more ways to take photos of the underwater world than anyone could have imagined at the start of the millennia, thanks to ever-improving designs for aquatic cameras. On one hand, they have provided illuminating views of life in the seas. But on the other hand, these devices have inundated marine biologists with mountains of visual data that have become incredibly tedious and time-consuming to sort through.
October 11, 2022 | Oceanographic Magazine
In 2017, as part of an expedition by the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, scientists discovered a ‘forest of the weird’ over a mile beneath the Pacific Ocean. Oddly shaped corals and glass sponges with their concave sides directed towards the current made up the unexpected terrain.
October 6, 2022 | CNET
Talk about chompers. A team of ocean explorers discovered an absolute unit of a shark tooth and it may trace back millions of years to a time when colossal predators roamed the sea.
October 5, 2022 | The Source: St. Thomas
Scientists witnessed something deeply weird nearly 1,400 feet under the sea off St. Croix’s southwest coast — and they’re giddy about it.
October 5, 2022 | Yahoo! News
Dr. Dawn Wright is the first Black person to reach the deepest point in the ocean possible for humans to explore. Here's why she says that journey is crucial to humanity's future.
October 4, 2022 | Yahoo! Finance
During 4-H STEM Month this October, youth from across the country will apply their knowledge, creativity, and innovation to learn about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) topics during the 15th annual 4-H STEM Challenge. This year’s theme, Explorers of the Deep, focuses on ocean exploration, marine science, and the impact of climate change on our oceans.
October 3, 2022 | The Guardian
Wafting through the deep sea is a diaphanous creature that resembles a jellyfish, but is in fact something else entirely. Pelagothuria natatrix, meaning swimming sea cucumber, belongs to a group of animals better known for lying around on the seabed like giant, rubbery worms.
October 3, 2022 | MIT News
Swirling waters replenish nutrients in open ocean, a new study finds, and could mitigate some climate change effects.
September 30, 2022 | Living on Earth
Hudson Canyon is a vast underwater gorge and ecological hotspot with deep-sea corals that’s being considered for national marine sanctuary status. Living on Earth’s Jenni Doering called up Merry Camhi, director of the New York Seascape at the Wildlife Conservation Society and New York Aquarium to learn more about what protecting Hudson Canyon could mean.
September 30, 2022 | Carbon Brief
The world’s oceans are home to more than 240,000 known species, each with specific conditions in which they need to thrive. However, human-caused climate change is altering the marine environment through changes in temperature, oxygen content and acidity levels, threatening the habitats of these species.
September 29, 2022 | CBC
What if you could photograph the deepest depths of the sea using a camera powered only by the ocean's soundscape? That's the end goal of a new prototype device developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — a wireless, battery-free underwater camera that runs on sound waves.
September 29, 2022 | The Guardian
Lanternfish, the Earth’s most abundant vertebrates, may be the ultimate food source. But will catching them ruin the climate?
September 28, 2022 | CNN
The wreck of a ship that tried to warn the RMS Titanic of the iceberg that sank it on its maiden voyage has been found at the bottom of the Irish Sea. The British merchant steamship SS Mesaba sent a warning radio message to the Titanic on April 15, 1912 while crossing the Atlantic. The message was received by the Titanic -- which was advertised as unsinkable -- but did not reach the main control center of the vessel.
September 16, 2022 | Nerdist
We here at Nerdist love watching videos about the ocean. Especially when there’s critters in them that we never even knew existed. Like the barreleye fish and its translucent head. Or the carnivorous harp sponge. Whether you want to learn or just vibe out to deep sea videos, there’s an amazing collection on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (MBARI) YouTube channel. Scientists have described more than 240 new species based on footage and collections by MBARI. Jordan Peele even used some of them as inspiration while designing aliens for his film Nope. So we jumped at the chance to visit MBARI and see just how much science, technology, and manpower is behind those wonderful deep sea videos.
September 14, 2022 | Popular Science
Ocean explorers have long tried to survey the contours of the seafloor, but today's charts still pale in comparison to those of distant planets.
September 14, 2022 | The Guardian
Shrimp-like Cystisoma are protected from predators by being virtually invisible – thanks to unique retina and a body that casts almost no shadow.
September 12, 2022 | Scientific American
After nearly two weeks of recent United Nations negotiations in New York City, countries from around the world failed to finalize an ambitious treaty that would create enormous marine protected areas and enforce stricter rules for industry on the high seas—the two thirds of the ocean beyond any country’s exclusive ocean territory. The deal faltered in the final hours, mainly over an issue that has long dogged international ocean talks: how to share profits from commercializing the high seas’ genetic resources.
September 9, 2022 | USA Today
Some social media users are sharing a YouTube video that claims NASA halted ocean exploration efforts in 1978.
September 7, 2022 | Science Daily
A new study finds that marine predators, such as tunas, billfishes and sharks, aggregate in anticyclonic, clockwise-rotating ocean eddies (mobile, coherent bodies of water). As these anticyclonic eddies move throughout the open ocean, the study suggests that the predators are also moving with them, foraging on the high deep-ocean biomass contained within.
September 7, 2022 | NBC News
As climate change causes the pace of warming to accelerate, scientists are concerned about the potential consequences for marine ecosystems, sea-level rise and extreme weather.
September 7, 2022 | The Guardian
Nearly 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) underwater in the Pescadero basin in the Gulf of California lie some of the Pacific’s deepest hydrothermal vents – and they’re covered in small iridescent worms. “You’ll see little pink sparkly worms, blue ones, red ones, black ones and white ones,” says Avery Hiley, a graduate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
September 5, 2022 | Miami Herald
An alien-looking “goo” creature is growing on the floor of the Caribbean Sea and it bears more than a slight resemblance to the shapeless 1950s science fiction monster The Blob. Scientists with NOAA Ocean Exploration made the discovery, but were at a loss as to what to call it — or even what category of life it fits into.
September 1, 2022 | NOAA Research
NOAA is seeking up to two new members for its Ocean Exploration Advisory Board, a federal advisory committee that advises the NOAA administrator on matters pertaining to ocean exploration. The panel advises NOAA on strategic planning, exploration priorities, competitive ocean exploration grant programs and other matters as requested.
August 31, 2022 | The Hill
In July, I took part as a scientist in a commercial deep sea company’s amazing dive to explore the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, over 12,000 feet beneath the North Atlantic. Next year, I am scheduled to fly to space aboard commercial space company Virgin Galactic to conduct a suborbital research mission for NASA. Both of these activities are examples of modern-day exploration using high tech vehicles that didn’t exist until recent years.
August 31, 2022 | CBS News
Nearly 40 years after the discovery of the RMS Titanic shipwreck, newly released video is providing new details about the ship that sunk over a century ago.
August 31, 2022 | The Guardian
In the ocean’s shadowy twilight zone, between 600 and 800 metres beneath the surface, there are fish that gaze upwards through their transparent heads with eyes like mesmerising emerald orbs. These domes are huge spherical lenses that sit on a pair of long, silvery eye tubes – hence its common name, the barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma).
August 25, 2022 | Science Alert
Close to the summit of an underwater mountain west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a jagged landscape of towers rises from the gloom. Their creamy carbonate walls and columns appear ghostly blue in the light of a remotely operated vehicle sent to explore.
August 24, 2022 | NPR
We are headed to the deep sea today, off the west coast of Ireland. Sam Afoullouss is one of just a handful of people who've seen what lives down there, a mile or more below the surface.
August 23, 2022 | CNN
Hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface, somewhere between the dark ocean floor and the bright blue shallows, lies the twilight zone. It's a world of the unknown, but in some tropical and subtropical waters coral reefs thrive. Very few scientists have ventured to these deep reefs, known technically as mesophotic coral ecosystems, meaning "middle light," and many assumed that the lack of light and chilly temperatures meant few species could exist there.
August 22, 2022 | The Guardian
The deep sea is home to a group of animals that look like tiny plants. They have no mouths, no stomachs and no anuses. They live inside a tube with a feathery red plume sticking out of one end and a clump of roots at the other.
August 22, 2022 | Marine Technology News
On August 11, 2022, the Saildrone Surveyor departed Dutch Harbor in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, embarking on a multipartner project to better understand the ocean and seafloor in one of the most remote and understudied parts of the United States. NOAA Ocean Exploration and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) are the primary sponsors of this work.
August 17, 2022 | SciTechDaily
A previously overlooked factor — the position of continents — helps fill Earth’s oceans with life-supporting oxygen. Continental movement could ultimately have the opposite effect, killing the majority of deep ocean creatures.
August 17, 2022 | Hawaii Public Radio
Exploration Vessel Nautilus has mapped over 8,000 square miles of the seafloor in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The world heritage site is 582,578 square miles, but less than 30% of its seafloor is mapped.
August 15, 2022 | Gizmodo
An undersea expedition is surveying the Mid-Atlantic Ridge for the first time. They're capturing astounding footage of marine life.
August 15, 2022 | The Guardian
Discovered 2,500 metres deep, and named after former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff, these crabs live in one of the Earth’s most extreme habitats.
August 9, 2022 | Discover Magazine
Deep-sea species tend to outgrow their shallow-sea counterparts. Whatever the cause of their increased size, whether the colder temperatures, the reduced pressures of predation or the increased scarcity of food in the ocean depths, animals such as crustaceans and cephalopods simply become bigger the deeper that they swim.
August 9, 2022 | Phys.org
Phytoplankton is the foundation of all life on the planet. Understanding how these photosynthetic organisms react to their ocean environment is important to understanding the rest of the food web.
August 6, 2022 | Science Alert
A bizarre seafloor creature covered with luminous orange, spaghetti-like tentacles recently made its internet debut in newly released video footage. The unusual pom-pom-shaped creature is actually a type of segmented marine worm known as a polychaete, and it belongs to an appropriately named group: spaghetti worms.
August 1, 2022 | Scientific American
Schoolbooks typically present explorers as intrepid individuals who, at the behest of colonizing leaders, sail wooden ships to new lands, ride on horseback across uncharted mountains or slash their way through the jungle. But today most explorers who are making fundamental discoveries are scientists. And whether the frontiers are minuscule, like the human genome, or massive, like our deepest oceans, we still have much left to learn about planet Earth. The quests that modern scientists pursue rival anything in a history book or an adventure novel.
August 1, 2022 | Scientific American
After completing six long rounds of chemotherapy, 75-year-old Pedro R. L. received the news he and his family had been hoping for: his chronic lymphocytic leukemia was in complete remission. But while his body was still recovering, he contracted COVID-19. He was admitted to the Quirónsalud Madrid University Hospital on January 30, 2021. Initial treatments failed, and by February 25 he had developed severe pneumonia. That's when his doctor, Pablo Guisado, recommended they try plitidepsin, a potent antiviral compound in a phase 3 clinical trial for treating hospitalized COVID patients.
July 28, 2022 | Miami Herald
Scientists exploring a submerged mountain range in the Mid-Atlantic stumbled onto something they can’t explain: An organized series of holes punched in the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
July 26, 2022 | The Guardian
Researchers from the UK’s Natural History Museum used a remotely operated vehicle to collect specimens from the abyssal plains of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the central Pacific. Previously, creatures from this area had been studied only from photographs.
