The current state of deep-sea science is profoundly peculiar. At nearly the same time, mining companies are requesting permits to remove those same habitats from the ocean floor, while researchers are cataloguing species that have never been documented before—creatures that have evolved over millions of years to live in complete darkness, crushing pressure, and nearly freezing water. The Trump administration has made it clear that it wants to act quickly. The federal organization in charge of studying the ocean, NOAA, has stated more and more that these ecosystems are unique to Earth and that there is a genuine and irreversible…
Author: Derrick Lester
Derrick Lester
Derrick Lester is a professor and editor at indeep-project.org. His academic career has been molded by a single, enduring obsession: the sea and all life in it. Drawing from marine biology, oceanography, and the kind of hard-won field knowledge that only comes from spending significant time on and under the water, Derrick's writing has the depth of a scholar thanks to his years of research and teaching experience. His writing delves into the science of marine life with the inquisitiveness of someone who has never fully moved past the wonder of what exists beneath the surface. Derrick hopes to introduce readers to a world that encompasses over 70% of the planet and is, in many respects, still largely unexplored through his contributions to indeep-project.org.
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There was little drama surrounding Tropical Storm Cristina’s announcement. On a Monday in early June 2026, it just appeared silently and without fanfare in the warm waters of the Eastern Pacific off the coast of Nicaragua. Maximum sustained winds of 45 miles per hour, centered about 105 miles west-northwest of Managua, were first reported by the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Nearly instantly, a tropical storm warning was issued, extending from Puerto Sandino to the border between Guatemala and El Salvador. Meteorologists are kept up at night by the combination of rapid formation and proximity to populated coastline. Even though…
One of Australia’s most talked-about and least financially viable gas developments is located in the deep blue silence of the Browse Basin, nearly 300 kilometers off the coast of Kimberley. The depth of the water is high. The reserves are genuine. Additionally, an increasing number of energy analysts believe that the economics are somewhere between challenging and detrimental. Woodside Energy’s suggested The AUD37 billion Browse gas project, which calls for a drilling platform, two floating production facilities, about fifty gas wells, and a 900-kilometer pipeline back to Karratha, has been lurking on Australia’s energy agenda for decades without ever quite…
A startup named Carboniferous is getting ready to dump 20 burlap sacks of sugarcane residue into one of the world’s most oxygen-starved areas of the Gulf of Mexico, about 300 kilometers off the coast of Louisiana. For a plan with significant planetary aspirations, it sounds almost comically modest. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discreetly granted a research permit for precisely this experiment in March. Despite its modest scope, this decision represents something truly uncommon: federal approval for ocean biomass sinking, a carbon removal method that has been on the periphery of climate science for years without much institutional support.…
A pleasant winter has a subtle unnerving quality. Somewhere in Minnesota, a state that takes pride in its harsh cold, people were actually enjoying February, while people in the Midwest were going outside without heavy coats in January and homeowners were forgoing bags of road salt. It seemed fortunate. It wasn’t. The meteorological winter of December 2023 through February 2024 was the warmest winter ever recorded for the contiguous United States in 130 years of climate data, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, confirming what the thermometers had been suggesting all season. During that three-month period, the average…
Watching a Vancouver, British Columbia-based company establish itself as a key participant in what could turn out to be one of the decade’s most significant resource conflicts, all centered on the Pacific Ocean floor, miles below the surface, where sunlight never reaches and pressures would crush most of what we know, is subtly surreal. Earlier this month, Deep Sea Minerals Corp., which is listed on the CSE under the ticker SEAS, declared that it had obtained a substantial compliance determination under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980 through NOAA’s regulatory process. It sounds unglamorous. However, that procedural…
Observing a rescue crew toss grappling hooks at a humpback whale from a small inflatable boat—not to capture it, but to save it—has a surreal quality. What NOAA Fisheries’ Large Whale Entanglement Response Network really does is captured in that image, which is subtly dramatic and rarely seen by the general public. These responders are not employed in offices or labs. They attempt to free animals that can weigh tens of thousands of pounds and suddenly panic while working in open water, frequently in choppy seas. It is difficult to accept the scope of the issue. Every year, hundreds of…
World Oceans Day arrives on June 8th every year with its typical wave of awareness campaigns, blue-tinted social media posts, and promises from governments that seem significant until you take a close look at what’s really being decided in the rooms where it matters. But it felt different this year. Marine scientists are experiencing a tangible tension that is more akin to controlled alarm than panic. This tension is not related to plastic straws or coral bleaching, but rather to something that is occurring far below the surface of the sun, in a location that most people will never see…
The idea that an animal can be known without being seen has an almost poetic quality. In water so dark it could pass for space, a jellyfish floats by. It leaves no traces, no sound, and no shadow in its wake. Nevertheless, it has left a DNA trace of itself in the water itself. These traces are now being read by scientists, and what they discover is subtly altering our understanding of one of the planet’s least-known locations. The genetic material that organisms shed as they move through their surroundings is known as environmental DNA, or eDNA as researchers refer…
Deep-ocean footage has a certain kind of silence that is momentarily broken by the lights of a remotely operated vehicle sweeping across the seafloor. It’s that unsettling, pressurized darkness. Distilled, it is a marvel of science. For many years, NOAA’s ship Okeanos Explorer and similar expeditions were primarily focused on that wonder. Knowing the ocean. recording the inhabitants. covering the gaps in our knowledge. Something is changing right now, and it’s important to be aware of it. In collaboration with the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority, NOAA Ocean Exploration will send Okeanos Explorer on a 28-day expedition off the Cook…