Ocean Exploration Facts
The ocean exploration facts in this section provide short answers to common or intriguing ocean questions. The questions are organized in a series of categories; click on a category to learn more about these topics.
For many ocean exploration facts, content has been repurposed from essays posted elsewhere on the website; to access the original content, click on links available on individual ocean fact pages.
Upwelling occurs when winds push surface water away from the shore and deeper water rises to fill the gap.
A narwhal is a medium-sized, toothed whale that is only found in Arctic waters.
Corals are animals.
With structure for animals to settle and live on and currents supplying food and nutrients, the variety of life, or biodiversity, at seamounts is often rather high.
The coloration of animals in the ocean follows a surprisingly regular pattern by depth, most likely tied to how light pentrates ocean water and an animal's ability to blend in with its surroundings.
An Expendable Bathythermograph (XBT) is a probe used to measure temperature throughout the water column.
The average depth of the ocean is 3,682 meters, or 12,080 feet.
Sargassum is a genus of large brown seaweed (a type of algae) that floats in island-like masses and never attaches to the seafloor.
The mid-ocean ridge is the most extensive chain of mountains on Earth, stretching nearly 65,000 kilometers (40,390 miles) and with more than 90 percent of the mountain range lying in the deep ocean.
In geology, a hotspot is an area of the Earth’s mantle from which hot plumes rise upward, forming volcanoes on the overlying crust.
Isopods are an order of marine invertebrates (animals without backbones) that belong to the greater crustacean group of animals, which includes crabs and shrimp.
Red light does not reach ocean depths, so deep-sea animals that are red actually appear black and thus are less visible to predators and prey.