July 25, 2022 | Reflector
Researchers at East Carolina University have received more than $700,000 in grant funding to explore the site of the only World War II battle fought on North American soil.
July 22, 2022 | The Daily Beast
The water is murky as lights from an unmanned submersible shine on the seafloor, more than 10,000 feet below the surface. As the vehicle slowly moves through the depths of the Davidson Seamount off the coast of central California, a team of researchers observing everything remotely murmur in excitement as a giant corpse slowly comes into focus on the camera.
July 22, 2022 | New York Post
Scientists have discovered a real-life “deadpool” at the bottom of the Red Sea — one that kills almost every creature that swims into it.
July 21, 2022 | IFL Science
No humans had visited the Yap and Palau Trenches until the last few weeks, when explorer Victor Vescovo was accompanied to the bottom of Yap Trench by Master Navigator Sesario Sewralur of Micronesia for the Yap, reaching a depth of around 8,929 meters (29,295 feet). Former President of Palau, Thomas Rememngesau, joined Vescovo in the dive to the lowest point of the Palau trench at 8,027 meters (26,335 feet).
July 20, 2022 | Gizmodo
An expedition to map and survey a little-understood region of the Atlantic Ocean is underway this week. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and partner groups are sending a two-part, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) on a series of deep ocean dives as part of a mission called “Voyage to the Ridge 2022.”
July 15, 2022 | CNET
I'll admit, I'd never heard of a Solumbellula sea pen until today, when I saw a tweet from the Exploration Vessel Nautilus showing an intriguing tentacle-y creature with a long thin stalk reaching down to the ocean floor. I was immediately enchanted. The Nautilus team called it "a thrilling discovery."
July 14, 2022 | CNN
Ocean worlds in our solar system are attractive places in the search for life beyond Earth. Beneath a thick, icy shell, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus likely harbor oceans, scientists believe. On Earth, the oceans teem with life, but is the same scenario possible on these frosty moons?
July 13, 2022 | Nautilus
Carlie Wiener is used to early mornings. It started with dolphins. Wiener would rise before daybreak to observe Hawaiian spinner dolphins as part of her dissertation on human-dolphin interaction—research that played a role in providing stronger protection for spinner dolphins. Today, Wiener, who is based in Oahu, Hawaii, is Schmidt Ocean Institute’s director of communications and engagement strategy, but still gets up well before sunrise to speak with marine science collaborators all over the world, sharing news of the strange and awe-inspiring discoveries made by Schmidt’s cutting-edge research vessel.
July 13, 2022 | NOAA Research
The United States joined with leaders of six nations and the European Union today in Washington, D.C., to sign the All-Atlantic Ocean Research and Innovation Alliance (AAORIA) Declaration, in which the nations pledge to cooperate on ocean research for the environmental health and sustainable development of the Atlantic Ocean.
July 8, 2022 | World Economic Forum
The 2022 UN Ocean Conference was a long time coming, with pandemic-induced delays, but it did not disappoint. Taking place in Lisbon, co-hosted by the Governments of Portugal and Kenya, the event spotlighted the progress made so far in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal for the Ocean, SDG14 – highlighting ongoing challenges alongside the countless new solutions that are emerging to complement multistakeholder action.
July 8, 2022 | The Guardian
Noise pollution from proposed deep-sea mining could radiate through the ocean for hundreds of kilometres, scientists predict, creating a “cylinder of sound” from the surface to the sea bed.
June 30, 2022 | United Nations
While oceans cover 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface, providing food and livelihoods for 3 billion people, current understanding of its vast biochemical processes has not kept pace with the rapid changes it is experiencing, speakers in the sixth Lisbon dialogue stressed today, as they outlined a range of scientific and other initiatives to close the knowledge gap.
June 30, 2022 | Engadget
Roughly 25 percent (23.4 percent to be exact) of the Earth’s sea floor has been mapped, thanks to an international initiative known as Seabed 2030. Relying largely on voluntary contributions of bathymetric data (or ocean topography) by governments, companies and research institutions, the project is part of a larger UN-led initiative called The Ocean Decade. Seabed 2030 hopes to map 100 percent of the ocean floor by 2030, which researchers say will be possible thanks to advances in technology and corralling already available data. Over the past year alone, Seabed 2030 has added measurements for around 3.8 million square miles (roughly the size of Europe) primarily through newly opened archives, rather than active mapping efforts.
June 28, 2022 | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Someday, a swarm of cellphone-size robots could whisk through the water beneath the miles-thick icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus, looking for signs of alien life. Packed inside a narrow ice-melting probe that would tunnel through the frozen crust, the tiny robots would be released underwater, swimming far from their mothercraft to take the measure of a new world.
June 25, 2022 | Mashable
Biologists spotted a deep sea critter that just devoured a hefty meal. The Monterey Bay Aquatic Research Institute (MBARI) recently tweeted deep sea archival footage of a jellyfish with its stomach filled with food. Scientists say the prey would have most likely been krill, which are tiny shrimp-like creatures with hard shells. As jellies are transparent, it’s pretty common to see them with something in their stomach, said Steven Haddock, a marine biologist at MBARI who observed this creature in June 2018 during a dive in Monterey Bay.
June 23, 2022 | Science Alert
A fearsome 'vampire' predator that lurked in Earth's oceans more than 160 million years ago probably did actually suck its prey, at least in a sense. A new analysis of exceptionally well-preserved fossils of a small cephalopod named Vampyronassa rhodanica, related to modern vampire squids (neither actually vampires, nor squids), reveals the presence of muscular suckers that the beastie likely used for snaring and manipulating prey.
June 22, 2022 | ScienceDaily
Using DNA data, researchers have examined seawater to find not only new species of bacteria, but also previously unknown natural products that may one day prove beneficial.
June 20, 2022 | UN News
The ocean holds the keys to an equitable and sustainable development path for all. This is the premise behind the UN Ocean Decade and it will be in the spotlight during several major international summits this year to promote ocean health, including the UN Ocean Conference, which is set to open soon in Lisbon, Portugal.
June 17, 2022 | BBC
Whale skeletons stand guard around the coastline of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, a stark reminder of the damaging effects of military sonar. Sonar from ships and submarines is thought to be one of the contributing factors to whale strandings, confusing the whales' own sonar and casuing them to beach themselves on the shore.
June 15, 2022 | BlooLoop
Flying Fish, a leading producer of touring museum and science centre exhibitions, has partnered with nonprofit ocean exploration organization OceanX to announce the launch of OceanXperience, a unique and immersive touring museum exhibition that aims to raise awareness of the world’s oceans.
June 14, 2022 | Live Science
Researchers have published the most detailed map of Antarctica's frigid Southern Ocean to date, including the ocean's new deepest point, the "Factorian Deep," which sits nearly 24,400 feet (7,437 meters) below the sea surface.
June 13, 2022 | The Guardian
When they are in the deep, dark ocean, seals use their whiskers to track down their prey, a study has confirmed after observing the sea mammals in their natural habitat.
June 9, 2022 | U.S. Geological Survey Volcano Watch
June 8 was World Oceans Day, a day to appreciate the huge body of saltwater that covers about 71% of the Earth’s surface. This month, Dr. Ashton Flinders, research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), will be co-leading a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ocean Exploration expedition to a section of the Atlantic Ocean floor.
June 9, 2022 | The Weather Channel
A vast underwater ravine off the coasts of New York and New Jersey could soon become a national marine sanctuary. Hudson Canyon sits about 100 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. It's more than 7 miles wide and 2.5 miles deep at its largest point. It's home to many protected and threatened species, including sperm whales, corals and sea turtles, and is important for fisheries, recreational diving, whale watching and birding, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
June 9, 2022 | Science Daily
A hotter ocean is a hungrier ocean -- at least as far as fish predators are concerned. Scientists have discovered predator impacts in the Atlantic and Pacific peak at higher temperatures. The effects cascade down to transform other life in the ocean, potentially disrupting balances that have existed for millennia.
June 9, 2022 | CNN
CNN's Richard Quest spoke to the founder of the world's biggest hedge-fund firm, who is investing in what he calls the planet's most important asset: the ocean.
June 8, 2022 | Business Wire
On or about July 12, a two-person team will descend nearly 36,000 feet into the Pacific Ocean to capture images and data from the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the Earth's ocean. The expedition team will include Victor Vescovo, undersea explorer and founder of the ocean research company Caladan Oceanic, as pilot and Dr. Dawn Wright as mission specialist. The expedition will be led and coordinated by expedition leader Rob McCallum, founder of EYOS Expeditions.
June 7, 2022 | GeekDad
I’ve been following the E/V Nautilus and their live-streamed exploration from the depths of our oceans for the past couple of years. On June 8th, you’ll be able to connect live with the E/V Nautilus team. In honor of World Ocean Day, the Corps of Explorers team of scientists, researchers, and explorers will answer your questions submitted on http://nautiluslive.org.
June 6, 2022 | Newsweek
A U.S. warship has been found to be in "astounding condition" after 160 years resting on the sea floor off the coast of North Carolina. On New Year's Eve 1862, at the height of the Civil War, the fledgling ironclad Union Navy warship USS Monitor foundered and sank 16 miles off Cape Hatteras on the North Carolina coast, having become overwhelmed by a storm. Sixteen men died, many going down with the ship's turret.
June 3, 2022 | Science Friday
The ocean is the largest region of the planet and remains a source of newly discovered species. But what do you do with a treasure trove of new viruses? A research team wrote in Science last month about finding thousands of new RNA viruses, and five new taxonomic phyla, in water samples from around the globe.
June 2, 2022 | Tech Xplore
With forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (a division of the National Weather Service) predicting above-average hurricane activity this year, a paper published in the peer review magazine Oceanography shows that robotic ocean observing platforms can improve intensity forecasts for hurricanes and tropical storms and should be supported as a crucial component of the ocean infrastructure designed to protect the lives of coastal residents and mitigate the economic impact from storms.
May 31, 2022 | The White House
From the air we breathe to the food we eat, our magnificent ocean touches every aspect of our lives. It helps regulate the climate, supports millions of jobs, and serves as a place for exploration, commerce, and recreation. As it sustains and connects us, the ocean is woven into the cultures of local and Indigenous coastal and island communities. During National Ocean Month, we celebrate the beauty and bounty of our ocean and reaffirm our commitment to protecting and conserving our marine environments for a sustainable future.
May 26, 2022 | The Scientist
Like many deep-sea animals, giant isopods (genus Bathynomus) look like they’re ready to star in a B-horror movie. Yet, they’ve become charismatic marine ambassadors in aquariums around the world—in some places, you can even pet one! Now, they’re also helping scientists better understand how species adapt to the dark depths, thanks to a high-quality genome sequence published May 13 in BMC Biology.
