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December 31, 2020 | The Independent
Scientists are “pinging” in the New Year off the coast of Australia with a sonar wave project to launch a decade of ocean exploration. The Falkor research vessel is gathering the first seafloor data of 2021 by sending sonar waves to “ping” off the ocean floor at midnight on December 31, the first stake in a global effort to map the bottom of the seas by 2030.
December 28, 2020 | BBC News
Almost five years of studying the deep Atlantic in unprecedented detail has revealed 12 species new to science. The sea mosses, molluscs and corals had eluded discovery because the sea floor is so unexplored, scientists say.
December 23, 2020 | Mashable
This spring, over 2,000 feet down in the Indian Ocean, a robot exploring a canyon happened upon a fantastical, loosely coiled creature. The siphonophore, found suspended in the water, might be the longest animal ever discovered. It's well over 150 feet in length.
December 23, 2020 | Eos
Remote sensing technology proves effective in monitoring key regions of the world’s oceans, where upwelling and other essential ecosystem services occur.
December 17, 2020 | New York Times
Take one look at a ghost shark and you may say, “What’s up with that weird-looking fish?” Over the past few decades, scientists learned that these cartilaginous fishes, also known as ratfish or Chimaeras, have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and that they have venomous spines in front of their dorsal fins and “fly” through the water by flapping their pectoral fins. They even learned that most male ghost sharks have a retractable sex organ on their foreheads that resembles a medieval mace.
December 11, 2020 | Discover Magazine
Crouched in the rocky confines of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, an icy sphere the size of Texas has been hiding a secret. This dwarf planet, called Ceres, is actually an ocean world, astronomers revealed in 2020. And it’s far from the only one: Scientists have found the best evidence yet that Pluto (also located in a distant part of the solar system strewn with small space rocks) has an active underground ocean, as well.
December 9, 2020 | Tech Explorist
Many of the natural resources are on the ocean floor in places we have yet to find. For that purpose, ocean exploration is necessary. Currently, automated vehicles, sonar, and satellites, with varying advantages and disadvantages, are being used for ocean exploration. Now, scientists at RIKEN are developing a completely different system that relies on electric rays’ natural swimming behavior and sting rays.
December 3, 2020 | Fox News
Scientists have discovered a new blob-like species of ctenophore, or comb jelly, off Puerto Rico. The creature, named Duobrachium sparksae, was first spotted during a 2015 dive led by the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.
December 3, 2020 | Phys.org
At what depth beneath the seabed does it become so hot that microbial life is no longer possible? This question is the focus of a close scientific cooperative effort between the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen. An expedition by the drilling program IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program) in 2016 has provided new insights into the temperature limits of life beneath the ocean floor. The findings have now been published by the international team in the professional journal Science.
December 2, 2020 | BBC
Far from land, deep sea mining trials have left barren marks that are still there decades later, and as Richard Fisher writes, they symbolise two different timescales colliding.
December 1, 2020 | Gizmodo
Never underestimate the power of one cell. That’s how many cells foraminifera—little sea creatures with striking shells—have. But boy can they do a lot with it. They’re the world’s tiniest geochemists, tinkering with the ocean.
November 25, 2020 | Science Alert
Before we start mining for precious metals in the darkness of the deep sea, we might try switching on the light first and observing our surroundings. In this seemingly isolated abyss, at deeper than 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) below sea level, scientists were able to coax a massive swarm of 115 cutthroat eels (Ilyophis arx) out of the shadows and into the light, and with only a relatively small package of bait.
November 25, 2020 | Science Robotics
More than 95% of Earth’s water is in oceans; however, much of it remains unexplored. Studies calling for global-scale datasets to model ocean basin–scale ecosystems (1) have led to improvements in how often and from where we sample a frontier in ocean exploration. Developments in concurrent sampling of the environmental variables with in situ measurements and acquiring filtered samples for ex situ analysis are also expected to lead to a more detailed characterization of ocean biochemistry.
November 21, 2020 | Visual Capitalist
Today’s unique map from cartographer Andrew Douglas-Clifford (aka The Map Kiwi) focuses on ocean territory instead of land, highlighting the vast areas of the ocean floor that remain unmapped. Which countries are exploring their offshore territory, and how much of the ocean floor still remains a mystery to us? Let’s dive in.
November 20, 2020 | CBS News
China livestreamed footage of its new manned submersible parked at the bottom of the Mariana Trench on Friday, part of a historic mission into the deepest underwater valley on the planet. The "Fendouzhe", or "Striver", descended more than 33,000 feet into the submarine trench in the western Pacific Ocean with three researchers on board, state broadcaster CCTV said.
November 15, 2020 | La Jolla Light
A research team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla has returned from an 11-day excursion exploring the depths of the ocean, and Lisa Levin, one of its leaders, said the mission was successful.
November 12, 2020 | Gizmodo
Why leave Earth in search of aliens when you can just dive right into our oceans? No doubt, the seas are filled with all sorts of oddities that often defy description, from incomprehensibly shaped comb jellies through to gigantic isopods that more rightly belong in a 1960s B-picture. Case in point, these 12 bizarro sea animals, all of which will have you questioning reality.
November 11, 2020 | CNN
China has broken its own record for deepest manned dive into the world's oceans, sinking an estimated 10,909 meters (35,790 feet) into the Mariana Trench, state-run news agency Xinhua said.
November 5, 2020 | Popular Science
NASA is planning a new crewed trip to the Moon, but there’s somewhere almost equally mysterious here on Earth that scientists are working to learn more about: the deep ocean. Dark, cold, and hard to reach, the deeps are Earth’s biggest biome, containing strange-looking fish and other organisms, many species of which have never been scientifically identified.
November 5, 2020 | Naval News
The Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute (OECI), funded by NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) recently signed a purchase contract to acquire a DriX Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) from high-tech company iXblue.
November 2, 2020 | New Atlas
MIT scientists have developed an acoustic system that acts like an underwater GPS, yet doesn't need batteries to operate. The Underwater Backscatter Localization (UBL) system is powered by reflecting modulated audio signals to generate binary impulses.
October 30, 2020 | Live Science
Scientists have captured rare footage of a teeny, tiny squid swimming near the Great Barrier Reef; the squid is the only living member of its genus and has never before been observed alive and in its natural habitat.
October 29, 2020 | Science Magazine
A single drop of seawater holds millions of phytoplankton, a mix of algae, bacteria, and protocellular creatures. Across the world’s oceans these photosynthesizing microbes pump out more than half of the planet’s oxygen, while slowing climate change by capturing an estimated 25% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released from humanity’s burning of fossil fuels. But the scale of this vital chemistry is mostly a guess, and there’s little sense of how it will change as temperatures rise. “What’s happening out there? We have no idea really,” says Susan Wijffels, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
October 29, 2020 | San Diego Tribune
A scientific cruise this week will explore life forms on seamounts and ridges off Southern California, in order to map out those ecosystems before commercial activities take place there.
October 29, 2020 | Maritime Executive
The National Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization Council (NOMEC Council), a group of federal agencies established to carry out the National Strategy for Mapping, Exploring, and Characterizing the United States Exclusive Economic Zone, is requesting your input on developing an Implementation Plan and setting strategic priorities for the effort to map the entire U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by 2040 and explore and characterize strategic areas.
October 26, 2020 | Marine Technology News
Scientists have discovered a massive detached coral reef in the Great Barrier Reef, the first to be discovered in over 120 years, Schmidt Ocean Institute announced.
October 16, 2020 | SciTechDaily
New research published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment today (October 16, 2020) uses data from two sustained open-ocean hydrographic stations in the North Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda to demonstrate recent changes in ocean physics and chemistry since the 1980s. The study shows decadal variability and recent acceleration of surface warming, salinification, deoxygenation, and changes in carbon dioxide (CO2)-carbonate chemistry that drives ocean acidification.
October 16, 2020 | Science Alert
Global warming is beginning to penetrate even the deepest parts of our oceans. While the surfaces of these vast bodies of water have absorbed the vast majority of human-induced warming, as sea water circulates, the worrisome changes are slowly making their way downward.
October 15, 2020 | Eos
Jellyfish and sea salps aren’t getting the credit they deserve for their role in ocean carbon cycling, according to a new study.
October 15, 2020 | Science News for Students
Last October, a team of marine explorers sent Hercules — a remote-controlled vehicle — to the bottom of the ocean. Its mission: to visit an octopus neighborhood. It was off the coast of central California, near an undersea volcano. Late one night, after scanning a long stretch of empty seafloor, Hercules’ spotlight and camera revealed a parade of curious creatures. First was a slender bottom-feeder called an eelpout. It was half-buried in the sediment. Then came a sea pig — a squishy thing that looks like a living pink balloon, but with tentacles.
October 13, 2020 | The Hill
The largest Arctic science expedition, led by the German research ship the Polarstern, has ended, with the ship docking back home in Germany after 13 months at sea. With assistance from roughly 300 scientists affiliated with the funding body the Alfred Wegener Institute, the mission recovered invaluable data regarding the Arctic environment, but reached a saddening conclusion: The Arctic is still melting.
October 9, 2020 | URI Today
The University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography is holding a national competition to select a name for a new National Science Foundation-owned Regional Class Research Vessel which will homeport at the URI Narragansett Bay Campus.
October 1, 2020 | Hakai Magazine
In the northeast Pacific, the upper 3,000 meters of water has lost 15 percent of its oxygen over the past 60 years, and the top 500 meters is simultaneously becoming more acidic at an unprecedented rate, a study by Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientists has found.
September 24, 2020 | PR Web
The Marine Technology Society (MTS) and The Society for Underwater Technology (SUT) are proud to announce that Dr. Edie Widder is the inaugural recipient of the Captain Don Walsh Award for Ocean Exploration. Dr. Widder is an MTS member, MacArthur Fellow, a deep-sea explorer, and conservationist who combines expertise in oceanographic research and technological innovation with a commitment to reversing the worldwide trend of marine ecosystem degradation.
September 24, 2020 | Business Wire
AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles announced an upcoming webinar with three of the top female explorers and scientists in the field of ocean exploration and conservation. The webinar will be focused on the role these women played in breaking barriers in their field.
September 24, 2020 | Salamanca Press
OceanX today unveiled its new one-of-a-kind scientific research, media production, and exploration vessel, the R/V OceanXplorer. Designed and built to be the most advanced combined marine research and media vessel in existence, OceanXplorer is both a floating, integrated marine research platform and a Hollywood-caliber media production studio.
September 23, 2020 | Business Wire
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute are among a team of scientists from Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) who are getting a unique glimpse into these blue holes thanks to gutsy divers and a maneuverable 500-pound autonomous, benthic lander designed especially to descend deep into blue holes.
September 22, 2020 | New York Times
Have you ever seen a giant larvacean, the tiny sea squirt that lives inside a giant mucus house? How about a wildly iridescent bloodybelly comb jelly? If not, you’re far from alone. In the deepest, darkest parts of the world’s oceans, mysterious and remarkable animals abound. But because of the immense cost and logistical challenges involved in exploring those depths, only a handful of scientists, engineers and well-financed explorers such as James Cameron have been able to see these creatures in the flesh.
September 17, 2020 | Washington Post
The U.S. ambassador to Britain officially launched a ship named Mayflower on Wednesday, 400 years to the day after a wooden vessel with that name sailed from an English port and changed the history of two continents. Unlike the merchant ship that carried a group of European Puritan settlers to a new life across the Atlantic Ocean in 1620, the Mayflower christened by U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood Johnson has no crew or passengers. It will cross the sea powered by sun and wind, and steered by artificial intelligence (AI).
