Author: Natalie Dillon

Standing on the seafront in Bournemouth on a late May morning and realizing that the temperature has already reached 29 degrees before lunchtime has a subtly surreal quality. On days like this, the beach fills up early. Teenagers spread out across the sand in groups, families arrive with cool boxes, and the whole scene seems more like a place you’d need a passport to get to than the south coast of England. The weather in Bournemouth on this Bank Holiday Monday was almost extraordinary, with temperatures approaching 30°C, almost constant sunshine, and conditions that the Met Office itself described as…

This is not how the ocean should feel. If you ask anyone who works in the field of sea surface temperature research, you’ll notice a certain level of fatigue in their descriptions of the past few years. It’s not exactly panic, but rather the weariness of being correct too frequently. Global sea surface temperatures outside of polar regions hit 21 degrees Celsius in April 2026, which was the second-highest temperature ever recorded for that month. Two years ago was the warmest April on record. The difference between them is getting smaller as the numbers continue to rise.Fundamentally, ocean temperature is…

A room full of deep-sea biologists exudes a subtle defiance. These individuals dedicate their careers to researching environments that the majority of people will never see, organisms that survive in extreme darkness that makes blindness seem commonplace, and pressures that would crush steel. There was every reason to anticipate a dry conference when 141 of them convened for the 6th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium in Copenhagen during the summer of 1991. That was not the case. Under the resolute leadership of Torben Wolff and his co-organizers Ole Tendal, Jorgen Kirkegaard, and Reinhardt M. Kristensen, the gathering attracted attendees from eighteen nations,…

Last June, over forty marine scientists from eleven different countries gathered in a crowded conference room at a hotel in Nice to discuss a problem that has been building for decades: we are actively working to protect areas of the Atlantic Ocean that we have never really seen. Governments are required by law to safeguard vulnerable marine ecosystems in areas where they are known or likely to occur. Professor Kerry Howell of Plymouth Marine Laboratory made it clear that day that the key word is “known.” Conservation efforts currently end at the boundaries of what has already been documented by…

Moon jellyfish hover in a tall, neon-lit aquarium in a darkened lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their translucent, bell-shaped bodies expand and contract in a slow, rhythmic pulse. They appear to be nearly weightless. Nearly serene. When it comes to an invertebrate that hasn’t changed in over 500 million years, Nicole Xu watches them with what can only be called true affection. However, since she was a graduate student, Xu has been fascinated by the movement of moon jellyfish, and what she has developed around that fascination is one of the most surprising ocean research projects going on…

The report, which was created by over 100 scientists and subjected to peer review, was released in late September 2025. It was based on decades of in-situ ocean measurements, satellite data, and deep-sea instruments. It was painstakingly created, comprehensive, and detailed. Additionally, it landed in a news cycle full of other stories, and the majority of what it contained—nine distinct warnings about the current state of the ocean—barely made an impression outside of specialized circles. Correcting that seems worthwhile. Every year, the Copernicus Marine Service and Mercator Ocean International publish the ninth edition of the Copernicus Ocean State Report, which…

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography sits peacefully above the Pacific on most mornings in La Jolla. Its piers span the water, and its laboratories conduct experiments on deep-sea specimens and kelp embryos that most people would never consider. The San Diego Zoo Safari Park, which spans 900 acres of cactus scrub and biodiversity reserve, is located about 35 miles north, beyond the scrublands of Escondido and the dry heat of inland San Diego County. Two esteemed organizations with completely different daily tasks, ecosystems, and areas of focus. They could have been operating on different planets for the majority of their…

Currently, there are instruments bolted to the seabed on the North Atlantic floor, silently monitoring temperature, pressure, and the movement of cold water in the dark. The results of these measurements, which have been made for almost 20 years, are not promising. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which spans a broad band of ocean from the subtropics to the mid-latitudes, has been steadily weakening, according to research recently published by researchers at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School. four distinct monitoring arrays. each one with the same signal. That isn’t sound. It is not a model projection. Scientists are being…

Photographs of the nodules appear unremarkable; they are lumpy, dark, and about the size of a potato, dispersed over a muddy seafloor four miles below the Pacific’s surface. At a beach, no one would give them another glance. However, they constitute one of the world’s most concentrated battery metal deposits down there, in the almost freezing darkness between Hawaii and Mexico. manganese, nickel, cobalt, and copper. The materials that end up in electric vehicle batteries, solar infrastructure, consumer electronics. They were referred to as “an EV battery in a rock” by an Australian mining executive who had a salesman’s eye…

A version of this story starts with Jacques Cousteau and a grainy underwater film that was first captured in color, with viewers all over the world gazing at a television screen with a mixture of amazement and discomfort. That was seventy years ago. Since then, the technology has evolved to an almost unrecognizable degree. The amount of the ocean that people have truly seen hasn’t really changed. Over 70% of the earth is submerged under water. Roughly 95% of it—depth included—is still unmapped, unresearched, and basically unknown. In 2026, that figure ought to be embarrassing. It appears to do so…