May 26, 2022 | Associated Press
In the cold, choppy waters of Alaska’s Resurrection Bay, all eyes were on the gray water, looking for one thing only. It wasn’t a spout from humpback whales that power through this scenic fjord, or a sea otter lazing on its back, munching a king crab. Instead, everyone aboard the Nanuq, a University of Alaska Fairbanks research vessel, was looking where a 5-foot (1.52-meter) long, bright pink underwater sea glider surfaced.
May 26, 2022 | Hawaii Public Radio
Exploration Vessel Nautilus has concluded its third expedition for this year. The Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute led the most recent mission to advance the tools used in its work. Engineers tested three remotely operated vehicles in waters south of the main Hawaiian Islands.
May 20, 2022 | Live Science
Resembling an alien shopping bag with guts made of glowing Cheetos, a bizarre creature took center stage in new footage captured by a remotely operated vehicle deep in the Pacific Ocean.
May 12, 2022 | Investor's Business Daily
You'd think discovering the long-lost Titanic would impress Robert Ballard's mother. Apparently not. After finding the remains of the legendary lost luxury liner, a search that stymied other explorers for decades, his mom lamented: "Now they're only going to remember you for discovering that rusty old boat."
May 10, 2022 | HydroInternational
he world’s deepest diving three-person acrylic submersible was officially named Aurelia at the end of April 2022 and will soon go through sea trials as it gets prepared for its first missions. The ‘first-of-its-class’ sub was built by Triton Submarines for REV Ocean, and the final assembly took place at the Triton facility in San Cugat, Spain. A deep-submergence vehicle (DSV) is a deep-diving crewed submersible that is self-propelled.
May 9, 2022 | Newsweek
Ocean explorers have found a natural volcanic structure deep underwater that has the appearance of a mythical man-made road. The underwater structure was discovered by marine scientists aboard the Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus, who were using a remotely operated vehicle to peek at underwater structures known as seamounts—mountains formed by volcanic activity.
May 5, 2022 | WorkBoat
During a recent expedition on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ship Okeanos Explorer, an engineer on shore, over 1,000 miles away from the ship, successfully piloted a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to explore the deep ocean. A first for NOAA Ocean Exploration and the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration, this test of piloting an ROV from shore opens new possibilities for deep-ocean exploration.
April 28, 2022 | People
A recently discovered deep-sea jellyfish is leaving scientists stunned. According to a video posted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), the newly identified deep-sea jellyfish species — called Atolla reynoldsi — is part of the Atolla jellyfish family.
April 22, 2022 | Vox
The Earth is mainly a water world — more than 70 percent of its surface is covered by oceans — and yet we know so little about what resides beneath the waves. The ocean, in this light, is like an alien world within our own. Many of its creatures are still unknown to us — both in kind and number. Their behaviors and adaptations remain inexplicable. Even the very contours of this world are still unmapped: We probably know more about the surface of Mars than we know about the ocean floor.
April 22, 2022 | Forbes
The climate conversation has never been more ubiquitous. With rampant wild fires occurring in the most surprising locations causing unthinkable destruction to the harshest of winters in the unlikeliest areas, we are seeing the ravaging effects of a climate and planet neglected.
April 21, 2022 | Science Daily
A team of scientists, engineers, and ship's crew on the research vessel Neil Armstrong operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) recently collected a 38-foot-long cylindrical sediment sample from the deepest part of the Puerto Rico Trench, nearly 5 miles below the surface.
April 19, 2022 | Los Angles Times
The startup’s pitch was simple and cinematic: The mining company would send large robots to explore the bottom of the ocean and harvest minerals millions of years old that could be used to make electric car batteries.
April 14, 2022 | The American Surveyor
The University of New Hampshire’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (UNH CCOM), as a member of the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute (OECI), funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration, has taken delivery of an iXblue DriX Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV) and its Universal Deployment System. The autonomous solution will help expand the footprint and efficiency of the OECI’s ocean exploration operations.
April 14, 2022 | News@TheU
Hilary Close, an ocean sciences assistant professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, is using a unique strategy to understand how carbon is transferred through living things into the deep ocean.
April 14, 2022 | CNET
The ocean has a reputation for harboring eerie-looking animals like angler fish and giant mystery squid. But let's not overlook the bounty of charming critters that also dwell below the waves. Dumbo octopuses are cephalopods with ear-like fins that make them resemble Disney's flying elephant. Very cute.
April 11, 2022 | Coastal Review
Tiny, glowing shrimp that live in oceans’ darkest depths are shedding light on how life operates in one of the final frontiers, the deep sea. Research examining the eye size of more than 16 species of planktonic, almost transparent shrimp called sergestid shrimps, is revealing how animals of the deep have adapted to surviving in low light.
April 7, 2022 | Smithsonian Magazine
Free Black Americans and Native Americans once worked on the “Industry,” a whaling ship whose wreck was recently identified in the Gulf of Mexico.
April 5, 2022 | Newsweek
A "toothy" anglerfish has been filmed on the bottom of the seafloor, about 3,000 feet from the surface. The footage was taken at the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge. This is a protected area just over 900 miles southwest of Hawai'i. It is considered one of the most pristine coral reef atoll ecosystems in the world.
April 5, 2022 | ECO Magazine
The World Ocean Observatory (W2O) and Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) announced the launch of World Ocean Explorer DEEP SEA exhibit, creating a first-of-its kind immersive virtual aquarium showcasing deep-sea discoveries. THE DEEP SEA is an educational, interactive online platform for ocean exploration and discovery, utilizing high-resolution video, models, and descriptive materials of newly discovered deep-sea ocean species and environments observed during science expeditions aboard research vessel Falkor with the underwater robot (ROV) SuBastian.
March 31, 2022 | Phys.org
Call them hitchhikers; the microbes that latch onto particles at the ocean's surface have a big job. They ride along until they reach the bottom, transferring carbon to the deepest waters of the ocean. The journey can take weeks to months, though estimating the rate has been a challenge—until now.
March 25, 2022 | Eos
Deep-ocean-dwelling microbes may hold keys to improved medical diagnostics and new drugs for fighting diseases. But we must search Earth’s most extreme habitats to find them.
March 25, 2022 | CNET
Few things bring me as much glee as listening to marine scientists lose their minds over the wild and enchanting creatures they find deep under the ocean waves. The crew of the Exploration Vessel Nautilus shared a highlight reel video from a recent remote-operated vehicle dive at the Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean. It shows a wonderland of strange and mysterious creatures.
March 23, 2022 | CNN
The discovery of a 207-year-old whaling ship in the Gulf of Mexico is shedding light on the history of its Black and Native American crew members in the early 1800s. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and partners discovered Industry, a two-masted, 64-foot wooden brig on February 25 off the coast of Pascagoula, Mississippi.
March 23, 2022 | Live Science
A circular shape on the seafloor visible on Google Earth is raising cries of "UFO," but chances are ...it's not aliens.
March 21, 2022 | Hawaii Public Radio
Exploration Vessel Nautilus has begun an eight-month deep-sea expedition. The ship is carrying a team of researchers, educators, and crew members through areas of the Pacific Ocean surrounding Hawaiʻi. Expedition leaders hope to bring new findings to light on geology and marine biology.
March 17, 2022 | Investor's Business Daily
Dawn Wright grew up on Maui — surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and Hawaiian volcanos. It's only fitting she's now the top geologist and oceanographer overseeing the world's most valuable set of ocean data.
March 16, 2022 | Business Wire
Senator Alex Padilla (CA) has announced that he has secured $600,000 in funding for AltaSea’s Ocean STEM Pathways program at the Port of Los Angeles, a major win for the nonprofit and the Los Angeles community. AltaSea is the only nonprofit organization in Los Angeles focused on climate change and job creation to receive this federal community project funding.
March 16, 2022 | Business Wire
Scientific expeditions rarely focus on only one subject. The Endurance22 voyage’s main goal to uncover the shipwreck of the long-lost Ernest Shackleton vessel Endurance was a success because it is now found. But there was also a lot of important science done along the way. The multinational team broke records and collected samples in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Information they collected about weather forecasting, ice coverage, and even ship engineering is invaluable to future exploration in the Southern Ocean.
March 16, 2022 | The Hill
The last decade has seen a surge of activity and interest involving the world’s oceans. Exciting examples include the recent discovery of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship the HMS Endurance at a depth of 10,000 feet in the Weddell Sea, record-setting submersible diver Victor Vescovo’s mind-blowing descents into the world’s deepest ocean trenches, as well as an upsurge in ocean-based, post-pandemic tourism and recreation.
March 10, 2022 | CNN
Far beneath the waves surrounding the Maldives, there's a living rainbow in the ocean's "twilight zone." Say hello to the rose-veiled fairy wrasse, a colorful species of fish that's new to science.
March 10, 2022 | The Conversation
Antarctica represents one of the last frontiers for discoveries on Earth. Our focus is on what lies beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica’s massive wedge of floating ice that shelters the southern-most extension of the Southern Ocean.
March 9, 2022 | PBS News Hour
Off the coast of Antarctica, deep underwater, researchers have discovered the British ship called “Endurance," the vessel that launched one of the most remarkable stories of survival and determination. William Brangham reports.
March 8, 2022 | LA Times
Scientists have found the oldest known ancestor of octopuses — an approximately 330-million-year-old fossil unearthed in Montana. The researchers concluded the ancient creature lived millions of years earlier than previously believed, meaning that octopuses originated before the era of dinosaurs.
March 8, 2022 | Screen Rant
Living and working under the ocean in a futuristic habitat could become possible thanks to a new network that's currently in development. Jacques Cousteau was a pioneer of ocean exploration and known for bringing the wonders of the ocean's depths to the public through documentaries. Cousteau's grandson, Fabien Cousteau, has been following in the same footsteps and is now gearing up for the ultimate mission, life underwater.
March 7, 2022 | ScienceNews
Octopuses living in the deep sea off the coast of California are breeding far faster than expected. The animals lay their eggs near geothermal springs, and the warmer water speeds up embryonic development, researchers report February 28 at the virtual 2022 Ocean Sciences Meeting. That reproductive sleight of hand means that the octopus moms brood for less than two years, instead of the estimated 12.
February 28, 2022 | War History Online
Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are conducting a search of the Pacific Ocean for what’s been dubbed the largest graveyard of aircraft downed during the Second World War.
February 23, 2022 | Yahoo! News
Aquanaut Fabien Cousteau breaks down clips from movies and tv about ocean exploration, and explains just how accurate they really are. Are submarines really yellow like The Beatles's "Yellow Submarine"? What makes the Titanic shipwreck so legendary? Can sharks be as intelligent as the ones seen in "Deep Blue Sea"? How much was "The Life Aquatic" based on Jacques Cousteau?
February 23, 2022 | Eos
The Labrador Sea plays a vital role in supplying oxygen to deep-sea life across the world. Now, a Canadian-German team has, for the first time, measured the amount of oxygen exiting the Labrador Sea basin, using data from a deep-ocean current.
February 21, 2022 | Freethink
During an expedition in the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA scientists used a remotely operated submarine to spot a ghostly cephalopod, known as a bigfin squid (Magnapinna).