September 17, 2020 | Eos
The ocean is losing oxygen, and global warming is largely to blame. As water temperatures rise, oxygen solubility decreases, and ocean stratification intensifies, limiting both the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water and the supply of the gas mixed into deeper layers from the surface. What’s less clear is whether these trends will hold over millennial timescales. Some studies suggest that this deoxygenation could reverse after the end of the century, but these studies have been based on low-complexity Earth system models.
September 17, 2020 | Science News
Sound waves traveling thousands of kilometers through the ocean may help scientists monitor climate change. As greenhouse gas emissions warm the planet, the ocean is absorbing vast amounts of that heat. To monitor the change, a global fleet of about 4,000 devices called Argo floats is collecting temperature data from the ocean’s upper 2,000 meters. But that data collection is scanty in some regions, including deeper reaches of the ocean and areas under sea ice.
September 15, 2020 | Science Magazine
Never underestimate pond scum. The asteroid impact that killed most of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago also created conditions for ocean microbes to flourish, according to a new study. In microscopic rock crystals, researchers have found evidence that massive blooms of algae and photosynthetic bacteria covered the world’s oceans, providing food for larger marine creatures soon after the cataclysm.
September 14, 2020 | Science Magazine
Aiming to bolster conservation on the high seas, a team of marine researchers today released the first comprehensive survey of coral reefs in the high seas–the roughly two-thirds of the ocean outside of national jurisdictions.
September 10, 2020 | Phys.Org
The ocean plays an invaluable role in capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, taking in somewhere between five to 12 gigatons (billion tons) annually. Due to limited research, scientists aren't sure exactly how much carbon is captured and stored—or sequestered—by the ocean each year or how increasing CO2 emissions will affect this process in the future.
September 10, 2020 | E&E News
Small unmanned watercraft are revolutionizing oceanography and beginning to answer questions about climate change that have troubled scientists for decades. They are classic examples of inventors stumbling across an innovation while looking for something else. Take the case of Joe Rizzi, an engineer, venture capitalist and ukulele player who lives on the ocean in Puako, Hawaii.
September 9, 2020 | Australian Times
For the first time, scientists have viewed the deepest regions of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and discovered, among other things, an extremely rare fish that appears to “walk” along the seafloor. Researchers say it propels itself along the seabed using its pectoral fins, and its motion in doing so is described as “an awkward, lumbering gait”.
September 8, 2020 | Scientific American
Jupiter’s four largest moons may be conspiring to maintain their subsurface oceans. Long thought to arise from heat generated by the crust-flexing pull of Jupiter, these oceans may also owe their existence to immense subsurface tidal waves generated by gravitational interactions among the moons. Measuring such tides can provide insights about the depths of these lunar abysses—environments that may offer the best chances for finding extraterrestrial life in our solar system.
September 8, 2020 | CBS News
The wreckage of a German warship that was struck by a British torpedo in 1940 has been discovered off the coast or Norway. Norwegian power grid operator Statnett said the cruiser Karlsruhe was identified more than 1,600 feet underwater from sonar images.
September 7, 2020 | Science
As the world warms, many species of plant and animal will have to find new—often cooler—places to live. But things are trickier for sedentary marine creatures like snails, worms, and clams, according to a new study. It finds that in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, many species are spawning earlier in the year, when currents take their larvae southward and into warmer waters—the wrong direction. For some of them, including the sand dollars beloved by beachcombers, this means their range is shrinking.
September 4, 2020 | Fox News
Experts from the University of Bristol and Swansea University have shed new light on the giant megalodon, which is history’s largest marine predator. While the modern great white shark can be over 20 feet long, the megalodon, which lived from 23 million to 3 million years ago, was over twice the length of a great white. Scientists can now reveal the size of the rest of the megalodon’s body, including its huge fins.
August 31, 2020 | Chronicle Herald
The U.S.-based research group Ocearch is coming back to Nova Scotia next week to begin another expedition to study and tag great white sharks. The non-profit will be looking for the big beasts in waters off Cape Breton and the Lunenburg-LaHave area from Sept. 8 to Oct. 6.
August 27, 2020 | Inside Unmanned Systems
Experts project the unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) global market to hit the $5.2 billion dollar mark by 2022. This is largely due to increasing demands for commercial subsea construction-related applications, including surveys, seabed mapping and pipeline inspections. Even so, the governing legal regime for UUVs remains uncharted while the international community is just now skimming the surface of regulatory waters, with a focus on autonomous surface ships.
August 26, 2020 | BBC Science Focus Magazine
Earth’s biggest habitat is also the one that we know the least about. Now, a new wave (geddit) of innovators are engineering the technology that will help us find out more. Here’s what they are discovering.
August 26, 2020 | The First News
The wreck of a German submarine from World War II has been found off the Polish Baltic coast. Specialist divers have identified it as U-boat U-649, which sank after colliding with another German submarine which had been sunk months earlier.
August 18, 2020 | Science Alert
An international team of marine scientists have discovered 30 new species of invertebrates in deep water surrounding the Galapagos, the Ecuadoran archipelago's national park authorities announced Monday.
August 17, 2020 | World Atlas
The ocean is a massive body of saltwater that covers roughly seventy percent—or 139,434,000 square miles—of the Earth’s total surface. It has played a vital role throughout history, supplying humans with food and acting as an avenue for transport to develop commerce and trade. Depending on one’s outlook, it can be awe-inspiring for its natural beauty, or terrifying in its vastness. But despite the long history of ocean exploration, approximately eighty percent is unmapped and unexplored, while some sources put this number as high as 95 percent.
August 15, 2020 | BBC
A UK boat has just provided an impressive demonstration of the future of robotic maritime operations. The 12m Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV) Maxlimer has completed a 22-day-long mission to map an area of seafloor in the Atlantic.
August 14, 2020 | Federal News Network
Sometimes contractors surprise you with how good a job they did. That was the case for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Its Office of Ocean Exploration and Research was so pleased with one contractor, the office chief wrote a formal letter of commendation. For the details, Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to the chief of NOAA’s expedition and exploration division, Rachel Medley.
August 14, 2020 | BBC
Firms are building robots that can survey the seabed and underwater structures without human help.
August 13, 2020 | Science Tech Daily
Scientists observed a ‘boomerang’ earthquake along Atlantic Ocean fault line, providing clues about how they could cause devastation on land.
August 12, 2020 | Smithsonian Magazine
Some 200 to 600 octillion microbes live deep underneath the seafloor, where they’re subject to intense pressure and have only rocks, methane and the occasional bit of oxygen for sustenance. Simply surviving in these conditions is a feat. New research suggests that the microbes make it work by expending the least possible amount of energy needed to survive—less energy than was previously known to support life on Earth.
August 11, 2020 | Southern Fried Science
Bioprospecting, the discovery of new pharmaceutical compounds, industrial chemicals, and novel genes from natural systems, is frequently cited among the critical non-mineral commercial activities that yield value from the deep ocean.
July 31, 2020 | Tahlequah Daily Press
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research is honoring a team of Cherokee Nation Strategic Programs employees for their dedication in helping explore and better understand the ocean.
July 24, 2020 | CBS News
Off the coast of Florida, deep at the bottom of the ocean, are massive blue holes that formed thousands of years ago. What the unexplored holes contain has remained largely a mystery — but now, scientists want to change that.
July 22, 2020 | Vice
Next month, scientists will enter “Green Banana,” a 425-foot-deep sinkhole in the Floridian seafloor that may contain hidden secrets, including novel microbial life.
July 22, 2020 | CNN
Sixty feet beneath the surface of the Caribbean Sea, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau and industrial designer Yves Béhar are envisioning the world's largest underwater research station and habitat.
July 22, 2020 | Fox News
A German U-boat that sank off the British coast during World War II has been captured on camera in remarkable images. The pictures were taken by diving contractor Dive Newquay, which took a group of divers to see the remains of U-1021, British news agency SWNS reports. The vessel lies 9 nautical miles off the coast of Cornwall.
July 20, 2020 | BBC
The 3.5-year voyage to the furthest corners of the globe reshaped marine science and permanently changed our relationship with the planet’s oceans.
July 18, 2020 | Interesting Engineering
There is still so much to learn about our oceans, still, what we do know so far is still impressive.
July 16, 2020 | Gizmodo
New research shows how some deep-sea fish, with their specialised, ultra-black skin, are able to avoid detection even in the presence of light. Certain black-skinned fish, like dragonfish and fangtooth, are capable of absorbing more than 99.5% of light that reaches them, according to new research published today in Current Biology.
July 16, 2020 | Daily Mail
A gruesome-looking 'Darth Vader' sea cockroach discovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean has been identified as belonging to a new species.
July 16, 2020 | UpMatters.com
Thousands of years ago, long before Stonehenge and the pyramids, mining operations in the Keweenaw Peninsula were being conducted. These miners are known to be the world’s first metal workers in the area. The Noble Odyssey Foundation is searching under the waves of Huron Bay, for evidence of these ancient people.
July 10, 2020 | Sacromento Bee
A marine creature that resembles the alien E.T. has been found growing in a prehistoric area of eastern Pacific seafloor rock. The “E.T. sponge” has been classified as a new species and genus, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday as it announced the discovery.
July 10, 2020 | Phys.Org
On July 25, 2017, while exploring a seamount during the 2017 Laulima O Ka Moana: Exploring Deep Monument Waters Around Johnston Atoll expedition on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, a team of deep-ocean explorers came upon an extraordinary seascape. Dr. Chris Mah of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) dubbed the scene the "Forest of the Weird" due to the diversity of prominent sponges rising up on stalks with their bodies oriented to face the predominant current carrying tiny food particles.
July 7, 2020 | Massive Science
One of the most common ways that scientists study the effects of future climate change is to look into the past. Like a clumsy jewelry thief, fluctuations in Earth’s climate over millions of years have left their fingerprints all over: in pollen records, ice cores, and ancient tree rings. Animals also have their own built-in historical record, in their DNA.
July 1, 2020 | Miami Herald
In a tale reminiscent of a Jules Verne novel, scientists have found evidence suggesting people once lived in an area that is now buried 20 feet below the Gulf of Mexico. The discovery comes after wood turned up in core samples taken nine miles off Port Arthur, Texas.
June 29, 2020 | Marine Technology News
While deep-ocean exploration is responsible for ground-breaking discoveries, it is also unmasking the true scale of our impacts in the deep ocean. Marine debris is a growing problem, and a new study has shown that even unexplored, remote and protected areas of the central and western Pacific deep ocean are not immune from our touch.
June 28, 2020 | Science Daily
Scientists working remotely with Schmidt Ocean Institute, one of the only at-sea science expeditions to continue operating during the global pandemic, have completed a first look at deep waters in the Coral Sea never before seen.
June 20, 2020 | BBC
It used to be said that more people had walked on the surface of the Moon than had dived to the deepest part of Earth's oceans. Not anymore. Kelly Walsh, the son of the great ocean explorer Don Walsh, has just descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, almost 11km down in the Pacific.
June 12, 2020 | The White House
Advancing understanding of our oceans and coastlines has been a top priority for President Trump, particularly as it relates to further mapping the United States Exclusive Economic Zone (U.S. EEZ) –an area surrounding the United States that is larger than the areas of all fifty states combined.
