29 Jul 2025
A groundbreaking international study of brittle stars—ancient marine invertebrates—has revealed a hidden web of global connectivity in the deep sea, upending long-held assumptions of isolation. Global links hidden in museum specimens Researchers analysed DNA from 2,699 brittle star specimens held in 48 museums worldwide, with samples spanning equatorial to polar regions and depths exceeding […]
15 Jul 2025
Photo by Sindy Sussengut The Ocean Census, a global initiative launched in 2023 by The Nippon Foundation in collaboration with the UK-based ocean research institute Nekton, aims to discover at least 100,000 new marine species within the next ten years. As part of this ambitious effort to accelerate marine biodiversity discovery, the Ocean Census has […]
07 Jul 2025
Photo of volcanic activity at sea by Marc Szeglat A massive underwater volcanic eruption in the South Pacific has devastated delicate deep-sea ecosystems, according to new research. The Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption, which took place in January 2022, released a towering ash plume and generated dense underwater flows that blanketed hydrothermal vent communities in […]
29 Apr 2025
Trump’s Executive order President Trump has signed an Executive Order establishing a framework for American companies to identify and commercially extract offshore critical minerals and resources in both National and International waters. It is the latest in a series of orders issued by the US president to try to increase America’s access to minerals […]
15 Apr 2025
US to counter China’s “dominance” of rare earth minerals Image description: Black and gold computer processor against a black background. Image by Pete Linforth / Pixabay The Trump administration is drafting an executive order to enable the stockpiling of deep-sea metals to counter China’s dominance in battery minerals and rare earth supply chains, […]
08 Apr 2025
Image description: A plastic bottle, polystyrene and driftwood on a sandy beach. Image by Catherine Sheila/ Pexels. Not a single inch of the Mediterranean is clean A new study has shone a light on one of the highest concentrations of deep-sea litter ever detected at the deepest point of the Mediterranean Sea. Scientists captured […]
17 Sep 2024
The movement of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the surface of the ocean, where it is in active contact with the atmosphere, to the deep ocean, where it can be sequestered away for decades, centuries, or longer, depends on a number of seemingly small processes. One of these key microscale processes is the dietary preferences of […]
23 Jul 2024
Researchers from a global collaboration have unveiled groundbreaking evidence of dark oxygen production (DOP) at the abyssal seafloor, challenging existing understanding of deep-sea oxygen dynamics. The study, published in Nature Geoscience, reveals that polymetallic nodules on the abyssal Pacific Ocean floor may contribute to unexpected oxygen production in the deep sea. Polymetallic Nodules reveal new […]
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