February 18, 2022 | AZoRobotics
AZoRobotics speaks with Peter Gunnarson from Caltech about his research into using artificial intelligence (AI) to teach autonomous drones to navigate the ocean using ocean currents.
February 17, 2022 | Good Morning America
A trip to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture launched journalist Tara Roberts on a journey into the depths of the waters to tell the story of a group of Black scuba divers searching for lost slave ships.
February 15, 2022 | Commerce Newswire
The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries department has successfully completed a series of 21 expeditions over a span of several years to learn more about aquatic life.
February 14, 2022 | Eos
The seafloor near a mid-ocean ridge is often home to rising hydrothermal fluids from the deep crust that deposit minerals on the ocean bottom. These seafloor massive sulfide deposits offer new sources of copper, zinc, lead, gold, and silver. The ore potential led to the European Union’s initiation of the Blue Mining project in 2014 with the goal of turning seafloor mining into a viable industry.
February 14, 2022 | Emerging Tech Brew
Nearly every time humans go into the deep sea, we discover new species. Scientists estimate that we have classified as little as 9% of all marine life. And the mystery extends beyond life and to topography, too—at present, we’ve only mapped about 20% of the Earth’s seabed.
February 14, 2022 | Screen Rant
NASA is well-known for being the government agency that explores space. But did it ever explore the oceans, and why did it stop doing so?
February 8, 2022 | National Geographic
A scientific instrument that collapsed in the deep sea allowed scientists to make one of the most precise calculations yet for the abyss known as Challenger Deep.
February 4, 2022 | The Natural History Museum
A new study trying to understand this diversity found that 60% of DNA sequences from marine sediments could not be identified at a higher taxonomic level, demonstrating the huge gap in scientific knowledge as a new era of deep sea mining is set to begin.
February 2, 2022 | Smithsonian Magazine
On September 6, 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England, bearing 102 passengers and about 30 crew members. After a perilous 66-day journey across the North Atlantic and a harsh winter, the surviving Pilgrims and crew of the Mayflower encountered the Wampanoag, who were familiar with Europeans as traders, kidnappers, and agents of plague. The Wampanoag have lived in what is now southeastern Massachusetts for more than 12,000 years, and the two communities coexisted for about 50 years before war began.
January 29, 2022 | Deeper Blue
The National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and NOAA Ocean Exploration have announced seven new mini-grants aimed at promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
January 28, 2022 | Vice
Life on Earth likely emerged in our planet’s oceans, which is why scientists hoping to find extraterrestrial life elsewhere are particularly interested in ocean worlds. Fortunately, there are multiple moons right here in our own solar system that fit that description, some of which host watery depths and, in one case, strange seas made of hydrocarbons.
January 21, 2022 | Technology News
There are more than 9,000 species of marine sponges (Phylum Porifera) worldwide, which are a source of novel natural products. They contain promising chemical agents that may be useful in combatting cancer, COVID-19 and antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria. These chemicals interact with molecules that have been conserved throughout evolutionary history and are involved in human disease processes, for example, cell cycling, immune and inflammatory responses, and calcium and sodium regulation.
January 15, 2022 | Environmental News Service
Much has changed since the early days of oceanic bathymetry, the study of the seafloor, when simple soundings were taken by hand with a rope and weight. Today, an international effort led by Seabed 2030 is underway to precisely map the entire ocean floor by the end of the decade, an ambitious target that may be achieved with the help of advanced technology, and a new Seabed 2030 partnership with Global Oceans.
January 12, 2022 | BBC
Could our understanding of the deep ocean help unlock the mysteries of outer space? Nasa's space mission is leading us to unexplored depths of our own planet.
January 6, 2022 | Newsday
The ocean is an unending source of wonder. Dr Anjani Ganase discusses a few of the discoveries made in 2021, including the realisation that protection should be secured by co-operation among all nations working together.
December 31, 2021 | Forbes
There’s a lot of debate about the expression, “may you live in interesting times.” Where did it come from? Is it a wish or a curse? Whatever the back story, it’s safe to say 2021 was, to put it politely, interesting in the extreme. But, for one inventor-computer scientist-video game developer-explorer from New York, there may never be another year as amazing as the one he’s just had.
December 23, 2021 | Hellenic Shipping News
A new partnership has been announced between The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project and Global Oceans. The two parties will work together to further our understanding of ocean bathymetry and contribute to the global effort to produce the definitive map of the ocean floor, complementing the goals of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
December 21, 2021 | The Hill
While the U.S. has been a leader in space exploration, including investing billions of dollars to achieve a set of national priorities, there are many great unknowns on Earth where we can step up similar efforts.
December 17, 2021 | Screen Rant
Caltech engineers created a tiny robot that fits in the palm of a hand and is learning how to navigate the ocean all by itself. Ocean studies are essential in the fight against climate change. The oceans are the least explored environment on Earth and their extension and depths pose a serious challenge for research efforts.
December 10, 2021 | Forbes
South Africa is known to be a country of diversity – from the people, languages, culture, music, and food, you can blink and be surrounded by different experiences. And while this region is famed for its beautiful land animals (such as giraffes, lions, rhinos, and more), this rich diversity also can be found under the deep blue waves that hug the shore.
December 9, 2021 | Climate Change
The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is scrambling to develop regulations for exploiting metals from the marine floor by July 2023. Under an obscure rule invoked by Nauru, if the deadline is not met the ISA will have to “consider and provisionally approve” licencing requests regardless.
November 28, 2021 | SciTech Daily
In the strange, dark world of the ocean floor, underwater fissures, called hydrothermal vents, host complex communities of life. These vents belch scorching hot fluids into extremely cold seawater, creating the chemical forces necessary for the small organisms that inhabit this extreme environment to live.
November 27, 2021 | KXAN NBC
NOAA has now mapped two million square kilometers of the ocean with a high resolution, multi-beam sonar system. Two million square kilometers is equivalent to more than 772,000 square miles or roughly more than one quarter of the size of the lower 48 United States.
November 25, 2021 | Mashable
Down there, it's normal to happen upon unprecedented, never-seen-before animals and intriguing behavior. Sometimes, sources for precious new medicines are collected — and many more are almost certainly waiting to be discovered. What marine scientists didn't expect to find, however, was a three-foot-long tusk from an extinct mammoth some 10,000 feet beneath the ocean. Researchers collected the specimen off the California coast in July 2021.
November 19, 2021 | Marine Technology News
Craig N. McLean, assistant administrator of NOAA Research has announced his plan to retire from public service on April 1, 2022.
November 18, 2021 | Live Science
A ghostly squid with huge, iridescent fins and funky, elbow-like bends in its tentacles is rarely seen, but scientists recently captured stunning footage of the elusive animal during an expedition in the Gulf of Mexico.
November 16, 2021 | CNN
Before the perpetual dark of the deep sea, in the space at the final reaches of daylight, is the ocean twilight zone. It is one of the final frontiers for Earth exploration, and as researchers delve deeper into this mysterious region, it is becoming clear that the animals that inhabit it play a critical role in regulating the Earth's climate.
November 11, 2021 | Newsweek
A rarely filmed deep-sea squid was recorded off the southeast coast of the U.S., with observers describing the creature with tentacles stretching up to 20 feet as "ghostly" and "alien-ish."
November 9, 2021 | Marine Technology Reporter
he National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the only federal agency with a program dedicated to exploring the deep ocean, closing gaps in our basic understanding of U.S. deep waters and the seafloor, and delivering the ocean information needed to strengthen the economy, health, and security of our nation. Inspiring and engaging the next generation are fundamental to the operations of the agency’s ocean exploration program.
November 5, 2021 | CBC
In a new memoir, Edie Widder discusses her life's work studying brilliant displays in the deep sea.
November 5, 2021 | Ground Truth
Consider the hours of labor required to map an as-yet uncharted area of the ocean floor. You’d have to sail for weeks just to reach some of the waters to be mapped, and a crewed vessel heading out into the big wide open needs to carry enough fuel for the boat and supplies for the crew.
November 3, 2021 | Popular Science
At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, at a place called the Challenger Deep near Guam, 36,000 feet beneath the surface of the ocean, the pressures from the water above reach a crushing eight tons per square inch—about a thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. Some comparisons ask us to picture 100 adult elephants standing on your head, which would no doubt be painful if you even survived long enough while exposed to that kind of pressure to feel anything at all.
November 3, 2021 | UT News
A team led by scientists from The University of Texas at Austin is attempting “to boldly go where no man has gone before”: the Earth’s deepest oceans. In the 1989 science fiction film “The Abyss,” a search and recovery team is tasked with finding a lost U.S. submarine that has vanished somewhere deep in uncharted waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the team’s discovery of an extraterrestrial species living on the ocean floor is imaginative, it did highlight how little we know about what may be present in the deepest parts of the Earth’s oceans.
November 2, 2021 | Hydro International
The health of our oceans and the health of our planet are one and the same. Yet the link between how much we know about this environment and how we protect it is not always clear. In this article, James Carey, head of operational delivery at the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO), outlines five reasons why better mapping could help us to understand the basics of our ocean ecosystem and help us protect it – and one reason why mapping could compromise our environment.
October 29, 2021 | Charlotte Observer
The haunting remains of the SS Bloody Marsh may have been discovered 100 miles off South Carolina — 78 years after torpedoes from a German U-boat split the ship in two and killed three men. “Based on evidence surveyed, participating scientists are reasonably certain that it is SS Bloody Marsh,” NOAA Ocean Exploration reported Thursday.
October 28, 2021 | San Diego Tribune
An underwater mountain in the Pacific that is taller than the highest peak in Southern California has been named in honor of Walter Munk, the late UC San Diego oceanographer whose grand insights led many scientists to call him the “Einstein of the oceans.”
October 26, 2021 | CNN
For centuries, humans have explored the Earth's mountains, jungles and deserts. But despite covering more than 70% of the Earth's surface, the ocean is still a relative mystery. In fact, we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the sea floor; just over 20% of the ocean bed has been mapped.
October 26, 2021 | Oregon Public Broadcasting
Engine trouble can be a real drag. Especially when you’re just a few days into a week-long journey to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in search of elusive beaked whales. So when the Oregon State University research mission aboard the R/V Pacific Storm had to turn around in the middle of the ocean and head back to Newport, there was a fair amount of disappointment on board.
October 22, 2021 | Vice
Volcanic activity near Tokyo has formed a new island and brought partially sunken WWII battleships into better view, creating an eerie sight of ghost ships that recalls one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. Marine history.
October 20, 2021 | Seattle Times
They call it “ice liberty,” a tradition during the Coast Guard’s maritime missions in Arctic waters. At a thick ice floe, the crew gets to disembark for a brief moment of freedom from the vessel confines. Some play touch football, or bring hockey gear for the occasion. Others just take a stroll.
October 20, 2021 | Civil Beat
Much remains unknown about the long-term effects of deep-sea mining in the Pacific and its role in the greater climate crisis. Given that, activists, governments and the private sector support a 10-year moratorium on deep-sea mining.