June 8, 2020 | Society of Women Engineers
In observance of World Oceans Day, we are sharing this Parley article on six women pioneers of ocean exploration. To date, only three people have reached the deepest point on the planet’s seabed. All of them are men; none of them got there without the contributions of women. How do you inspire the world’s future female leaders in ocean conservation? Encourage them to explore, and honor the pioneers who have led the way.
June 8, 2020 | Daily Mail
Former NASA astronaut and geologist Kathy Sullivan has become the first woman to dive to lowest point on Earth, known as Challenger Deep, inside the Mariana Trench. Sullivan, 68, emerged from the submersible DSV Limiting Factor (LF) on Sunday, which performed a successful expedition at more than 35,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.
May 31, 2020 | Interesting Engineering
Submarines are one of the most effective elements of the world's most powerful navies. From sinking shipping during wartime to covert reconnaissance and use as nuclear deterrence, these machines are both feared and admired. But this wasn't always the case. Far from a recent invention, submarines have a long and interesting history. The development of submarines was, like many other types of machines, a process of incremental improvements over many centuries.
May 28, 2020 | Times Higher Education
Ocean science’s ‘brute force’ approach is impossible in space. But extraterrestrial necessity may also be the mother of fruitful invention when it comes to probing the alien worlds beneath the terrestrial waves, says Kevin Peter Hand.
May 21, 2020 | Ocean Conservancy
What would you do if you came face-to-face with a deep-sea lizardfish? If we’re honest with ourselves, the answer probably includes running, screaming and/or fainting. With their massive, protruding teeth and dark eyes, these guys don’t exactly seem inviting. But these deep-sea dwellers are definitely worth learning more about! And who knows, you might end up loving that nightmarish mug after all.
April 29, 2020 | Interesting Engineering
Here are some amazing facts and milestones from the history of deep-sea exploration and its technology.
April 22, 2020 | Business Insider
Scientists were amazed when the massive creature floated beneath their research vessel in the depths of the ocean near Western Australia. Some compared it to a UFO, while others thought it looked like a giant heap of silly-string.
April 21, 2020 | Marine Technology News
NOAA has forged a formal agreement with Vulcan Inc. to share data resulting from the two organization’s ocean work.
April 15, 2020 | Houston Chronicle
When you take a dip in the Gulf of Mexico, be aware that you're sharing the water with these guys. Sometimes these strange aquatic creatures are discovered by scientists with organizations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Ocean Exploration Trust, led by Dr. Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the Titanic wreck.
April 10, 2020 | The Travel
As the years have gone on, and as the ship continues to erode, many underwater missions have taken place to document the tragedy.
April 9, 2020 | Nextgov
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently teamed up with a record-breaking explorer to survey and map unknown parts of the world’s deep oceans.
April 8, 2020 | Science News
Allison Fong dangles over the edge of a “river” running through a massive chunk of sea ice floating between the North Pole and Russia’s Komsomolets Island. The river cracked open in the ice just a few days ago, exposing the Arctic Ocean below. Already starting to freeze over, the river’s surface is a dark scar in the white landscape.
April 8, 2020 | Metro
Known as a siphonophore Apolemia, the string-like creature is huge, measuring well over 150 feet. But not all is as it seems. The siphonophore is actually made up of thousands of small clones called siphonophores that resemble jellyfish.
April 7, 2020 | National Geographic
Last fall, astrobiologist Kevin Hand and I were aboard the Norwegian icebreaker Kronprins Haakon for a month, crashing through the frozen ocean off the northeast coast of Greenland. Around us, Earth looked alien—a world where the normally shifting seas were a solid mass of glowing ice.
April 2, 2020 | Miami Herald
An ancient forest has been found “entombed” in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico off Alabama, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to orchestrate a study of the haunting site.
April 2, 2020 | Intelligent Aerospace
NOAA is establishing a new Unmanned Systems Operations Program to support the rapidly expanding use of these systems across the agency. The new program will promote the safe, efficient and economical operation of unmanned systems (UxS) NOAA uses to collect high-quality environmental data for the agency’s science, products and services.
March 26, 2020 | The Independent
Thousands of feet deep down in the oceans off the coast of Angola in southern Africa, scientists have recorded mass movements of various fish species across the sea bed. Using cameras at observatory platforms, they believe they have recorded the seasonal migrations of deep-sea fish for what is said to be the first time.
March 25, 2020 | CNET
Deep, dark water doesn't stop humboldt squid from communicating. The creatures can talk to each other visually using bioluminescence, and, researchers now say, through changing skin color patterns that communicate precise messages that could be translated into warnings like "don't touch my food."
March 10, 2020 | Science News
Most fish are broadcast spawners, casting their eggs and sperm in clouds and leaving their young to develop alone. But a tiny minority — about 2 percent — are “mouthbreeders,” keeping their fertilized eggs (and sometimes hatchlings) protected in their mouths. Now, a study reveals the first fish known from the deep sea to mouthbrood, researchers report February 27 in Scientific Reports.
March 5, 2020 | The Verge
Meet BEN, the self-driving boat that’s been tasked with helping lay bare the long-lost secrets of the lakebed.
February 25, 2020 | The Weather Channel
From 2015 to 2017, scientists mapped more than 230,000 square miles of seafloor around western and central Pacific islands. Their cameras caught images of more than 347,000 deep-sea creatures.
February 24, 2020 | Smithsonian Magazine
Researchers from Project Recover, a joint endeavor of the University of Delaware and the University of California, San Diego, that aims to “find and repatriate Americans missing in action since World War II,” recently located the wreckage of three U.S. military aircraft lost during a February 1944 battle in the conflict’s Pacific theater.
January 31, 2020 | The Guardian
Sixty years ago, explorers first descended the 11,000 metres to the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point in the ocean. In the intervening decades we have discovered more about this mysterious and peculiar environment and its inhabitants. Nicola Davis speaks to Dr Jon Copley about the race to the ocean floor and what is lurking down there in the deep.
January 29, 2020 | CNET
Darth Vader and RoboCop now have some cyborg company in the form of superpowered jellyfish. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a swim controller that turns regular jellyfish into speed demons.
January 28, 2020 | Fox News
A team of experts has located the wreck of a merchant ship that vanished in the Bermuda Triangle in 1925. The fate of the SS Cotopaxi has long been shrouded in mystery. On Nov. 29, 1925, the steam-powered vessel left Charleston, S.C. for Havana, Cuba. She never reached her destination and the bodies of the Cotopaxi’s 32 passengers were never recovered.
January 23, 2020 | Phys.org
On January 23 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh climbed into an undersea craft called Trieste and dived nearly 11 kilometres to the deepest point in the ocean—the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
January 16, 2020 | Eos
Around the world, seafloor sediments harbor vast amounts of methane. When it escapes into seawater—either by natural seepage or because of such human activities as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill—this potent greenhouse gas becomes food for certain microbes, limiting the amount that ultimately enters Earth’s atmosphere.
January 9, 2020 | WorkBoat
NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and the ocean data and technology company Ocean Infinity have announced a new agreement to develop deepwater autonomous technologies that can gather ultra-high-resolution ocean information.
January 6, 2020 | MetroWest Daily News
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is kicking off its yearlong celebration commemorating 90 years of research and exploration with the release of a limited-edition pictorial postmark.
January 3, 2020 | E&E News
With little fanfare, President Trump in November declared the United States would "act boldly" on a gigantic task: mapping a chunk of ocean floor that's larger than the combined land area of all 50 states. Armed with this strong backing from the White House, NOAA is ready to go where no man has gone before. The agency this year plans to accelerate exploration of the entire U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, with the goal of completing the job by 2030.
January 1, 2020 | The Epoch Times
The depths of the earth’s oceans represent a huge amount of as yet unexplored territory. As such, it is exciting, baffling, and awe-inspiring for the scientific community when curious new creatures appear and are caught on camera.
December 30, 2019 | FedTech
For several years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has put an emphasis on the so-called blue economy, which refers to the use of seas and coasts for economic activities. These include seafood production, tourism and recreation, ocean exploration, marine transportation and coastal resilience.
December 20, 2019 | Newsweek
Deep-sea explorers trawling the ocean floor southwest of Florida came across an unusual and elusive character they first mistook for a rock. The fish in question is a Schaefer's Anglerfish (Sladenia shaefersi)—or goosefish—an evasive species assumed to be rare until deep-sea exploration expeditions revealed they were more prevalent than previously thought.
December 18, 2019 | Business Insider
The magnificent narwhal — a beast that has inspired monarchs and intrigued scientists — has quite the reputation. The spotted whales, found mostly in Greenland and Canada, are striking because of a prominent tooth that grows out of their jaws to resemble a horn, or tusk. It's led to their nickname: "the unicorn of the sea."
December 11, 2019 | Popular Mechanics
In a new study, scientists warn that our estimates of global ocean “dead zones” may be woefully low because of misleading biofeedback in the form of dark carbon. Anaerobic organisms living in these dead zones can still digest dark carbon without the help of sunlight, hence the “dark” in dark carbon. Because these organisms are still consuming carbon as fuel even in the absence of sunlight, they throw off measurements of where dead zones are and of global carbon totals.
December 9, 2019 | Eos
This is a “superexciting” time for seafloor mapping, according to Vicki Ferrini, a marine geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.
December 9, 2019 | Vice
Scientists were investigating the cause of "pockmarks" on the seafloor when they made an unsettling discovery: thousands of mini-craters, apparently formed by garbage.
December 3, 2019 | New York Times
This summer, the 235-foot research vessel Marcus G. Langseth set out into the ocean off the Pacific Northwest. Trailing the ship were four electronic serpents, each five miles in length. These cables were adorned with scientific instruments able to peer into the beating heart of a monster a mile below the waves: Axial Seamount, a volcanic mountain.
November 27, 2019 | URI Today
Despite great technological advances in ocean exploration over the last 30 years, the world’s most delicate deep-sea species largely remain a mystery.
November 23, 2019 | Business Insider
NASA scientists are dropping an upside-down underwater rover into the icy oceans of Antarctica. The robot, called the Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration (BRUIE), is a prototype of the rover that could search for life in frozen alien oceans.
November 22, 2019 | Science
The coastal waters of the United States cover an area dwarfing the nation itself. Yet more than half of that ocean floor is a blank—unmapped by all but low-resolution satellite imagery. Now, the White House has announced a new push to examine these 11.6 million square kilometers of undersea territory. President Donald Trump this week signed a memorandum ordering federal officials to draft a new strategy that would accelerate federal efforts to map and explore these reaches.
November 21, 2019 | EurekAlert!
Groundbreaking discovery by Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch, collaborators impacts marine biotechnology, early animal evolution and climate change.
November 19, 2019 | The White House
ADVANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OUR OCEANS AND COASTLINES: President Donald J. Trump is directing Federal agencies to develop a national strategy to map the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and a strategy to map the Alaskan coastline.
November 19, 2019 | Popular Mechanics
Meet the wind- and solar-powered ocean drones boldly going where humans rarely venture—including the harsh, unforgiving Antarctic.
November 18, 2019 | New York Times
Bruce H. Robison, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, began prowling the deep Pacific in a revolutionary craft in 1985. It was essentially a giant bubble of clear plastic that gave its occupant stunning panoramic views, instead of requiring them to peer through a tiny porthole.
November 14, 2019 | WBTV
Imagine a 5-foot living needle in the ocean, with “chrome-like skin” and a knack for swimming vertically before it bites with razor sharp teeth. That’s basically what deep sea explorers captured on video Nov. 5, when they recorded a predatory ribbonfish on the prowl off the southeastern United States.
