Fortaleza is located on the northeastern coast of Brazil, where the Atlantic Ocean stretches far enough into the horizon to cease appearing like water and begin to resemble a fact of the cosmos. In a way, it’s a suitable environment for discussing how little we truly understand about what’s underneath all that blue. No camera has ever been able to reach the seafloor somewhere out there, and in most newsrooms, that doesn’t really bother anyone.
A new workshop is attempting to bridge that gap. Recently, the Internews-run Earth Journalism Network announced a practical training program for Brazilian journalists in Fortaleza that focuses on marine exploration and deep-sea science. The entire workshop is planned for August 2026, and applications were accepted through mid-June. The timing seems purposeful. Journalism hasn’t kept up with the rapid global conversations about marine protected areas, deep-sea mining, and the High Seas Treaty.
When you sit with the numbers supporting this endeavor, they are truly astounding. Approximately 66% of the Earth’s surface is covered by the deep ocean, or anything below 200 meters. It is the world’s largest ecosystem. However, the entire seafloor area that humans have visually recorded is roughly the size of metropolitan São Paulo, as noted by researchers such as Katherine Bell and colleagues. That is all. The remainder is still unseen, unmapped, and mostly ignored by the media. Perhaps no statistic better captures the disconnect between public awareness and scientific urgency.
The workshop itself is based on a particular theory: if journalists are sufficiently knowledgeable about the science to find the story in it, they are more likely to produce meaningful coverage of the ocean. An overview of marine sustainability research, talks about topics like biodiversity hotspots and vulnerable marine ecosystems, and—possibly most memorably—a field trip to the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel are all anticipated. A journalist’s perspective on the ocean is altered in some way by standing on a ship’s deck. It becomes a subject and ceases to be a background.
Meanwhile, NOAA has been discreetly increasing its own funding for communication related to ocean science. From coral restoration research at its Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory to deploying ocean gliders ahead of hurricane season, the agency has been building a body of work that almost begs for wider coverage. Recently, researchers at AOML discovered that increasing alkalinity could significantly boost coral growth rates. This is a truly important discovery that hardly made an impression outside of specialized circles. Important ocean science has the necessary infrastructure. It is surrounded by a much weaker journalism infrastructure.
Observing these shows develop concurrently gives the impression that those closest to the ocean are growing impatient with waiting for mainstream media to catch up on its own. Similar calculations were made for the Caribbean Deep Sea Mining Media Fellowship, which was announced in June 2026. Fifteen journalists from the region were trained over several months to cover a topic that most editors haven’t yet figured out how to assign.
There is more going on in Fortaleza than just a journalism workshop. You can bet that coverage will follow if you put reporters on a research ship and provide them with the vocabulary to comprehend what they’re looking at. Whether that wager is profitable at scale is still unknown. However, it’s difficult to ignore how long the ocean has been waiting for someone to start producing it.