October 15, 2021 | Daily Mail
The U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday that it had located one of the most famous shipwrecks, the 'legendary' U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, after two decades of looking for it. She was found 90 miles due south of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, NOAA Ocean Exploration wrote in a post. The military ship was part of both World Wars, patrolled the waters off Alaska for decades and at one point was captained by the first black man to command a U.S. government vessel.
October 10, 2021 | CNET
It's cool enough to find a shipwreck. It's even better to spot a massive, mysterious sea creature hanging out with the wreck. That's what happened to the crew of the OceanX OceanXplorer research vessel during an expedition in the Red Sea in late 2020.
October 5, 2021 | E&E News
When it comes to meeting its aggressive conservation pledge, the Biden administration appears to have a head start on protecting the United States’ oceans — after all, on paper, the nation is already more than two-thirds of the way to the goal.
September 30, 2021 | GreenBiz
I’ve been fascinated with the ocean since I became an avid scuba diver two decades ago, a love I share with geographer and oceanographer Dawn Wright, chief scientist of geographic information systems software company Esri.
September 29, 2021 | Maritime Executive
In what could mark a significant step forward for the development of unmanned autonomous vessels, the French classification society Bureau Veritas awarded its first Approval in Principle (AiP) for an unmanned surface vessel. The approval was awarded to a French company iXblue for its vessel named DriX, an eight-meter Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) designed to assist with hydrographic and geophysical surveys, water column analysis, as well as subsea positioning operations. According to BV, the AiP addresses the safety requirements of the marine drone, which operates under the novel concept of remotely supervised autonomy.
September 24, 2021 | Angelus
Bioluminescence is oceanographer Edith Widder’s great obsession. Put simply, bioluminescence is light produced by a chemical reaction within a living organism.
September 23, 2021 | Phys.Org
Oceans play a key role in the global carbon dioxide balance. This is because billions of tiny algae live there, absorbing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and incorporating it into their biomass. When these algae die, they trickle down—along with the excretions of microscopic creatures that feed on them—as "marine snow" into deeper zones. About one percent of their carbon dioxide then lies buried in the seafloor for thousands of years.
September 23, 2021 | Penn State University
Third-year Penn State Dickinson Law student Ryan Marr believes in taking advantage of opportunities that come his way. From studying in Tanzania to traveling to Bermuda, he says “yes” to any chance to see the world or learn something new.
September 23, 2021 | Phys.Org
Two University of Wyoming researchers are part of the first-ever mapping of magnetic stripes—one of the foundations of plate tectonics—within the lower gabbroic section of fast-spreading oceanic crust.
September 22, 2021 | Florida Atlantic University
Coral cover on shallow reef systems (0 to 30 meters) in the Florida Keys has declined over the past several decades, punctuated by severe losses during coral disease outbreaks and bleaching events. However, some areas within the Florida Keys, especially the Dry Tortugas and many upper mesophotic habitats (30 to 60 meters), have maintained relatively healthy coral communities, even in the face of recent severe and widespread coral disease outbreaks.
September 15, 2021 | Live Science
Giant squid (Architeuthis dux) are mysterious deep-sea predators with basketball-size eyes and tentacles that can stretch to 33 feet (10 meters) long. Giant squid are one of the world’s largest invertebrates and belong to an ancient group of mollusks called cephalopods, which also includes octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiluses.
September 15, 2021 | NRDC
Five years ago today, on September 15, 2016, President Obama designated the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. By signing Proclamation 9496, he created the nation’s first marine national monument in the waters of the continental United States.
September 14, 2021 | Hyrdo International
Between 20 June and 29 July 2021, NOAA Ocean Exploration, in partnership with USGS, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and other organizations and universities, conducted a telepresence-enabled ocean exploration to collect baseline information about unknown and poorly understood deepwater areas off the eastern U.S. coast and high seas.
September 10, 2021 | Science Alert
The hidden scars left on the landscape during ice ages thousands to millions of years ago have now been imaged in spectacular detail. Using a technique called reflection seismology, a team of scientists has imaged enormous gouges carved by subglacial rivers, buried hundreds of meters below the floor of the North Sea. Called 'tunnel valleys', these features can help us understand how frozen landscapes change in response to a warming climate.
September 8, 2021 | CNN
Half a billion years ago, the oceans were filled with life that looked more like aliens than the marine animals we know today. Now, researchers have uncovered the fossil of an unusual creature that was likely a giant compared to tiny ocean life 500 million years ago.
September 7, 2021 | Physics World
Hot, ocean-covered exoplanets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres could harbour life and may be more common than planets that are Earth-like in size, temperature and atmospheric composition. According to astronomers at the University of Cambridge, UK, this newly defined class of exoplanets could boost the search for life elsewhere in the universe by broadening the search criteria and redefining which biosignatures are important.
September 7, 2021 | Time
Scattered three miles deep along the floor of the central Pacific are trillions of black, misshapen nuggets that may just be the solution to an impending energy crisis. Similar in size and appearance to partially burned charcoal briquettes, the nuggets are called polymetallic nodules, and are an amalgamation of nickel, cobalt, manganese and other rare earth metals, formed through a complex biochemical process in which shark teeth and fish bones are encased by minerals accreted out of ocean waters over millions of years.
September 1, 2021 | Smithsonian Magazine
A new glioblastoma drug is derived from a microbe found in the ocean at depths of up to 6,500 feet.
September 1, 2021 | Phys.Org
Comb jellies—known to scientists as ctenophores (pronounced "teen-oh-fours")—mesmerize with their beauty, but these captivating creatures remain poorly studied due to their delicate nature. MBARI researchers have used the power of genetics to learn more about these animals.
August 30, 2021 | LiveScience
Sharks are often called "living fossils," and for good reason: The first sharks appeared in the fossil record roughly 450 million years ago and have lived through all five mass extinctions, including the one that wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs. In addition to being long-lived as a group, individual sharks have long life spans. So just how long can sharks live, and what's the oldest shark on record?
August 29, 2021 | The Guardian
Trillions of metallic nodules on the sea floor could help stop global heating, but mining them may damage ocean ecology.
August 27, 2021 | CBS News
Life outside our solar system may be found within just a few years, thanks to the discovery of a new class of super hot, Earth-like planets, according to astronomers from the University of Cambridge.
August 24, 2021 | Miami Herald
The sinking of the SS Norlindo has all the elements of a good mystery, including World War II intrigue, prowling German U-boats and a handful of crewmen who were never seen again. It has been 79 years since Germany’s U-507 torpedoed the unarmed steamship and its whereabouts remain a puzzle. That could change in the next two weeks, however.
August 24, 2021 | Hydro International
Bedrock, a vertically-integrated sea-floor data platform and service, has announced the launch of its full-service offering: autonomous ocean surveys powered by the company’s proprietary, 100% electric autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and Mosaic, a universal cloud-based survey data platform for managing, accessing and sharing any marine survey data from any ongoing or historical survey, which is now open for beta sign-ups.
August 23, 2021 | ECO Magazine
The oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface, but house 99% of the world's biosphere – the areas where living organisms are found. Therefore, most of the world's biosphere is a deep ocean environment, where it's pitch black, the temperature is just above freezing, and it's subject to crushing pressures. The ocean has an average depth of approximately 3.7 kilometers (2.3 miles). Special equipment is required to visit these extreme depths, which is why less than 5% of this area has been explored and charted.
August 19, 2021 | ZDNet
What do you get when a SpaceX alum and submarine engineer cofounds a tech company? A submersible that can boldly go where no one has gone before. You're going to hear a lot more about ocean mapping in the coming years. Driven in part by the UN's Seabed 2030 program, which seeks to map the entire ocean within the decade, and partially by growing interest in offshore and near-shore sustainable energy infrastructure, it's a great age of ocean exploration.
August 18, 2021 | Popular Science
In January 1992, during what might have been a rough storm, a cargo box containing more than 28,000 rubber ducks and other bath toys toppled overboard, off a ship traveling from China to Seattle. These rubber toys, known now as the Friendly Floaties, were set adrift, and as they’ve washed up in places like Hawaii, Australia, and even Japan, they’ve revealed an invisible worldwide network of currents that have made huge ripples in ocean science.
August 17, 2021 | Bloomberg
Thirty years ago, I had the privilege of seeing the deep ocean up close. For my Ph.D. research, I dropped 1.5 miles in the Alvin submersible above the East Pacific Rise, southwest of Acapulco. Beyond illuminating the oceanographic process I was studying — the connection between plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions and deep-sea vents — that one shaft of ocean opened my eyes to a larger truth: Humans are largely blind to this enormous and lively part of the world — more than two-thirds of the Earth.
August 12, 2021 | Charlotte Observer
A new type of red jellyfish may have been discovered off the East Coast, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a big clue was more tentacles than expected for the genus. That’s rather intimidating news, given tentacles are where the dreaded stingers are located on jellyfish.
August 12, 2021 | PBS News Hour
Picture yourself slowly sinking in the sparkling blue waters of the open ocean. At first, the shining sun above makes visible many of the marine creatures floating by. But as you descend, the sunlight begins to dissipate. You’ve reached the ocean’s midwater, or “twilight zone,” a several-thousand-foot stretch of the water column where light eventually becomes nearly unmeasurable.
August 12, 2021 | Visual Capitalist
Even though mining in the Deep Sea is still a relatively new phenomenon, abundant levels of metals that are critical for clean energy such as copper, cobalt, and nickel have been found on the seafloor.
August 10, 2021 | Novus Light
The uncrewed, autonomous, Saildrone Surveyor recently completed a groundbreaking maiden voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu. While ocean crossings are nothing new for Saildrone’s autonomous surface vehicles, the Saildrone Surveyor is a new, much larger class of vehicle optimized for deep-ocean mapping. During the 28-day voyage, the Saildrone Surveyor sailed 2,250 nautical miles and mapped 6,400 square nautical miles of seafloor.
August 9, 2021 | Marine Technology News
Marine scientists on Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor completed a 12-day expedition off the coast of Southern California to survey the biodiversity of deep sea areas rich in minerals that are of interest to deep sea mining developers around the world.
August 6, 2021 | Marine Technology News
Please join us Aug. 11th at 3 p.m. EDT for a one-hour seminar on the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute (OECI), with Director Adam Soule and Manager Aurora Elmore. Opening remarks will be provided by NOAA acting Chief Scientist Craig McLean, Ocean Exploration Trust President Bob Ballard and NOAA Ocean Exploration acting Director Genene Fisher.
July 31, 2021 | NPR
An ocean expedition exploring more than a mile under the surface of the Atlantic captured a startlingly silly sight this week: a sponge that looked very much like SpongeBob SquarePants. And right next to it, a pink sea star — a doppelganger for Patrick, SpongeBob's dim-witted best friend.
July 29, 2021 | Marine Technology News
Ocean exploration organizations Nekton and Schmidt Ocean Institute have entered into a new partnership to work collaboratively on expeditions and to advance public understanding of the ocean by engaging cultural sectors such as fashion, food, and sports.