November 14, 2019 | Inverse
Beneath the ocean’s surface, there is a landscape marked by its biodiversity. Only by venturing under the water can scientists study the vast number of species living there — from giant blue whales to tiny marine animals like plankton and other microbes.
November 13, 2019 | Fox Business
The White House is holding a summit on ocean science and technology -- here's why.
November 11, 2019 | National Geographic
Pictures of deep-sea vents hidden below ice offer some of our first looks at creatures thriving in conditions akin to those on watery moons.
November 7, 2019 | NPR
What happens after a whale dies? Most fall. Their carcasses — known as "whale falls" — become an energy-rich habitat, drawing a wide variety of organisms from across the deep sea to feast. Whale falls become ecosystems unto themselves.
November 5, 2019 | New York Times
Researchers say they believe the debris field off the Philippines is from the U.S.S. Johnston DD-557, which played a pivotal role in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
November 5, 2019 | Outside
Backed by billionaire philanthropists and Silicon Valley venture capitalists, a wave of entrepreneurs are developing high-tech, low-cost technologies to probe the watery realms we still barely understand. Are the oceans finally getting their moon-shot moment?
October 30, 2019 | Miami Herald
There are all manner of creepy, crawly, bitey, slimy creatures deep in the ocean. Many are beautiful and graceful, but some are perfect for Halloween tales. Researchers who have been diving down into the ocean’s depths with the Office of Ocean Exploration at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shared some of their favorite Halloween photos.
October 24, 2019 | Charlotte Observer
Deep sea explorers probing an area off the East Coast watched in astonishment as first one, then two cutthroat eels ambushed a red crab feeding on a squid carcass.
October 20, 2019 | Inverse
Even if you live in the most landlocked area, the ocean impacts your everyday life through the air you breathe, climate regulation, trade and commerce, and perhaps by ingredients in products you use and the food you eat. The ocean is also an important part of human history and of the culture and heritage for many people.
October 19, 2019 | Business Insider
Giant squid live in the dark depths of the ocean, and very little is known about them to this day. Most of what the world has learned about the gargantuan creature, which can grow up to 40 feet long and live in a world devoid of sunlight, is taken from their floating carcasses, or from the belly of sperm whales.
October 19, 2019 | Daily Breeze
Scientists believe that there are perhaps more than nine million species still waiting to be discovered on the planet Earth. Thanks to new resources provided by AltaSea and famed ocean explorer Dr. Robert Ballard, it’s possible that local students might see some of these creatures being discovered before their very eyes, live in their classroom.
October 17, 2019 | People
The E/V Nautilus, an ocean exploration vessel operated by the nonprofit organization Ocean Exploration Trust, recently caught a spooky sight that looks straight out of an underwater horror movie during a deep sea dive.
October 14, 2019 | Time
One of humanity’s greatest achievements has been mastering routes across the world’s oceans. Communities separated by thousands of miles have been brought into contact and religious ideas have spread across the waters, while artistic creativity has been spurred on by the experience of seeing the products of different civilizations.
October 2, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
Mercer Brugler sits on his knees on a padded bench aboard the Research Vessel Manta, his face so close to the screen that the vibrant colors reflect off his black-rimmed glasses.
September 12, 2019 | Earth Touch News
A team aboard a research vessel could barely contain themselves recently when a shapeshifting jellyfish emerged from the depths to put on a ghostly display in front of their remotely operated vehicle (ROV).
August 29, 2019 | Oceanopgrahic Magazine
My first expedition to the deep sea was a bit serendipitous. I had finished my first degree at the University of Southampton in the UK and headed back to my home country of Trinidad and Tobago to fulfil a scholarship obligation.
August 29, 2019 | Smithsonian Magazine
Marine archaeologists exploring the 19th-century vessel could discover clues about what befell the sailors of the Franklin expedition.
August 29, 2019 | Huffington Post
A strange and disturbing possibility resurfaces as a new mission is under way to find her aircraft. There’s a new effort underway to discover what happened to aviation legend Amelia Earhart, who vanished 82 years ago along with navigator Fred Noonan during an ill-fated attempt to fly around the world.
August 23, 2019 | CBC
An American deep sea research vessel is now scheduled to depart Halifax Tuesday on a "voyage of discovery" that will send cameras and other instruments into six deepwater ocean canyons and channels off Nova Scotia.
August 23, 2019 | Christian Science Monitor
It should be a lifeless wasteland. Temperatures are barely above freezing, miles of water apply crushing pressure, and no sunlight reaches there. But the deepest parts of the ocean are actually rife with outlandish lifeforms.
August 23, 2019 | Medical Daily
Researchers have discovered the source of the seafloor methane that’s emitting millions and millions of tons of this potent greenhouse gas into the world’s oceans. In the process, the research team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts also discovered the largest source of “abiotic methane” on the planet.
August 22, 2019 | Science Alert
The wreck of what may be the most famous and infamous sea vessel in history has been visited by humans for the first time in almost 15 years – revealing an incredible state of natural deterioration hidden deep within the Atlantic Ocean.
August 12, 2019 | New York Times
Robert Ballard is the finder of important lost things. In 1985, he discovered the Titanic scattered beneath the Atlantic Ocean. He and his team also located the giant Nazi battleship Bismarck and, more recently, 18 shipwrecks in the Black Sea. Dr. Ballard has always wanted to find the remains of the plane Amelia Earhart was flying when she disappeared in 1937. But he feared the hunt would be yet another in a long line of futile searches.
August 9, 2019 | Discover Magazine
Now, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has received a NASA grant to fund a new project called In-situ Vent Analysis Divebot for Exobiology Research (InVADER). It will explore deep-sea vents on Earth in preparation for the day that scientists can send a similar craft out into the solar system to explore alien oceans and their own hydrothermal vents.
August 8, 2019 | Southern Fried Science
In the forty years since that first discovery, hundreds of research expedition ventured into the deep oceans to study and understand the ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. In doing so, they discovered thousands of new species, unraveled the secrets of chemosynthesis, and fundamentally altered our understanding of what it means to be alive on this planet. Now, as deep-sea mining crawls slowly towards production, we must transform those discoveries into conservation and management principles to safeguard the diversity and resilience of life in the deep sea.
August 7, 2019 | IFL Science
Deep in the frosty waters of Alaska, explorers have captured stunning images of a US submarine that seemingly vanished in the heat of World War Two. The bow of the USS Grunion submarine was recently identified by a team from the Lost 52 Project at a depth of around 820 meters (2,700 feet) in the waters near the Aleutian Islands, a curved band of remote volcanic islands that run between Alaska and Russia in the Pacific Ocean. The recent rediscovery was made using a gang of autonomous underwater vehicles that were able to capture advanced photogrammetry images of the submarine, showing its sunken glory in stunning three-dimensional detail.
August 7, 2019 | PR Web
Scientists from nine marine conservation, exploration and research organizations today announced the completion of a successful three-week research and media mission to study bluntnose sixgill sharks and oceanic whitetip sharks in protected and unprotected waters of the Wider Caribbean. Mission scientists successfully placed satellite tags on both shark species, marking the first time a bluntnose sixgill shark has ever been tagged at depth in its natural habitat. This and other results of the mission will provide scientists with critical data necessary to protect the ocean’s apex predators throughout their lifecycle.
August 7, 2019 | The Kansas City Star
Ocean predators come in all sizes, and a team of scientists working in the Gulf of Alaska last week says it found one of the smallest and most insatiable. Looking like an aquatic roach, the half-inch-long copepod has terrorized everything biologists mistakenly sat next to it, according to a Facebook post by researchers working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
August 5, 2019 | National Geographic
When the rocky mound lurched onto his computer screen aboard the R/V OGS Explora, geophysicist Emanuele Lodolo couldn’t believe his eyes. Just four miles off the coast of Sicily, the team had stumbled on a previously unknown volcano with an old lava flow trailing some 2.5 miles westward across the seafloor.
July 31, 2019 | The Nerdist
The ocean is full of mysterious creatures and sea life, most of which will never be seen or understood by humans. That’s why it’s such a treat when we stumble across an underwater being that’s totally foreign to our eyeballs, something that recently happened for a team of scientists aboard a ship called the Nautilus in the Pacific Ocean. What was it that they saw? An adorable little squid that looks like a piglet with tentacle antennas. Yes, it’s both as weird and as cute as it sounds.
July 30, 2019 | Cision PR News Wire
The bow of WWII Submarine USS Grunion (SS-216) has been discovered in 2700 feet of water off the Aleutian Islands, Alaska by a team pioneering robotic ocean exploration. The ongoing WWII submarine discoveries lead by ocean explorer Tim Taylor are applying comprehensive 3D imaging pioneering a new frontier in ocean exploration.
July 30, 2019 | Cision PR News Wire
NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer completed leg one of Expedition 1904 in partnership with private industry and the Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER). The mission consisted of seabed surveys of Undersea Cultural Heritage (UCH) sites located along the East Coast of the United States. Engineers from ThayerMahan's Seabed Systems Group, along with representatives from their technology partner Kraken Robotics, demonstrated the efficacy of their SeaScout Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) system in gathering high-resolution (3 cm x 3 cm), high-speed (6 - 8 knots), wide-area (up to 3 km2 / hour) precision seabed imagery.
July 29, 2019 | IFLScience
Making waves in the world of oceanic exploration, researchers aboard the E/V Nautilus have filmed a mysterious deep-sea squid alive for the first time.
July 29, 2019 | Fredericksburg.Com
Deep-sea explorers investigating a spot 39 miles off North Carolina’s Outer Banks say they encountered a surreal stretch of seafloor filled with geyser-like bubble plumes, some of them “continuous and others turning off and on over periods of less than a minute.”
July 26, 2019 | FIU News
FIU marine scientist Kevin Boswell and a multi-institution research team will deploy experimental technology next week to explore the deep scattering layers of the ocean. They are looking for information about animals in the Gulf of Mexico that make up the scattering layers — those that undergo daily vertical migrations of 100 to 1,000 meters. These animals represent the largest organized animal migration on the planet, yet little is known about them.
July 25, 2019 | Deeper Blue
National Geographic this week announced it has launched a new TV series with a working title of “MISSION OCEANX,” a global, six-episode series and cross-platform event that pairs a dream team of the world’s greatest ocean storytellers with the most advanced combined exploration and media vessel ever built. As a part of the series launch, the OceanX team is encouraging a broad audience to get involved by renaming the M/V Alucia2, the most advanced science and media vessel ever constructed, which will build on the legacy of OceanX’s current marine research vessel the M/V Alucia.
July 23, 2019 | Newsweek
A team of researchers has managed to tag and film an ancient type of deep-sea shark—which can grow up to 20 feet in length and weigh more than a ton—in its native habitat. The bluntnose sixgill is one of the largest sharks in the world, characterized by six pairs of long gill slits—most sharks have five—a long tail, a rounded snout, big green eyes and comb-like teeth.
July 16, 2019 | CBC News
Canada's largest underwater volcano is off the coast of British Columbia and, over the next two weeks, a team of national scientists will be doing a deep-sea exploration mission of the area. The team from Fisheries and Oceans Canada set off Monday on the deep-ocean journey to research the Explorer Seamount — an underwater mountain west of Vancouver Island.
July 16, 2019 | E&T Engineering and Technology
With most of the ocean seabed unmapped, Earth’s last frontier of terrestrial discovery has become a focus of activity for explorers, scientists, cartographers and environmentalists.
