Author: Derrick Lester

At the heart of ocean science at the moment is a subtle irony. Never before has the ocean been observed so intently. Satellites sweep the surface every few hours, research vessels collect samples by the crate, buoys bob across all major currents, and Argo floats drift through the water column taking readings every ten days. Ocean data collection is at its peak in terms of volume. However, when you ask a marine ecologist when a particular dataset will be available in a published, usable format, they frequently wince and say, “It depends.” It frequently takes years for biological samples taken…

The dispute over deep-sea mining has been one of those diplomatic standoffs that doesn’t immediately make the front pages; it’s been quiet, technical, and all of a sudden impossible to ignore. A pause or moratorium on mining the ocean floor has been endorsed by forty-three governments, a number that has continued to rise this year virtually unnoticed by anyone outside the conservation community. After Malawi’s earlier action, Kenya and Madagascar joined the Our Ocean Conference, and the math began to resemble a real geopolitical split rather than a fringe campaign. The G20 is directly affected by the split. A few…

As is often the case, the announcement was made quietly. Early in June, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared that El Niño conditions had officially begun in the tropical Pacific. The 0.5°C-above-average threshold that scientists use to signal the start of the event has been crossed by sea surface temperatures. That sentence hardly makes sense to most people. However, it triggers a kind of controlled alarm for climate researchers, agricultural planners, and humanitarian organizations—the kind where everyone knew it was coming but hoped it wouldn’t arrive quite so soon. This time, the arrival itself is not unusual. The…

On Friday night, State Highway 35 was once more closed. The area between Hicks Bay and Te Araroa became inaccessible to through traffic by 10 p.m., with a Saturday reopening scheduled for 8 a.m., subject, as usual, to what the weather left behind and what engineers discovered in the morning light. Anyone who lives on or close to the East Cape has grown accustomed to this rhythm. It’s almost routine now, which is a warning sign in and of itself. A road closure shouldn’t feel normal, particularly if it affects the only dependable land connection in a remote coastal community.…

Not even three weeks have passed since the previous heatwave, and here we are once more. London, the South East, East Anglia, and the South West are all covered by amber heat health alerts in southern and eastern England. On Friday, the temperature will rise to 30°C; on Sunday, it will reach 32°C; on Monday or Tuesday, it may even reach 34°C in some places. This is beginning to feel like a truly different kind of June for a nation where summer heat has historically meant a courteous 22C and an excuse to purchase a portable fan. The amber alerts…

One of the planet’s most biologically rich locations is the Aleutian Trench. It was just made available for leasing in Washington. In the North Pacific, humpback whales, Steller sea lions, and short-tailed albatrosses navigate some of the world’s most productive waters, cold-water corals grow in the dark at pressures that would crush an unprotected human body, and the ocean floor drops more than 25,000 feet. It is far away, mostly uncharted, and, as of early 2026, the federal government is considering it for its first-ever seabed mineral leasing sale. This past February, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management formally requested…

The deep ocean has a subtle, unnerving quality. The real thing, not the Hollywood version with its glowing fish and razor-sharp teeth. It is cold, always dark, and almost devoid of the nutrients necessary for most life. You wouldn’t expect anyone to construct a house there, much less one that is thousands of square kilometers in size. Nevertheless, you would discover gardens if you could manage to descend 800 meters below the surface off the coast of Brazil. Massive, expansive gardens of sponges, filtering seawater while sitting in complete darkness, seemingly since the time of the dinosaurs. Depending on who…

The picture of NASA engineers crouching at the edge of a university swimming pool in Pasadena, California, with one of them holding a fishing rod attached to a 3D-printed plastic robot bobbing through the water below, has a subtly peculiar quality. A laptop, a pool, and a small machine that spells out “J-P-L” with its movements like a child bragging at a science fair—not a rocket launch, not a control room illuminated by mission screens. It sounds almost insignificant. It isn’t. The robot in that pool is a prototype for a NASA project called Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers, or SWIM.…

During the war, the first hint was discovered. During World War II, sonar operators on U.S. Navy ships stared at their instruments, reading what appeared to be the ocean floor 300–500 meters below the surface. Everything was normal, but the seafloor continued to move. The men at the screens had no idea why it was deeper during the day and shallower at night. According to reports, some people claimed to have found submerged islands. They hadn’t. They were monitoring enormous, nearly unfathomable amounts of life. The Deep Scattering Layer, or DSL, is the new term for that phenomenon. This area…

There has never been anything particularly dramatic about the seafloor off the US East Coast. For a long time, the Atlantic margin was classified as passive—geologically stable and reasonably predictable—in contrast to the tectonically restless Pacific or the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico. In a way that few researchers expected, that assumption is now appearing dubious. Methane is seeping from the Atlantic Ocean floor at rates and locations that don’t neatly fit into current models, according to research conducted by Duke University scientists and their partners. At depths ranging from roughly 50 meters to 1,700 meters, more than 500 bubbling vents…