July 26, 2021 | Treehugger
The oceans make up around 70% of planet Earth, yet over 80% of the world's ocean remains unexplored. Since the global boom of ocean exploration technology began in the 1960s, deep-sea exploration has faced a number of barriers. Today, with fewer barriers in place than ever before, international efforts are underway to continue the exploration of the deep ocean.
July 21, 2021 | The Conversation
In collaboration with the United States Navy’s Underwater Archaeology Branch, I taught a computer how to recognize shipwrecks on the ocean floor from scans taken by aircraft and ships on the surface. The computer model we created is 92% accurate in finding known shipwrecks. The project focused on the coasts of the mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico. It is now ready to be used to find unknown or unmapped shipwrecks.
July 21, 2021 | EurekaAlert!
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has been awarded $2 million by the National Science Foundation to lead an international effort to accelerate scientific understanding of the environmental impacts of emerging industries in the deep sea - one of the most mysterious, and potentially lucrative, areas of the ocean.
July 16, 2021 | EurekaAlert!
The hydrothermal vent fluids from the Gorda Ridge spreading center in the northeast Pacific Ocean create a biological hub of activity in the deep sea. There, in the dark ocean, a unique food web thrives not on photosynthesis but rather on chemical energy from the venting fluids. Among the creatures having a field day feasting at the Gorda Ridge vents is a diverse assortment of microbial eukaryotes, or protists, that graze on chemosynthetic bacteria and archaea.
July 16, 2021 | Scientific American
Astrobiologists are now pursuing multiple interplanetary missions to learn whether any of these ocean-bearing moons actually possess more than mere water—namely, habitability, or the nuanced geochemical conditions required for life to arise and flourish.
July 15, 2021 | Science
In 2015, a German research team sent a submersible to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. West of Peru, the camera-mounted robot explored a vast expanse of sea floor, 4 kilometers (more than 2 miles) deep, known for its extreme flatness. “It’s very dark,” recalls Antje Boetius, a biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute. “Then you switch on the lights of the robot and see a new landscape that no one has ever seen before.”
July 15, 2021 | Phys.org
Marine scientists often feel like they're fumbling in the dark. The global ocean covers about 71 percent of our planet and is central to life as it exists on Earth. But only about 20 percent of the seafloor has been directly mapped so far.
July 15, 2021 | The Times Record
The year 2020 was and will remain a period in history. But here we are in 2021 and we are moving forward as well as celebrating the positive things that happened over the last year and even before. One ocean milestone of note this year is that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ocean Exploration’s marked its 20th year of discovery. This program has been venturing into oceans around the world in various vessels and vehicles with an array of evolving technology to learn about the places on earth that most people never see.
July 13, 2021 | Hydro International
The world’s deepest diving acrylic-hulled manned submersible is to be equipped with Sonardyne’s BlueComm optical communications link to allow live streaming of deep ocean expeditions anywhere in the world. The Triton 7500/3 series submersible will operate from REV Ocean, one of the world’s most advanced research vessels, currently under construction for the Norwegian non-profit organization of the same name.
July 13, 2021 | Interesting Engineering
The ocean keeps the Earth alive. Covering around 70 percent of our planet's surface, the ocean regulates temperature, drives weather, and supports all living organisms in some way. For centuries, it has also provided humans with food, transport, commerce, leisure, and inspiration.
July 12, 2021 | Mashable
Bill Chadwick has seen things you wouldn’t believe. He’s observed an undersea volcano oozing carbon dioxide, which turned into an eerie, milky liquid under the intense water pressure. “That was crazy,” Chadwick tells Vox. He witnessed another eject a toxic plume that was killing and stunning fish and squid, which rained down to be eaten by crabs, worms, and shrimp.
July 10, 2021 | Mashable
Every deep sea expedition returns with footage of new, rare, and/or alien-like creatures. One of the latest such journeys, undertaken by marine researchers aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s 272-foot research vessel Falkor, just brought back vivid footage of life around the protected Phoenix Islands Archipelago, located in the remote Pacific Ocean.
July 9, 2021 | Phys.org
The California Current extends nearly 2,000 miles from Canada's Vancouver Island to the middle of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. It brings cold water from the North Pacific Ocean to the west coast of North America and is home to numerous and abundant species because of the upwelling of deep nutrient-rich waters.
July 8, 2021 | Maritime Executive
After a voyage lasting 28 days and covering an estimated 2,250 nautical miles, an uncrewed, autonomous vessel mostly powered by wind and solar energy is arriving at the dock in Honolulu, Hawaii this afternoon, July 8. The Saildrone Surveyor, a 14 ton vessel promoted as the world’s largest and most advanced autonomous ocean mapping drone, completes its trans-Pacific maiden voyage having sailed from San Francisco.
July 7, 2021 | Eos
Earth’s oceans play a pivotal role in the global carbon cycle. As seawater moves and mixes, it stores and transports huge amounts of carbon in the form of dissolved organic and inorganic carbon molecules. However, the various sources and fates of marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) are complex, and much remains to be learned about its dynamics—especially as climate change progresses.
July 4, 2021 | The Guardian
He is the celebrated deep-sea explorer who discovered the Titanic, as well as the German battleship Bismarck and other historic sunken vessels around the world. Now Dr Robert Ballard is pioneering cutting-edge technology – autonomous underwater vehicles that will “revolutionise” the search for more than three million shipwrecks that lie scattered across ocean floors, according to a Unesco estimate. Many will offer new insights into life on board at the time of sinking, hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
July 2, 2021 | CNN
Drop through the ocean in the right place and eventually you'll enter the twilight zone. It's hundreds of meters down, yet not so far as the ocean floor. And in the middle ground between light and shadow, science is making incredible discoveries.
June 30, 2021 | PR Web
Nonprofit ocean exploration organization OceanX today announced the launch of the Young Explorers Program (YEP), offering college students from across the nation the opportunity to learn about and explore the ocean aboard OceanX’s marine research and media vessel OceanXplorer. Launching this summer, the program, coordinated by OceanX with partners from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute (GMGI) and Coral Vita, will host 10 participants as they chart largely unexplored areas on the ship’s 12-day voyage from the Azores to Svalbard, Norway.
June 30, 2021 | KSAT.com
The Titanic is disappearing. The iconic ocean liner that was sunk by an iceberg is now slowly succumbing to metal-eating bacteria: holes pervade the wreckage, the crow's nest is already gone and the railing of the ship's iconic bow could collapse at any time. Racing against the inevitable, an undersea exploration company's expedition to the site of the wreckage could start this week, beginning what’s expected to be an annual chronicling of the ship’s deterioration. With the help of wealthy tourists, experts hope to learn more about the vessel as well as the underwater ecosystem that shipwrecks spawn.
June 29, 2021 | Discover Magazine
For some time now, humanity has been saying we know more about the surface of the moon than the floor of the ocean. While space exploration attracts headlines and eye-popping budgets, understanding the depths of our own planet often garners less interest. But, along a coral reef off the coast of Florida, a one-of-a-kind underwater lab is facilitating ocean research while also preparing generations of astronauts.
June 28, 2021 | Government Executive
Last year, before the pandemic, some of the world’s most dedicated data experts gathered at an Ocean Data Roundtable to improve the way we manage ocean data for the health of the planet and the millions who depend on it for food, their livelihoods, or recreation. Building on that meeting, Ocean Conservancy and the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) analyzed America’s ocean data revolution in a detailed report published in May 2021.
June 28, 2021 | WTKR
What's out of sight for many people isn't out of mind for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. The unknown is what has NOAA's Ocean Exploration team plunging into new depths.
June 24, 2021 | Live Science
About 70% of Earth's surface is covered in water, and researchers are trying to map every last inch of it. On June 21 (that's World Hydrography Day, in case you forgot to update your Calendar of Very Nerdy Events), a group of international researchers announced that they are about one-fifth of the way to that goal, having mapped 20.6% of Earth's total underwater area using modern sonar techniques, according to a statement.
June 24, 2021 | National Geographic
Drawn from hours of never-before-seen footage, Bob Ballard: An Explorer’s Life will air July 18 at 7pm on National Geographic. “If the plane was in there, it would have seen it,” says Robert Ballard, referring to the 14-foot autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) launched from his 211-foot exploration vessel, the E/V Nautilus.
June 23, 2021 | University of Maine
This summer, Rhian Waller will return to an area of the Atlantic Ocean that she last explored 16 years ago. And she’s inviting everyone interested in the deep sea and deep sea animals to watch the underwater discoveries with her in real time.
June 17, 2021 | Miami Herald
A NOAA expedition is underway to explore unmapped areas of seafloor off the East Coast, including the first known visit to a puzzling deep sea anomaly known as the Caryn Seamount.
June 16, 2021 | Wired
The grandest migration on Earth isn’t the journey of some herbivore in Africa or a bird in the sky, but the vertical movement of whole ecosystems in the open ocean. All kinds of animals, from fish to crustaceans, hang out in the depths during the day, where the darkness provides protection from predators. At night, they migrate up to the shallows to forage. Then they swim back down again when the sun rises—a great big conveyor belt of biomass.
June 15, 2021 | SciTech Daily
Methane is a strong greenhouse gas that plays a key role in Earth’s climate. Anytime we use natural gas, whether we light up our kitchen stove or barbeque, we are using methane. Only three sources on Earth produce methane naturally: volcanoes, subsurface water-rock interactions, and microbes. Between these three sources, most is generated by microbes, which have deposited hundreds of gigatons of methane into the deep seafloor. At seafloor methane seeps, it percolates upwards toward the open ocean, and microbial communities consume the majority of this methane before it reaches the atmosphere. Over the years, researchers are finding more and more methane beneath the seafloor, yet very little ever leaves the oceans and gets into the atmosphere. Where is the rest going?
June 15, 2021 | Astrobites
One of the highlights of the prolific Cassini mission to the Saturnian system was the detection of methane and molecular hydrogen, among other trace gases, in a plume of Enceladus’ ocean material ejected into space (see here and here). A leading hypothesis for the presence of H2 in the plume points to hydrothermal activity at the base of the Enceladus’ subsurface ocean.
June 11, 2021 | The Alpena News
BEN gets around. From coast to coast in the U.S., to American Samoa, and back to Lake Huron, the autonomous surface vessel (ASV) is in Rogers City this month for lake floor mapping.
June 10, 2021 | Eos
Although scientists often assume that random variations in scientific data fit symmetrical, bell-shaped normal distributions, nature isn’t always so tidy. In some cases, a skewed distribution, like the log-normal probability distribution, provides a better fit. Researchers previously found that primary production by ocean phytoplankton and carbon export via particles sinking from the surface are consistent with log-normal distributions.
June 8, 2021 | The Hill
Far too few people realize that the futures they expect to have actually depend on the health of the ocean. Some get it. Artisanal fishers whose chief source of protein is the fish they catch themselves and bring home in the evenings understand this now that many have seen their yields decrease steadily. Coastal homeowners whose properties are vulnerable to sea-level rise see their flood insurance premiums skyrocket and worry about their property values. They, too, know things aren’t what they had hoped to be.