July 15, 2019 | silive.com
Marine biologists captured incredible footage of a rare deep-sea shark during a mission to tag the species at its native depth from a submarine. After several failed attempts, OceanX scientists tagged a bluntnose sixgill shark in the Bahamas on June 29 -- making history by tagging an animal from a submersible, or submarine, for the first time ever, according to an OceanX blog post.
July 12, 2019 | Geek.com
An expedition exploring the deep-sea habitats of the southeastern United States has spotted some fascinating, rarely-seen sights, including a wreckfish swallowing a shark whole, and an interesting ravioli-like starfish. Recently, it also recorded a deep-sea crab plucking fish eggs from a pile — and eating them.
July 10, 2019 | Geek.com
Scientists have filmed some of the world’s weirdest deep-sea creatures, but a recent expedition off the southeast coast of the U.S. gave researchers a chance to record one that looks weird and...delicious.
July 8, 2019 | Fox News
Researchers exploring the depths of the ocean off the coast of South Carolina recorded a rare sight last month when they stumbled upon a shark feeding frenzy that had a surprise ending.
July 3, 2019 | Greenville News
A 75-year-old mystery off the coast of South Carolina took a strange twist Friday, when an expedition of maritime archaeologist and historians tried to find an oil tanker sunk by a German U-boat in 1943.
July 1, 2019 | Charolotte Observer
A sonar anomaly deep in the Gulf of Mexico -- officially known as Site 15711 -- is now known to be the resting place of a sailing ship that went down in the 1800s, according to a report by NOAA Ocean Exploration and Research. An expedition on June 27 confirmed it was a shipwreck after sending a remote control camera down 1,800 feet to view the somber debris field that included everything from from dinnerware to glass bottles.
June 28, 2019 | Science Friday
The eight-day squid-and-kin appreciation extravaganza of Cephalopod Week is nearly over, but there’s still plenty to learn and love about these tentacled “aliens” of the deep. After a rare video sighting of a giant squid—the first in North American waters—last week, NOAA zoologist Mike Vecchione talks about his role identifying the squid from a mere 25 seconds of video, and why ocean exploration is the best way to learn about the behavior and ecology of deep-sea cephalopods.
June 20, 2019 | Quartz
For millennia, the ocean has been an inspiration for generations of storytellers and poets, novelists and artists. Throughout history, it has served as a ubiquitous backdrop for stories of adventure and exploration: Treasure Island, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to name a few.
June 18, 2019 | Charlotte Observer
A “giant” shrimp longer than a human hand was encountered Sunday as part of an expedition to collect data “about unknown and poorly understood deep water areas” in the Gulf of Mexico. Deep sea explorers, who were clearly impressed, cited the blood-red creature as an example of “the phenomenon of gigantism in the deep sea, when animals grow much larger than their shallow water relatives.”
June 17, 2019 | Hydro International
The data available to produce the definitive map of the world’s ocean floor has more than doubled, just two years after the launch of an international effort to produce a complete map by the year 2030. Following the efforts of The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, coverage of the world’s ocean floor has now increased from 6% to 15%.
June 11, 2019 | IFL Science
A newly discovered abnormal hydrothermal vent discovered 120 kilometers (75 miles) off the west coast of America could help researchers find life on oceanic worlds beyond our own.
June 7, 2019 | Science
Like us, fish need oxygen to survive. But to breathe, most pull oxygen-containing water into their mouths and pump it through their gill chambers before expelling it out of their gill slits. Now, for the first time, scientists have seen fish “holding” that breath, some for up to 4 minutes at a time.
June 3, 2019 | Hydro International
XPRIZE, the global leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, has announced winners in the US$7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a global competition to advance ocean technologies for rapid, unmanned and high-resolution ocean exploration and discovery. The results were revealed at an awards ceremony hosted at the world-renowned Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, part of the Oceanographic Institute, Prince Albert I of Monaco Foundation.
May 30, 2019 | Newsweek
Researchers testing equipment in the Gulf of Mexico inadvertently discovered the 200-year-old wreckage of a ship earlier this month. Evidence from the wreck suggests it's sailors may have come to a fiery end.
May 30, 2019 | CNN
The hull of a ship, still sheathed in copper, and the numbers "2109" on a rudder suddenly appeared in the depths of the abyss. It was an "unexpected and exciting discovery" that sea floor explorers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made earlier this month while conducting a routine test of their new remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, in the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA announced.
May 29, 2019 | SpaceRef
NASA will join an international crew on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean this summer to prepare for future deep space missions during the 10-day NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 23 expedition slated to begin June 10.
May 28, 2019 | The New Yorker
In 2015, Melissa Omand, a thirty-four-year-old oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island, began preparing for a six-day research expedition. For the first time, Omand would be the lead scientist—an important professional milestone. She would be supervising eleven other researchers studying how the movement of carbon through the oceans shapes the global climate. Many of them would be using advanced instruments that had never before been deployed in the field. The expedition was set for October. In April, Omand learned that she was pregnant.
May 22, 2019 | 9 & 10 News
The bottom of Lake Huron is massive and a lot of it still holds many secrets. Over the last two weeks the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary has teamed up with Dr. Bob Ballard’s team to help unlock some of those mysteries. Corey Adkins explains in this week’s Northern Michigan in Focus.
May 10, 2019 | Phys.Org
Artificial intelligence (AI) could help scientists shed new light on the variety of species living on the ocean floor, according to new research led by the University of Plymouth.
May 9, 2019 | Newsweek
Researchers have discovered strange deep-sea tubeworms 36 miles off the North Carolina coast—an animal that has never been observed before in this area of the Atlantic Ocean. A team from the Deep Search program made the find while exploring several recently identified methane cold seeps— cracks or fissures where hydrocarbon-rich fluid is released from below the seafloor—near Pea Islan. They used a remotely operated vehicle known as Jason, which belongs to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
May 8, 2019 | Hakai Magazine
It’s an odd line to hear, that the sea cucumbers “wouldn’t settle down.” But that curious observation, made in the lab of Memorial University of Newfoundland professor and biologist Annie Mercier, set the stage for the discovery of a wholly unexpected mode of locomotion in orange-footed sea cucumbers.
May 6, 2019 | Wired
Larry Mayer is headed out this week on a ship to explore the Channel Islands off the Southern California coast. Well, he’s actually exploring seafloor formations near the islands, looking for evidence that ancient peoples might have camped out in the caves as they migrated south some 15,000 years ago, a time when the sea level was 600 feet lower than today.
May 6, 2019 | National Geographic
Something strange is happening off the coast of Portugal, and scientists have now proposed a groundbreaking explanation.
May 1, 2019 | Coastal Review Online
This vibrant octopus was spotted in the Pamlico Canyon about 20 miles offshore of the Outer Banks by a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, during a dive by DEEP SEARCH, an interagency project sponsored by the National Oceanographic Partnership Program. The dive is part of the fifth research expedition of the 4.5-year Deep Sea Exploration and Research of Coral/Canyon/Cold seep Habitats, or DEEP SEARCH.
April 26, 2019 | Charlotte Observer
Explorers surveying mile-deep sea canyons this week off North Carolina’s Outer Banks say they encountered “spectacular” rock walls draped in deep-sea animals and brightly colored corals. The discoveries were made in the Pamlico Canyon, 20 miles off the Outer Banks, according to the Office of Ocean Exploration and Research team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
April 23, 2019 | Marine Technology News
Seabed survey and ocean exploration company Ocean Infinity said it has conducted urgent subsea search, inspection and operations on the wreck of the MV Grande America, which sank in the Bay of Biscay on March 12.
April 23, 2019 | Natural History Museum
A huge variety of animals produce eggs. These help to protect and provide for offspring as they develop. There are over 500 species of shark living in waters around the world and the majority give birth to live young. The remainder are oviparous, meaning they lay eggs.
April 2019 | Reader's Digest
The Earth’s briny waters are full of life—some of it is truly strange and mysterious-looking.
April 14, 2019 | U.S. News & World Report
Seychelles president in underwater speech pleads to protect world's oceans from climate change.
April 11, 2019 | Times Union
The deepest part of the infamous Mariana Trench — a 43-mile-wide crescent canyon that cuts its way through 1,500 miles of ocean at the edge of two tectonic plates — the Challenger Deep is home to a unique ecosystem of creatures and microorganisms.
March 26, 2019 | Barron's
Mark Dalio was an associate producer at National Geographic’s television network in 2013 when he watched scientists and filmmakers with the Discovery Channel and the Japanese broadcaster NHK capture the first-ever footage of a giant squid.
March 26, 2019 | Marine Technology News
A major $2 million scientific study led by the University of Rhode Island (URI)’s Graduate School of Oceanography will monitor disruptive ocean currents in the US Gulf of Mexico, with a long term goal to improve forecasts for safer offshore operations in the region.
March 15, 2019 | Digital Day News
Underwater Drones market is growing at a progressive growth rate due to increasing usage for surveillance, gathering data and intelligence. These Underwater drones are specially used for research in oil and gas industry due to which the implementation of underwater drones have been increased significantly in recent years. Moreover, organizations in ocean exploration have started using these underwater drones for mapping ocean floor and for other purposes.
March 14, 2019 | The New York Times Magazine
Three hours after nightfall on Sept. 15, 1942, the U.S.S. Wasp, a United States Navy aircraft carrier, slipped beneath the waves 350 miles southeast of Guadalcanal. Hit by two or possibly three torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, the crippled ship was abandoned, then torpedoed by an American destroyer to send it to the bottom, approximately 14,000 feet below. In the early morning hours of Jan. 14, 2019, researchers laid eyes on the Wasp for the first time in 76 years.
March 13, 2019 | The New York Times Magazine
In 1942, a volley of torpedoes sent the U.S.S. Wasp to the bottom of the Pacific. For decades, the families of the dead wondered where in the lightless depths of the ocean the ship could possibly be. Earlier this year, a team of wreck hunters set out to find it.
March 12, 2019 | ABC News
A British-led scientific mission to document changes taking place beneath the Indian Ocean has broadcast its first live, television-quality video transmission from a two-person submersible.
March 11, 2019 | Eos
Imagine that the ocean could be drained to reveal the landscape of the seafloor around Australia. Now imagine that we could overlay on this landscape a map of the various seafloor types and the ways that marine animals and plants are distributed across these seafloor types. Even better, imagine being able to easily visualize all these factors in relation to resource management boundaries or factors that place stress on marine environments.
March 1, 2019 | Mashable
Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) collaborated to build Orpheus, a small, autonomous robot capable of exploring the deepest, uncharted realms in the ocean — and possibly one day exploring extraterrestrial ocean worlds in our solar system, like the moons Europa and Enceladus.
February 21, 2019 | Marine Technology News
As Oceanology International celebrates its 50th Anniversary, Marine Technology Reporter explores half a century of subsea technology development and discovery. Oceanology International Americas runs February 25-27, 2019 in San Diego.
February 21, 2019 | mySA
Scientists from NASA and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have teamed up on a $1.2 million, privately funded effort to research, design, and build a new robot to explore the hadal zone. The group aptly named the new drone Orpheus, after the mythic Greek hero who dove to the depths of hell and serenaded Hades, the king of the underworld. Scientists hope that similarly, this Orpheus will one day find new bottom-dwelling sea creatures and snap photos of deep-sea life.
February 14, 2019 | The Independent
After a wide-ranging search for nominations and thorough deliberations, the new Regional Class Research Vessel that will soon call the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus home has a name.