June 4, 2021 | Science Daily
Experts have experimentally measured the release of iron from the fecal pellets of krill and salps under natural conditions and tested its bioavailability using a natural community of microalgae in the Southern Ocean.
June 3, 2021 | VICE
When traveling to a previously unexplored portion of Earth, you might expect to find any number of things. Strange plants, neon sea creatures, maybe even aliens? In the Emden Deep, however, marine scientist Deo Onda found a teddy bear.
June 1, 2021 | The White House
The world’s ocean basins are critical to the success of our Nation and, indeed, to life on Earth. The ocean powers our economy, provides food for billions of people, supplies 50 percent of the world’s oxygen, offers recreational opportunities for us to enjoy, and regulates weather patterns and our global climate system. During National Ocean Month, we celebrate our stewardship of the ocean and coasts, and reaffirm our commitment to protecting and sustaining them for current and future generations.
June 1, 2021 | Wiscasset Newspaper
This summer University of Maine Darling Marine Center based researcher Dr. Rhian Waller, a cold-water coral expert, will lead a NOAA Ocean Exploration’s 2021 expedition called North Atlantic Stepping Stones: New England and Corner Rise Seamounts.
June 1, 2021 | The Naked Scientists
Bob Ballard is an oceanographer and explorer who is most famous for having discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, as well as the Bismarck in 1989 and many others. He’s currently working on a new project exploring the vast underwater landscape of the Pacific, using satellites and what’s called ‘telepresence technology’ to visit the ocean’s depths from the comfort of dry land!
May 20, 2021 | Intelligent Living
In 1620, the original Mayflower took 102 passengers sailing away from Plymouth, England, on a dangerous voyage to the “new world,” North America, inspired by hopes for a better future. In 2016, the Plymouth community gathered and discussed how to memorialize the upcoming 400th anniversary of that Mayflower’s journey. The inspiring age-old sea challenge combined with a new kind of desire for discovery prompted ProMare Co-founder Brett Phaneuf to ask: Why not use this opportunity to advance into the future rather than reminisce about the past?
May 19, 2021 | People
A rare fish species believed to have gone extinct with dinosaurs millions of years ago has recently been rediscovered alive in the Indian Ocean. According to a report from Mongabay, a US-based non-profit conservation and environmental science news platform, a group of South African shark hunters recently found the rare coelacanth species (Latimeria chalumnae) in the West Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar.
May 17, 2021 | Forbes
Dear humans: Abraham doesn’t need your help with this task. Abraham is the name of an autonomous submarine produced by Terradepth, a startup in Austin, Texas. The venture is headed by two former Navy SEALs who plan to have the 9-meter-long sub back in the water in a few months, working in the Gulf of Mexico.
May 14, 2021 | NASA
Terrain-relative navigation helped Perseverance land – and Ingenuity fly – autonomously on Mars. Now it’s time to test a similar system while exploring another frontier. On May 14, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship Okeanos Explorer will depart from Port Canaveral in Florida on a two-week expedition led by NOAA Ocean Exploration, featuring the technology demonstration of an autonomous underwater vehicle. Called Orpheus, this new class of submersible robot will showcase a system that will help it find its way and identify interesting scientific features on the seafloor.
May 13, 2021 | WIRED
WE LOVE DEEP-SEA science here at WIRED, and we have the coverage to prove it. From mysterious, barely visible fish and high-tech deep sea submersibles to virtual reality tours of the ocean floor and ocean conservation challenges, it's safe to say we like thinking about the worlds that exist beneath the sea and what worlds may await us in the watery depths beneath the ice of Jupiter's moon, Europa, and Saturn's moon, Enceladus.
May 13, 2021 | Deeper Blue
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will begin a major expedition this week, exploring the deep waters off the US East Coast and testing new technologies. From May 14th to May 27th, scientists aboard the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer will conduct the 2021 Technology Demonstration, traveling from Cape Canaveral, Florida to Norfolk, Virginia.
May 13, 2021 | Space.com
A new deep-sea exploration technology that could one day search for life in subsurface oceans on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn will be put to test during a two-week demonstration expedition aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship.
May 12, 2021 | Marine Technology News
Robert Ballard, world-renowned pioneer in deep-ocean exploration, opens up as never before with a highly personal memoir "Into the Deep". In an interview with Marine Technology Reporter on the day the book hit the shelf, Ballard discusses his dyslexia, his family and the cavalcade of discoveries and technologies that have opened up the world of ocean exploration.
May 12, 2021 | CNN
An unusual fish with teeth as sharp as glass and a body shaped like a football washed ashore on a California beach last week. The black colored creature with its gaping mouth laid on the sand on the shore of Crystal Cove State Park's Marine Protected Area in Laguna Beach last Friday. The park shared images of the fish on social media and identified it as being most likely the Pacific Football Fish.
May 11, 2021 | BBC
Scientists say we now have the most precise information yet on the deepest points in each of Earth's five oceans. The key locations where the seafloor bottoms out in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Southern oceans were mapped by the Five Deeps Expedition.
May 6, 2021 | Mashable
During a recently completed 18-day expedition in the protected Ashmore Reef Marine Park (off of Australia), scientists aboard a Schmidt Ocean Institute exploration vessel dropped an underwater robot into deep, low-light depths. At some 165 to 500 feet down (50-150 meters), it observed otherworldly corals, sea snakes, and a diversity of sea creatures, shown in the eight images below.
May 6, 2021 | CNN
In a career that's spanned more than 60 years, Robert Ballard has conducted over 150 underwater expeditions and made countless significant scientific discoveries. But the renowned oceanographer says he's made peace with the fact that he will probably always be known as "the man who found Titanic."
April 28, 2021 | IFL Science
Wildlife photography is a notoriously difficult art form, requiring patience, stamina, and serendipitous timing. A recent Twitter thread demonstrated the perils of life in the field, as did the BBC’s A Perfect Planet as it sent camera operators to some of the most inhospitable habitats on Earth. Things only get harder as you move underwater, though a recent spike in recreational blackwater diving has allowed marine scientists to lay eyes on the living artwork that is some of the ocean’s residents’ larval forms.
April 27, 2021 | The Conversation
The deepest regions of the oceans still remain one of the least explored areas on Earth, despite their considerable scientific interest and the richness of lifeforms inhabiting them.
April 26, 2021 | E&E News
NOAA has gone without a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader for more than four years, the longest stretch in the agency's history. President Biden is now moving to fill the job with a scientist deeply familiar with its operations: Richard "Rick" Spinrad, who retired in 2016 as NOAA's chief scientist and currently works as a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University.
April 25, 2021 | NPR
President Biden is nominating Rick Spinrad to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government's premier agency on climate science which oversees the National Weather Service.
April 23, 2021 | Science Daily
Corals and sponges are important foundations in ocean ecosystems providing structure and habitats that shelter a high number of species like fish, crabs and other creatures, particularly in the seamounts and canyons of the deep sea. Researchers have discovered that when it comes to climate change not all deep-sea corals and sponges are affected the same and some could be threatened if average ocean temperatures continue to increase in the deep sea of the Northwest Atlantic.
April 21, 2021 | Vox
Let’s dive down into the ocean. Start by imagining you’re floating on the surface, basking in the sun of a hot day. Next, dive. First 50 meters. Then 100 meters. Then 150 meters. (In this imaginary exercise, you have amazing, inhuman lungs.) At the beginning of the dive, you’re in the ocean’s epipelagic, or sunlight zone: the shallow waters where light still penetrates and photosynthetic organisms live. But as you dive deeper and deeper, the sunlight above you fades. The ocean around you gets darker and darker, colder and colder.
April 20, 2021 | Monterey Herald
Northern California’s most-celebrated deep sea explorers are about to get a new ride. Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Tuesday announced plans to build a new $50 million state-of-the-art flagship vessel, named the David Packard, in honor of the Silicon Valley pioneer who co-founded Hewlett-Packard and in later life used much of his fortune to explore and preserve the world’s oceans.
April 15, 2021 | The Tyee
Late last summer, a team of scientists from the University of British Columbia tracked southern and northern resident killer whales off the B.C. coast using cutting-edge technology that opened a new window into the lives of these charismatic creatures.
April 15, 2021 | Forbes
The Earth could have been called Planet Ocean. In fact, oceans are our planet’s largest life support system. About 70% of the planet’s surface is covered by water, and 97% of this water is found in the oceans. In addition, ocean currents govern the world’s weather and its dependent biomes. For centuries, a planetary equilibrium in the ocean’s overturning circulation (the flow of warm, salty water in upper layers of the ocean, and the opposite flow of cold water in lower layers) created stable conditions for the atmosphere and made life possible below water – and on land.
April 14, 2021 | World Economic Forum
Scientists and planners are increasingly turning to digital technology to save the ocean. Data is needed to map and monitor ocean conditions, assess the impacts of climate change, warn about ocean-related natural disasters, and manage the ocean’s valuable economic and ecological resources.
April 9, 2021 | BBC News
Ocean scientists around the world are studying the "unique moment" of quiet created by the pandemic. The researchers have called their vast listening experiment: The year of the quiet ocean. "Lockdown slowed global shipping on a scale that would otherwise be impossible," explained Prof Peter Tyack from the University of St Andrews. The scientists plan to listen to the ocean soundscape before, during and after lockdown.
April 8, 2021 | USA Today
With only nine months left until he pilots a history making mission to space, real estate investor and philanthropist Larry Connor has another groundbreaking piece of exploration to take care of. He is scheduled to make two dives to the deepest part of the ocean at more than 35,000 feet.
April 7, 2021 | NASA
Long before NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, one of its highest-level mission goals was already established: to seek out signs of ancient life on the Martian surface. In fact, the techniques used by one of the science instruments aboard the rover could have applications on Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan as well Jupiter’s moon Europa.
April 2, 2021 | IFL Science
A recent study has paid tribute to one of the natural sciences’ most iconic duos: blackwater photographers and ocean scientists. Together, they have shed literal and figurative light on some of the alien-like ocean babies that are milling around the murky depths, by combining photographs with specimen investigations in a study recently published in the journal BioOne Complete. Their combined efforts revealed, in stunning detail, some of the bizarre morphologies and behaviors of larval fishes – including one who rides jellies like an epipelagic cowboy.
April 1, 2021 | Universe Today
Underneath its shell of ice, the globe-spanning ocean of Enceladus isn’t sitting still. Instead, it might possibly host massive ocean currents, driven by changes in salinity.
April 1, 2021 | Science: The Wire
Google, BMW, AB Volvo Group and Samsung SDI are the first global companies to sign up to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) call for a moratorium on deep–sea mining, likely shrinking the potential market for deep–sea minerals harvested for our cars and smartphones.
March 30, 2021 | Marine Technology News
SOI acquired a 10-year-old high specification offshore vessel recently, which will go under conversion at a shipyard in Spain and be ready for ocean exploration in 2022.
March 29, 2021 | MIT Technology Review
Here on Earth, we have more detailed maps of Mars than of our own ocean, and that’s a problem. A massive force for surviving climate change, the ocean absorbs 90% of the heat caused by emissions and generates 50% of the oxygen we breathe. “We have the ocean to thank for so many aspects of our safety and well-being,” says Dawn Wright, oceanographer and chief scientist at geographic information system (GIS) provider Esri, who notes the ocean also provides renewable energy, a major food source, and a transportation corridor for not only ships but submarine internet cables.
March 29, 2021 | Marine Technology News
During recent decades, progress in subsea exploration has increased significantly, especially with the advancement of underwater vehicles, whether autonomous, remotely operated, manned or otherwise. Sound has moved to the forefront of ocean exploration in past years thanks to its speed underwater—it travels almost five times faster than in the air. Audio samples can be caught with hydrophones that can pick up sounds from hundreds of miles away, whether they come from marine life, human interference or movement within the Earth’s surface.
March 25, 2021 | The Cordova Times
Legislation before Congress reintroduces the National Ocean Exploration Act, which would authorize the National Ocean Mapping, Exploration and Characterization Council, updating priorities for ocean studies.
March 24, 2021 | Arizona State University News
Scientists from Arizona State University, who are a part of the Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog (SUBSEA) program, have pioneered a new approach to the scientific process of geochemical exploration for our Earth and beyond.
March 23, 2021 | Marine Technology News
Today, the Board of Trustees of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership announced the appointment of Dr. Alan Leonardi as president and CEO, effective May 24, 2021.
March 18, 2021 | UPI
For the first time, scientists have documented biofluorescent fish in the Arctic. Researchers spotted snailfish glowing red and green in the icy waters off the coast of Greenland.
March 16, 2021 | The Verge
Vast amounts of ancient Martian water may have been buried beneath its surface instead of escaping into space, scientists report in the journal Science. The findings, published Tuesday, may help untangle a clash of theories seeking to explain the disappearance of Mars’ water, a resource that was abundant on the planet’s surface billions of years ago.
March 12, 2021 | Phys.org
A team led by scientists from Cardiff University has, for the first time, been able to track the development of the largest and least understood habitat on Earth.
March 11, 2021 | Discover
Just off the southeast coast of the United States, there lies a span of ocean that’s long held a fearsome reputation. Ships traversing its choppy breadth disappear without a trace. Flights routed above the waters blink from radar screens, never to be seen again. The mysterious happenings have conjured stories of supernatural interference, alien kidnappings and an area somehow outside the normal bounds of physical reality. The Bermuda Triangle, it’s said, is a haunted place.
March 10, 2021 | New Scientist
There is an abundance of weird and wonderful life in the depths of the sea – and The Brilliant Abyss by Helen Scales is an excellent introduction to it.
March 9, 2021 | Singularity Hub
While all eyes were on the dramatic descent of NASA’s Perseverance rover last month, a team sent a robot into another alien world, one closer to home: the deep sea.
March 9, 2021 | McGill Tribune
Despite covering more than two thirds of Earth’s surface, the ocean remains notoriously unexplored. In fact, the American budget for ocean exploration is 150 times smaller than that for space exploration, which has successfully captured cultural and public imagination for decades. While the moon’s surface has been mapped to a resolution of seven metres and that of Mars to six metres, the best maps of the ocean only have a resolution of slightly over one kilometre.
March 4, 2021 | Eos
An expanded nonmilitary hydrophone network provides new opportunities to understand the variability and trends of ocean sound and the effects of sound on marine organisms.
March 4, 2021 | Science
A comprehensive survey of corals has turned up billions of colonies across the Pacific Ocean. The work—based on actual head counts, satellite data, and informed estimates—suggests many species are not in immediate danger of extinction, and the census could help conservationists and policymakers make better decisions about how to protect reefs.
March 4, 2021 | Phys.org
The oceans are becoming more acidic because of the rapid release of carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by anthropogenic (human) activities, such as burning of fossil fuels. So far, the oceans have taken up around 30% of all anthropogenic CO2 released to the atmosphere. The continuous increase of CO2 has a substantial effect on ocean chemistry because CO2 reacts with water and carbonate molecules. This process, called 'ocean acidification,' lowers pH, and calcium carbonate becomes less available. This is a problem for calcifying organisms, such as corals and molluscs, that use calcium carbonate as the main building blocks of their exoskeleton.
March 3, 2021 | Nature
A self-powered robot inspired by a fish can survive the extreme pressures at the bottom of the ocean’s deepest trench, thanks to its soft body and distributed electronic system – and might enable exploration of the uncharted ocean.
March 3, 2021 | CNN
Scientists have taken the first ever photos of a glow-in-the-dark shark producing its own light. The kitefin shark, Dalatias licha, is the world's largest known bioluminescent vertebrate, growing to nearly six feet in length.
March 1, 2021 | Soundings
Eighty-one percent of the world’s oceans are still unmapped, but a California-based company is hoping to change that by using unmanned sailboats. Saildrone, which is based in Alameda, just launched its first 72-foot, remote-controlled, unmanned sailboat, the Saildrone Surveyor, into San Francisco Bay.
March 1, 2021 | Lost Coast Outpost
His fixation with gadgetry and exploration started at an early age. In middle school, when he wasn’t playing in the woods or along the beaches in Trinidad, he was tinkering with his ham radio as a member of the Humboldt Amateur Radio Club. By the time he was a senior at McKinleyville High, he was competing in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s underwater robotics competition.
March 1, 2021 | Deeper Blue
The US Ocean Exploration Advisory Board will hold a virtual meeting next month to talk about its priorities under the new Biden administration.
February 25, 2021 | Anchorage Press
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) joined Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) in reintroducing the National Ocean Exploration Act. The bill would authorize the National Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization Council, update national priorities for ocean mapping, exploration, and characterization, and direct the Council to coordinate and facilitate activities across federal and non-federal entities to advance those priorities.
February 25, 2021 | CBS News
An influential current system in the Atlantic Ocean, which plays a vital role in redistributing heat throughout our planet's climate system, is now moving more slowly than it has in at least 1,600 years. That's the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience from some of the world's leading experts in this field.
February 25, 2021 | The Maritime Executive
Gravity waves, not to be confused with gravitational waves, form when air is pushed up and gravity pulls the air back down. On its way down, air displaces ocean water, forming waves that look like vertical channels. There are different types of gravity waves.
February 23, 2021 | Robb Report
Triton’s new 13000/2 TE, standing for Titanic Explorer, is designed to be the deepest-diving, acrylic-pressure-hulled submersible ever produced. It also is the first with retractable Gull Wings. The TE was named following the 2019 exploration by a Triton of the RMS Titanic. It was the first manned mission to visit the Titanic in 14 years.
February 17, 2021 | Science Alert
The way that the songs of fin whales echo back from the seabed could become a useful tool for scientists studying the sediment and rock that make up Earth's crust, according to new research carried out in the northeast Pacific Ocean.
February 16, 2021 | Freightwaves.com
Newport, Rhode Island, has been chosen as the future homeport for a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel being built for the agency. Discoverer will be a state-of-the-art ship that operates off the coasts of the U.S. and its territories around the nation to study and explore the oceans.
February 11, 2021 | Gizmodo
Some whale songs can give scientists valuable information about the ocean’s geography, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. What’s more, their songs can be used as a form of seismic testing, which uses blasts of sound to map out the ocean floor. Forms of this technology can be harmful to whales and other marine life.
February 11, 2021 | BBC
A mission to study a moon of Jupiter that could be home to extra-terrestrial life has been given a launch date. Nasa is sending a spacecraft to the icy world of Europa, which holds an ocean under its frozen outer shell. Scientists have long regarded the moon as one of the most promising targets in the search for life elsewhere in our Solar System. The Europa Clipper spacecraft will now launch to the jovian moon in October 2024, arriving in April 2030.
February 6, 2021 | Robohub
Most of the ocean is unknown. Yet we know that the most challenging environments on the planet reside in it. Understanding the ocean in its totality is a key component for the sustainable development of human activities and for the mitigation of climate change, as proclaimed by the United Nations. We are glad to share our perspective about the role of soft robots in ocean exploration and offshore operations at the outset of the ocean decade (2021-2030).
February 4, 2021 | The University of Southern Mississippi
NOAA and The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) signed a 10-year agreement today to collaborate on ways to improve how uncrewed systems (UxS) are used to collect important ocean observation data and augment NOAA’s operational capabilities. The agreement provides a framework for collaborating with NOAA scientists and UxS operators on projects to further UxS research, development and operations.
February 2, 2021 | WorkBoat
Newport, R.I., has been chosen as the future homeport for a new NOAA oceanographic research vessel being built for the agency. Discoverer will be a state-of-the-art ship that operates around the nation and the world to study and explore the ocean.
January 29, 2021 | Pew
A team of 20 scientists from the Australian Antarctic Program left Hobart, Tasmania, today to spend two months working in the Southern Ocean off East Antarctica aboard the research vessel Investigator—one of the few research missions over the past year that haven’t been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
January 28, 2021 | Live Science
The Atlantic Ocean is getting wider, shoving the Americas to one side and Europe and Africa to the other. But it’s not known exactly how. A new study suggests that deep beneath the Earth’s crust, in a layer called the mantle, sizzling-hot rocks are rising up and pushing on tectonic plates — those rocky jigsaw pieces that form Earth's crust — that meet beneath the Atlantic.
January 21, 2021 | SciTechDaily
It may not be very well known, but the Arctic Ocean leaks enormous amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane. These leaks have been ongoing for thousands of years but could be intensified by a future warmer ocean. The potential for this gas to escape the ocean, and contribute to the greenhouse gas budget in the atmosphere, is an important mystery that scientists are trying to solve.
January 21, 2021 | New Atlas
Saturn’s moon Titan is one of the most fascinating bodies in the solar system, not least because it’s home to huge oceans, lakes and rivers of liquid methane. Now scientists have used radar to probe the composition and depth of its largest sea, Kraken Mare, and estimated it to be at least 300 m (1,000 ft) deep.
January 18, 2021 | Wired
If you happen to be crossing the San Francisco Bay or Golden Gate bridges this week, look for a massive surfboard with a red sail on top cruising slowly across the water. Don’t flinch if you don’t see anyone on board. It’s actually an autonomous research vessel known as the Saildrone Surveyor and it’s being steered remotely from shore.
January 12, 2021 | Hydro International
Jyotika Virmani was executive director of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE before she entered Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI), also as executive director. Two positions at the forefront of state-of-the-art and new technological developments and discoveries, shaping both the future of ocean research and a sustainable future for the oceans, forming the perfect job switch. Hydro International spoke with Jyotika Virmani about SOI and other ambitious projects that are helping to save the ocean. First of all, Virmani explained how she landed the position with the non-profit foundation that Eric and Wendy Schmidt started back in 2009.
January 12, 2021 | URI Today
When Adam Soule begins work at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography later this month, he will not only become a professor of oceanography, but he will take the reins of one of the largest research initiatives in the University’s history.