February 12, 2019 | The Associated Press
As the world’s leader in designing and managing incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, XPRIZE today announced that the three finalist teams competing for the $1M Bonus Prize sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in its Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, have tested their technologies in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
January 28, 2019 | Eos
Brine pools—hypersaline, low-oxygen waters deadly to many forms of ocean life—can experience waves hundreds of meters high when hit by a landslide, potentially overspilling their deep-sea basins.
January 24, 2019 | Time
Scientists prepared Thursday to embark on an unprecedented, years-long mission to explore the Indian Ocean and document changes taking place beneath the waves that could affect billions of people in the surrounding region over the coming decades.
January 17, 2019 | Mashable
As midnight neared, we bobbed around in the black Caribbean Sea aboard a rubber dinghy. There were five of us out there, peering down into the undulating, forever darkness. We scoured the water for signs of a telltale light, coming from below.
December 23, 2018 | The Weather Network
It's the largest invertebrate on earth, weighing up to 750 kg, yet nobody has managed to capture video of the colossal squid in its natural habitat. SubC Imaging is hoping to change that.
December 21, 2018 | Popular Science
"One down!” Those were Victor Vescovo’s first words after climbing out of the hatch of the DSV Limiting Factor. He had just dove 27,480 feet down to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench, making him the first person to reach the absolute nadir of the Atlantic Ocean.
December 17, 2018 | The Newport Daily News
The new high-tech images of the submarines in Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound are helping to make the case for preservation of the wreckage sites with the cooperation of the Navy and the state.
December 14, 2018 | Science Alert
Deep under the ocean, in the dark, dark depths, marine scientists have discovered a new field of hydrothermal vents, hosting an ecosystem unlike any other - with a plethora of species that have never been seen before.
December 10, 2018 | Geospatial World
The U.N.-backed project, called Seabed 2030, is urging countries and companies to pool data to create a map of the entire ocean floor by 2030 which will be freely available to all.
December 9, 2018 | CBS News
In 1985 oceanographer and Naval Reserve commanding officer Robert Ballard stunned the world when he found the Titanic. But how he did it remained a highly-classified U.S. government Cold War secret for decades. An exhibition at the National Geographic museum in Washington, D.C., called "Titanic: The Untold Story," recounts the tragic fate of the ship, a supposedly unsinkable liner that struck an iceberg on April 15, 1912.
December 6, 2018 | Mother Nature Network
Scientists exploring the deep sea off the coast of Puerto Rico recently spotted a stunning species of jellyfish they've since nicknamed "the psychedelic Medusa." Officially known as a Rhopalonematid jelly Crossota millsae, this species previously has been spotted in depths below 3,000 feet (914 meters) in deep-sea regions from the Pacific to the Arctic.
December 5, 2018 | Reuters
A U.N.-backed project, called Seabed 2030, is urging countries and companies to pool data to create a map of the entire ocean floor by 2030. The map will be freely available to all.
November 21, 2018 | Forbes
What would you say is the biggest collection of human history? While a museum may be on the tip of your tongue, let me stop you right there to tell you that you are wrong. It isn’t a museum, but an environment that most likely holds more human history than every museum on our planet combined: our oceans.
November 21, 2018 | U.S News and World Report
U.S. scientists have wrapped up a 22-day mission exploring waters around Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands with the deepest dives ever undertaken in the region.
November 19, 2018 | Science Magazine
"A dream vessel" is what Joana Xavier, a sponge expert at the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine and Environmental Research in Porto, Portugal, calls a new research ship due to launch in 2021. Funded by a Norwegian billionaire, the 183-meter-long Research Expedition Vessel (REV) will be the largest such ship ever built, more than twice the length of most rivals. Engineered to endure polar ice, punishing weather, and around-the-world voyages, the REV will not only be big and tough, but packed with top-of-the-line research gear—and luxurious accommodations.
November 19, 2018 | CNN
Last week, scientific explorers caught a jellyfish in such an electrifying pose that they're calling it the "psychedelic Medusa." Scientists suggest the jellyfish, officially called Rhopalonematid jelly Crossota millsae, hovers just above the seafloor, while its tentacles reach out 360 degrees ready to sting its prey.
November 2, 2018 | Live Science
During the Oct. 23, 2018 dive of the ROV Hercules, part of the Nautilus exploration program, a cirrate octopod of the Grimpoteuthis species swam into view. Using the scaling lasers aboard the ROV, the research team estimated the animal to be less than 2 feet (60 centimeters) long.
October 25, 2018 | Mashable
On Tuesday at some 10,000 feet beneath the sea, marine scientists spotted a little-seen octopus swimming through the dark, black waters. A robotic Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) piloted by the Ocean Exploration Trust filmed this genus of Octopus, the bell-shaped Grimpoteuthis, as the ROV maneuvered around a deep-sea reef off the central California coast.
October 24, 2018 | KTVZ.COM
A team of researchers led by an Oregon State University marine geologist has documented a recent volcanic eruption on the Mariana back-arc in the western Pacific Ocean that is about 14,700 feet, or 2.8 miles, below the ocean surface, making it the deepest known eruption on Earth.
October 22, 2018 | USA Today
A "headless chicken monster" was spotted swimming in the Antarctic Ocean, Australian researchers announced Sunday. The bizarre creature that does indeed look like it's missing a head is actually a sea cucumber scientifically known as Enypniastes eximia.
October 19, 2018 | WJXT News4Jax
Researchers from the ocean exploration group DEEP SEARCH, (Deep Sea Exploration to Advance Research on Coral/Canyon/Cold seep Habitats) recently used JAXPORT as a home base. They spent a week at sea studying underwater ecosystems from the Florida/Georgia border to North Carolina aboard the TDI-Brooks International Inc. research vessel Brooks McCall. The information gathered will be used to help protect underwater ecosystems.
October 19, 2018 | Deeper Blue
National Geographic announced this week it has partnered with underwater drone company OpenROV to launch the Science Exploration Education (S.E.E.) Initiative, a pioneering effort to explore the ocean. Beginning in 2019, the S.E.E. Initiative will donate 1,000 underwater drones to explore, monitor and protect marine environments.
October 12, 2018 | Science Daily
Inspired by the visual system of the mantis shrimp-researchers have created a new type of camera that could greatly improve the ability of cars to spot hazards in challenging imaging conditions.
October 12, 2018 | University of Washington News
After years working on a cabled observatory that monitors the Pacific Northwest seafloor and water above, a University of Washington engineer decided to share the wonder of the deep sea with younger audiences. The result is “ROPOS and the Underwater Volcano,” published this month by Virginia-based Mascot Books.
October 11, 2018 | Marine Technology News
Archaeologists in Greece have discovered at least 58 shipwrecks, many laden with antiquities, in what they say may be the largest concentration of ancient wrecks ever found in the Aegean and possibly the whole of the Mediterranean.
October 9, 2018 | Robotics Business Review
XPRIZE, the global leader in designing and operating world-changing incentive competitions, today announced the deep sea off Kalamata, Greece, has been chosen as the field testing location for finalist teams competing in the $7 million Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE. Deep sea, real-world testing is a key stage in the three-year global competition challenging teams to advance ocean technologies for rapid, unmanned, and high-resolution ocean exploration and discovery.
October 4, 2018 | Santa Cruz Sentinel
Few think of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary as the home to beautiful corals, but oceanographic surveys scheduled to begin Oct. 21 will bring these deep-sea soft corals to life for all of us. The peaks of the Davidson Seamount lay 5,000 feet below the ocean surface, approximately 70 miles southwest of the Monterey Peninsula. This underwater mountain is home to large soft corals and sponges as well as crabs, fish and sea stars. The seamount is 8 miles wide and 26 miles long, rises 8,000 feet off the deep ocean floor and is the next destination for the exploration vessel Nautilus.
October 2, 2018 | BBC
And while the expedition is a commercial venture, it is a scientific one too: the group will use advanced 3D-modelling tools to analyse and preserve the memory of the Titanic for generations to come.
September 25, 2018 | Marine Technology News
Marine Technology Reporter catches up with Dr. Jyotika Virmani, Ph.D, Senior Director, Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE and members of the GEBCO-NF Alumni Team as the conclusion to the $7 Million Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE fast approaches.
September 21, 2018 | The Washington Post
Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the nation’s largest protected area, stretches over half-a-million square miles of sea and land in Hawaii. It also includes wonderfully odd and stretchy critters, as a research team aboard the exploration vessel Nautilus observed Thursday.
September 13, 2018 | The Canadian Press
Shell Canada Ltd. has given up its ocean exploration rights off northern Vancouver Island, clearing the way for the creation of Canada’s first protected marine area under the Canada Wildlife Act.
September 11, 2018 | The Washington Post
In their latest trip to the Atacama Trench, one of the deepest points in the Pacific Ocean, a team of scientists repeatedly lowered a device called a deep-sea lander overboard and watched as it sank into the cold, dark waters.
August 31, 2018 | NW News Network
Ocean researchers have found nearly 1,000 methane seep sites along the continental shelf of the Pacific Northwest. The bubble streams could be a sign of offshore energy potential, represent a greenhouse gas threat — or be neither of those things at all.
August 31, 2018 | News Deeply
In June, an expedition set off to explore a poorly understood region of the deep sea near the coasts of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. NOAA expedition coordinator Kasey Cantwell describes the discoveries that surprised scientists.
August 31, 2018 | Science Friday
NASA is exploring a deep-sea volcano off the coast of Hawaii as a test run for human and robotic missions to Mars and beyond. The mission, dubbed SUBSEA, or Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog, will examine microbial life on the Lō`ihi seamount.
August 30, 2018 | Marine Technology News
A recent expedition led by Dr. Blair Thornton, holding Associate Professorships at both the University of Southampton and the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, demonstrated how the use of autonomous robotics and artificial intelligence at sea can dramatically accelerate the exploration and study of hard to reach deep sea ecosystems, like intermittently active methane seeps.
August 29, 2018 | NBC News
In a discovery that significantly shifts scientists' thinking about coral formation, researchers have found a vast coral reef deep in the Atlantic Ocean some 160 miles off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina.
August 27, 2018 | Popular Science
Planned planetary missions like Europa Clipper and possible future missions to Enceladus could look for evidence of habitability, or maybe even microbial life in the oceans beneath those crusts, but before we arrive at these alien worlds to determine their habitability, NASA needs to better understand what these environments might be like. As it turns out, one of the best places to do this is right here on Earth.
August 25, 2018 | Huffington Post
As the research vessel Atlantis made its way out to sea from Woods Hole, Massachusetts, last week, expedition chief scientist Erik Cordes predicted the team would discover something no one has ever seen before. It didn’t take long.
August 23, 2018 | Fox News
Researchers at MIT have developed a system that helps solve a longstanding problem in wireless communication – how to send data directly from a submarine to a plane or drone.
August 16, 2018 | CNN
After 75 years, researchers have discovered the stern of a World War II destroyer off the coast of Alaska and presumably, the final resting place of 70 crew members who were never found after the vessel was hit by a Japanese mine.
August 15, 2018 | Washington Post
The the stern of the USS Abner Read was recently found the off the Aleutian island of Kiska, where it sank during World War II after hitting a mine. Seventy-one Navy sailors were lost in the aftermath of the blast.
August 7, 2018 | Mother Nature Network
If the planet stands any chance of keeping a secret from prying humans, it's deep in the oceans. In fact, we've long known there are sprawling ranges — called seamounts — deep underwater, many as breathtakingly grand as anything we've seen on terra firma. Being in the deepest depths, those clandestine cliffs and nebulous valleys elude not just human eyes, but even sea-probing satellites and sonar-equipped ships.
August 6, 2018 | Eos
A sensitive underwater microphone captures the sounds of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, escaping into waters off the coast of Oregon. Using this sound, researchers can estimate the bubbles’ sizes.
August 1, 2018 | PLoS ONE
Soft robotics is an emerging technology that has shown considerable promise in deep-sea marine biological applications. It is particularly useful in facilitating delicate interactions with fragile marine organisms. This study describes the shipboard design, 3D printing and integration of custom soft robotic manipulators for investigating and interacting with deep-sea organisms.
August 1, 2018 | Black Mountain News
Ocean scientists can face hazards on and below the surface of the sea that few of us on shore may ever know. Overcoming potential dangers such as hurricane-force winds, rare 60-foot “rogue waves,” and perhaps even icebergs, as well as facing the deep ocean’s near-freezing temperatures, total darkness and crushing pressure can be part of the job. All just to get to a workplace.
July 18, 2018 | The New York Times
A new invention could help marine scientists study sea creatures in their natural habitat more effectively without harming them in the process.
July 12, 2018 | People
Ever wonder what is hanging out below your feet in open water? Well, if you are swimming off the coast of the Carolinas a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Exploration and Research team has the answer, and you might not like it.
July 12, 2018 | Marine Technology News
In the first ever intentional hunt for a meteorite at sea, researchers set out to investigate the largest recorded meteorite to strike the United States in 21 years. They recovered from the ocean what are believed to be pieces of the dense, interstellar rock.
July 2, 2018 | Newsweek
On March 7, a minivan-sized meteor flashed through the skies at about nine miles per second before splitting up and splashing into the waters of the Pacific Ocean. NASA scientists are among those hunting for the fragments on the Ocean Exploration Trust's E/V Nautilus ship. NASA planetary scientist Marc Fries marked out a 0.4 square mile region of ocean some 330 feet deep to hunt for the meteorites.
June 28, 2018 | LiveScience
The suspenseful wait is over: The unusual "sonar anomaly" detected by an aquatic robot off the coast of North Carolina isn't a shipwreck, and it isn't aliens, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Rather, it's "geologic in origin," NOAA Ocean Explorer reported in a tweet yesterday (June 27).
June 26, 2018 | EurkeAlert!
A research team has successfully recorded the sound of methane bubbles from the seafloor off the Oregon coast using a hydrophone, opening the door to using acoustics to identify - and perhaps quantify - this important greenhouse gas in the ocean.
June 19, 2018 | Mashable
For centuries, sailors spoke about a tentacled monster called "the Kraken" that lurked in the oceans. "There were tales of them pulling ships and men to their death, which may have been partially true, although sailors tell tales," Edith Widder, a marine biologist, said in an interview. The Kraken, however, might exist — in the form of the elusive giant squid.
May 31, 2018 | Phys.org
For the past two years, scientists from Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have surveyed the Pacific Northwest near-shore region mapping sites where underwater bubble streams signify methane gas is being released from the seafloor.
April 20, 2018 | Live Science
Unusual deep-sea creatures seen for the first time can sometimes stump even a seasoned expert in marine biology. And in a recent video of an ocean dive in the Gulf of Mexico, an expert's off-camera exclamation revealed his surprised response to the appearance of a squid that had contorted itself into such a peculiar shape that it barely resembled a squid at all.
April 19, 2018 | Business Insider
The world's oceans cover 71% of the planet's surface, yet we've more thoroughly mapped the surface of Mars than we have the ocean floor. At the recent opening of an exhibit about exploring unseen parts of the ocean at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Investor Ray Dalio put the ocean's immensity into perspective.
April 2, 2018 | WeatherNation
It could be said that Earth’s oceans are the final frontier in exploration. More than 80 percent of the world’s oceans remain unexplored and unmapped. Compare that to the moon and Mars, which have both been mapped completely, and we are woefully behind in discovering what lies beneath.
February 26, 2018 | EcoWatch
To Shirley Pomponi the sea sponges lining her office shelves are more than colorful specimens; they're potentially lifesaving creatures, some of which could hold the complex secrets to cures for cancers and other diseases.
February 20, 2018 | Washington Post
A baby dumbo octopus is just like its parent, but tiny — which makes it even more adorable. The creature was seen for the first time in footage taken in 2005 by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ecologist Tim Shank. In the video and the accompanying research paper, published this week in the journal Current Biology, Shank and his colleagues report that within 10 minutes of hatching, the young octopus behaved like a fully grown adult.
February 20, 2018 | Smithsonian.com
Scientists’ understanding of the Dumbo octopus is relatively limited, but a new study in Current Biology sheds some light on the deep sea dwellers, detailing the first observations of dumbo octopus hatchlings. The biggest takeaway? Newly hatched Dumbo octopuses are nearly identical to their adult counterparts, which means their trademark fins are present from the very beginning.
February 20, 2018 | Smithsonian.com
Scientists’ understanding of the Dumbo octopus is relatively limited, but a new study in Current Biology sheds some light on the deep sea dwellers, detailing the first observations of dumbo octopus hatchlings. The biggest takeaway? Newly hatched Dumbo octopuses are nearly identical to their adult counterparts, which means their trademark fins are present from the very beginning.
February 9, 2018 | News Deeply
Research ships are vital for advancing marine science but are costly to operate. Oscar Pizarro, a scientist at the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics and the Schmidt Ocean Institute, thinks automated expeditions are the future of ocean science.
January 24, 2018 | Business Insider
A team of Japanese scientists set a record catching the deepest-dwelling fish on camera more than 26,000 feet below the surface. The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), filmed a snailfish in late August in the Marianas Trench — the deepest zone of the Pacific Ocean — at 26,830 feet below the surface.
January 18, 2018 | ENN
A new study from the British Antarctic Survey shows how lanternfish, small bioluminescent fish, are likely to respond to the warming of the Southern Ocean.
January 15, 2018 | Business Insider
There's a spectacular, uncharted alien world right off the Gulf Coast, and a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) expedition sought to uncover its secrets. This past December, a NOAA team, aboard the Okeanos Explorer, conducted the first of three month-long studies of the deepest parts of the Gulf of Mexico, with the dual aim of exploring the diversity of deep-water habitats and mapping the seafloor.
December 26, 2017 | Oceans Deeply
In the past year, scientists exploring the world’s marine biodiversity and geology have found the deepest fish in the sea and drilled into a submerged ancient continent. Read more about some of the fruits of the year in ocean exploration.
November 16, 2017 | LiveScience
A new study finds that crustaceans dwelling at the bottom of the 36,000-foot-deep (10,970 meters) trench have microplastics in their guts. In fact, across six deep-ocean trenches in the Pacific, not one was free of plastic contamination, the researchers reported today (Nov. 15).
September 21, 2017 | Scientific American
In late 2012 NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope spotted what appeared to be plumes of water vapor spewing from the frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Another observation last year provided more evidence this was not a fluke. It is likely that below that distant world’s ice is an ocean larger than all of Earth’s combined. This created a frenzy in the astrobiological community—brimming with all that water, could Europa also have the necessary ingredients for life?
August 4, 2017 | Gizmodo
Last month, scientists aboard the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer visited a poorly-explored deep sea area about 940 miles west of Hawaii. From giant sea spiders and rare snailfish through to comb jellies and glass-like corals, these are some of the weirdest critters we’ve seen in a while.
June 21, 2017 | The Huffington Post
Both space and ocean exploration can boast world firsts, extreme risks, unknown challenges, and mind-boggling discoveries that captivate our imagination and advance our understanding of our world and, fundamentally, of ourselves. So why does space exploration and research capture our collective attention and imagination more than ocean exploration and research?
June 8, 2017 | Inverse Science
It’s World Oceans Day, and the oceans need our help more than ever. In 2016, Inverse made the case for giving ocean exploration the same attention we give space exploration.
April 14, 2017 | NBC News
The ocean covers an astonishing two-thirds of our planet. Yet except for a few strange features — including the Romanche Fracture Zone, a valley along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that’s four times bigger than the Grand Canyon; a 4,000-meter cliff near the Bahamas; and a mid-Atlantic mountain chain that spans 40,000 miles and connects the Southern and Northern hemispheres – we know little about the specific features that lie in the deepest parts of the ocean.
February 23, 2017 | The Atlantic
A new class of machines knows how to recognize and investigate unexpected things that pop up underwater.
February 17, 2017 | Scientific American
A new class of machines knows how to recognize and investigate unexpected things that pop up underwater.
November 2, 2016 | CBS News
Underwater drones are opening up a whole new frontier of exploration. The lightweight vehicles can zip along coral reefs, explore marine life and even go inside shipwrecks.
October 19, 2016 | AAAS EurekaAlert!
Five hundred vents newly discovered off the US West Coast, each bubbling methane from Earth's belly, top a long list of revelations about "submerged America" being celebrated by leading marine explorers meeting in New York.
October 19, 2016 | Gizmodo
From British Columbia to Northern California, planet Earth’s got a case of the toots. A recent deep ocean mapping survey has learned that a geologically-active strip of seafloor called the Cascadia Subduction Zone is bubbling methane like mad. It could be one of the most active methane seeps on the planet.
October 19, 2016 | Daily Mail
Some of the pictures taken by remote cameras of never-before-seen areas, especially off the eastern Pacific, show what looks like an imaginary world. There's a delicate jellyfish, an eel with a strange head and a purple disco ball-like critter. And just in time for Halloween, there's a rare purple Vampire Squid, nicknamed for its red eyes and deep color. The images are being shown as part of the National Ocean Exploration Forum this week in New York.
September 29, 2016 | Newsweek
The unknown hit the USS San Francisco like a torpedo. On January 8, 2005, the nuclear submarine was barreling along at 38 miles per hour, 525 feet beneath the surface. Such vessels often travel in virtual blindness, forgoing radar and its telltale pings; the crew relied on seafloor charts to navigate. But the maps were incomplete.
August 24, 2016 | CNN
At its peak in World War II, the USS Independence sank a Japanese battleship during the fight for the Philippines. But after the war, the fearsome US aircraft carrier was heavily damaged during atomic tests at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. By 1951, it was scuttled about 30 miles from San Francisco. No one had laid eyes on the warship for 65 years – until this week.
August 23, 2016 | Fox News
Scientists have released incredible pictures of sunken light aircraft carrier USS Independence that were taken by underwater robots exploring the wreck.
August 22, 2016 | Live Science
Join researchers on a dive to the wreckage of the USS Independence, a World War II-era aircraft carrier that was deliberately sunk off San Francisco in 1951.
March 25, 2016 | Eos
Scientists painstakingly compared a shipwreck spotted in 2009 to a 1904 schematic of a long-lost tugboat. A naval gun on the wreck proved to be the "smoking gun" identifying the vanished ship.
March 16, 2016 | NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries
As the West Coast Regional Maritime Heritage Coordinator for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS), Schwemmer was the co-principal investigator with James Delgado, ONMS Maritime Heritage Coordinator, on the discovery of the USS Conestoga announced earlier this week. This U.S. Navy fleet tug sailed from San Francisco Bay on March 25, 1921 and vanished with 56 men on board.
February 13, 2016 | BBC
Scientists have categorised the Earth's rarest minerals. None of 2,500 species described is known from more than five locations, and for a few of them the total global supply could fit in a thimble.
January 29, 2016 | Schmidt Ocean Institue
A diverse team of scientists are returning from a 28-day expedition onboard R/V Falkor that has more than doubled the number of known hydrothermal vent sites in the Mariana Back-arc region.
January 5, 2016 | Eos
Researchers discovered the first new variety of hydrothermal vents in a decade—a finding that may give clues to how oceanic crust cools.
November 2, 2015 | The Economist
Deep-sea mining is both totem and taboo for the new ocean economy. It reflects the promise of what is loosely termed the “blue economy” as well as its dangers and pitfalls.
September 29, 2015 | Aquarium of the Pacific
Video documentary by the Aquarium of the Pacific stresses the importance of understanding Earth's ocean through interviews with leading researchers and historical lessons.
September 14, 2015 | The New York Times
Entering the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory hangar is akin to stepping onto the set of a Spielberg film. The dull metal shell, perched on the Makai pier along the Windward Coast of Oahu, is nondescript, but the inside bristles with Zodiac boats and a dizzying assortment of hoists and tools, and the walls are festooned with 30 years of snapshots.
July 17, 2015 | Science Daily
Researchers have discovered a centuries-old shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina. Artifacts around the wreck, including bricks, bottles and navigation gear, appear to date it to the late 18th or early 19th century. Scientists were on an expedition using sonar scanning technology and the submersible vessel Alvin when they spotted the wreckage.
July 10, 2015 | Western Digs
After more than 60 years – and some of the most intense action that a military vessel has ever seen – a World War II-era aircraft carrier has recently been re-discovered off the coast of San Francisco, still larded with its final cargo: hundreds of barrels of radioactive waste.
June 10, 2015 | Baltimore Sun
Cold-water corals growing in deep water off Maryland and the rest of the mid-Atlantic coast would be protected from most harmful fishing activity under a sweeping plan approved Wednesday.
June 10, 2015 | Reuters
More than 35,000 square miles (90,650 sq km) of ocean habitat along the U.S. Atlantic coast gained protection on Wednesday from trawl and dredge fishing that could harm deep-sea ocean corals, according to an environmental group supporting the restrictions.
June 10, 2015 | Afloat Magazine
A multi-national team of ocean exploration experts from Europe, USA and Canada led by Thomas Furey, Marine Institute, has revealed previously uncharted features on the Atlantic seabed including mountains and ridges taller than Carrauntoohil, Ireland's highest mountain.
June 9, 2015 | RTE News
A multi-national team of ocean exploration experts aim to use the marine research resources of Europe, Canada and the US to better understand the North Atlantic Ocean and promote sustainable management of its resources, particularly in the face of climate change.
June 8, 2015 | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
In 2009, scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution embarked on a NASA-funded mission to the Mid-Cayman Rise in the Caribbean, in search of a type of deep-sea hot-spring or hydrothermal vent that they believed held clues to the search for life on other planets.
June 5, 2015 | Wake Up with Al
Andera Quattrini shares some of the newest deep-sea discoveries with Al Roker and Stephanie Abrams.
May 15, 2015 | PBS News Hour
Each year, the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer maps an area of the seafloor the size of West Virginia. When compared to the total Atlantic Ocean, which spans 41 million square miles, West Virginia’s not so large. But the discoveries the team is making are vast: Small creatures in hydrothermal vents. Asphalt volcanoes. Ancient landslides. New species of squid.
March 5, 2015 | CNN
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen says he has found the wreck of a long-lost World War II Japanese battleship near the Philippines.
March 4, 2015 | Washington Post
The construction of a vessel that would come to represent the might of Japan’s navy was so secretive, according to historical accounts, that workers hid it underneath a camouflage of rope. There was good reason to try to keep construction secret. It would become a fearsome creature of war: Said to be at that time “the largest battleship in naval history,” it extended nearly 900 feet in length, weighed 73,000 tons and was equipped with a massive arsenal of guns.
February 10, 2015 | Philadelphia Inquirer
Off the Jersey Shore, where the continental shelf plummets into the deep sea, scientists have been exploring vast canyons, discovering far below the surface a trove of deep-sea corals as colorful and exciting as their warm-water cousins.
February 9, 2015 | The New York Times
A council that sets regulations for fishing off the mid-Atlantic coast will meet on Wednesday to consider protections for little known and fragile ecosystems of deep sea corals in and around 15 ocean sites.
February 1, 2015 | Daily Press
About 80 miles off the Virginia coast, the Continental Shelf drops off from a depth of 600 feet to sink thousands of feet more toward the black bottom of the deep ocean.
January 30, 2015 | Science Magazine
For years, U.S. marine scientists have fretted about the future of their field, watching as federal funding stagnated and the cost of seafloor observatories and other infrastructure steadily eroded the money available for research. But there's been little agreement on how to respond.
January 30, 2015 | National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council
With input from the ocean sciences community, the National Research Council report Sea Change: 2015-2025 Decadal Survey of Ocean Sciences identifies eight strategic research priorities for the next decade that will continue to advance scientific understanding of the ocean.
December 17, 2014 | Scientific American
The Nereid Under Ice vehicle, built and operated by a consortium led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, completed four dives during its first Arctic mission in July.
August 24, 2014 | The New York Times
Scientists have discovered methane gas bubbling from the seafloor in an unexpected place: off the East Coast of the United States where the continental shelf meets the deeper Atlantic Ocean.
July 29, 2014 | NBC News
A sweeping survey of coral communities surrounding the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico shows that the catastrophe had a wider effect than scientists thought four years ago.
July 18, 2014 | Fox News
A team spearheaded by the deep-sea explorer who found the Titanic has been searching a little-known ship graveyard located in the Gulf of Mexico that includes the only known Nazi U-boat to have sunk in the Gulf of Mexico during WWII and a few of its targets.
June 3, 2014 | Eos
This week the Deep Submergence Vehicle Alvin, the world’s first deep- diving submarine and the only one dedicated to scientific research in the United States, celebrates its 50th anniversary.
May 22, 2014 | Wired Magazine
Up and down the west coast of North America, countless numbers of starfish are dying. The affliction, known as Sea Star Wasting Syndrome, is already being called the biggest die-off of sea stars in recorded history, and we’re still in the dark as to what’s causing it or what it means. It remains an unsolved scientific mystery. The situation is also shaping up as a case study of an unsung scientific opportunity: the rise of citizen science and exploration.
May 21, 2014 | Popular Science
In the September 1966 issue of Popular Science, author John Steinbeck made the case for giving deep-sea exploration the same attention as the space race.
May 10, 2014 | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
On Saturday, May 10, 2014, at 2 p.m. local time (10 p.m. Friday EDT), the hybrid remotely operated vehicle Nereus was confirmed lost at 9,990 meters (6.2 miles) depth in the Kermadec Trench northeast of New Zealand.
February 24, 2014 | Rutgers
Peter Rona, renowned for his deep-sea exploration, died on Feb. 19 of complications of multiple myeloma. He was 79 years old.
February 8, 2014 | The St. Petersburg Tribune
St. Petersburg will be home to the state-of-the art vessel for the next three months while the ship goes through a $1.5 million overhaul of its complex data and communications systems. If all goes to plan, the ship and its 47-man crew will depart the city for the Pacific Ocean in April or May to begin sea-floor mapping of submerged United States territories.
December 2, 2013 | The New York Times
What the crew of the submersible Pisces V found on the sea floor off Hawaii in August was a huge Japanese submarine that the United States sent to the bottom of the ocean in 1946, lest it become a Cold War trophy for the Soviet Union.
December 2, 2013 | The Huffington Post
Researchers at the University of Hawaii and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have discovered a missing World War II-era Japanese mega-submarine under more than 2,300 feet of water off the southwest coast of Oahu.
December 2, 2013 | The University of Hawaii
A World War II-era Imperial Japanese Navy mega-submarine, the I-400, lost since 1946 when it was intentionally scuttled by U.S. forces after its capture, has been discovered in more than 2,300 feet of water off the southwest coast of O‘ahu. The discovery resolves a decades-old Cold War mystery of just where the lost submarine lay, and recalls a different era as one war ended and a new, undeclared conflict emerged.
November 2, 2013 | Make Magazine
“[In] the last century, discovery was basically finding things. And in this century, discovery is basically making things.” So explained Stewart Brand at the TED conference this past February. He was referring to the National Geographic Society’s rationale for hosting the first-ever meeting on de-extinction — a gathering of scientists and engineers who are using biotechnology to bring back extinct species.
October 28, 2013 | Salon
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is seeking to improve its image – by associating itself with cute cartoon characters. The federal agency announced that it's partnering with the producer of "Octonauts," an animated preschool series that airs weekday mornings on Disney Channel.
October 28, 2013 | The New York Times
Octonauts, the animated preschool series about a crew of eight undersea adventurers whose motto is 'explore, rescue and protect,' is getting a seal of approval of sorts from a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
September 25, 2013 | U.S. News and World Report
More than three-quarters of what lies beneath the surface of the ocean is unknown, even to trained scientists and researchers. Taking steps toward discovering what resources and information the seas hold, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Aquarium of the Pacific released on Wednesday a report that details plans to create the nation's first ocean exploration program by the year 2020.
September 25, 2013 | Wall Street Journal: Market Watch
NOAA and the Aquarium of the Pacific have released their co-authored report today detailing plans for the nation's first ocean exploration program.
August 30, 2013 | Science Magazine
Last month, a distinguished group of ocean researchers and explorers convened in Long Beach, California, at the Aquarium of the Pacific to assess progress and future prospects in ocean exploration.
August 12, 2013 | The Atlantic Wire
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is running a livestream, complete with delightful commentary, of their exploration of the deep sea. As the NOAA puts it, they want to "allow the world public to ‘join’ the team in making real-time discoveries from hundreds to thousands of meters below the ocean surface."
August 11, 2013 | Fox 4 News
Who needs Honey-Boo-Boo or the next housewives reality TV show when you’ve got an ocean full of real drama?
August 8, 2013 | The Atlantic
Pyrosomes are actually colonies composed of hundreds and sometimes thousands of individuals known (reason 1.5 to love pyrosomes) as zooids. The individuals work in unison to propel the colony through the water.
July 21, 2013 | National Geographic
44 years ago today, human beings set foot on the moon. It was the result of nearly a decade of intense research, development, and experimentation, and as John F. Kennedy had forseen, it was not easy– it was hard. But it was done.
July 10, 2013 | LiveScience
Scuba divers have discovered a primeval underwater forest off the coast of Alabama. The Bald Cypress forest was buried under ocean sediments, protected in an oxygen-free environment for more than 50,000 years.
June 20, 2013 | Center for American Progress
“Star Trek” would have us believe that space is the final frontier, but with apologies to the armies of Trekkies, their oracle might be a tad off base. Though we know little about outer space, we still have plenty of frontiers to explore here on our home planet. And they’re losing the race of discovery.
June 11, 2013 | PR Newswire
Explorer and director James Cameron will be on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, June 11, with Dr. Susan Avery, president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for a series of public events and a Senate hearing.
June 6, 2013 | CNN Tech
More than 15 years after director James Cameron made his Oscar-winning film, it was his turn to scour the deep sea in a high-tech pod. But unlike his "Titanic" fictional character Lockett, Cameron wasn't in search of a sunken diamond – instead he was gathering scientific data which could revolutionize our understanding of both deep sea creatures and earthquakes.
May 28, 2013 | Everything Long Beach
Starting this summer, visitors to the Aquarium of the Pacific will be transported into the dark depths of the ocean, where they will encounter unusual animals that live beyond the reach of light.