The expression “out of sight, out of mind” seems almost too practical. It explains why the ocean continues to lose, with unsettling accuracy. No capital city offers a view of the Baltic Proper. A harbor porpoise drowning in a gillnet cannot be heard. A propeller strike a thousand feet below the Mediterranean’s surface cannot cause a beaked whale to bleed. So, for the most part, nothing is done. The harbor porpoise, which is small, timid, and seldom captured on camera, lives in a state of political invisibility. The Baltic Proper population is in such dire danger that the Scientific Committee…
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.
Read More
When something unexpected shows up on the screen, a certain type of stillness descends upon a research vessel. That silence lasted a bit longer than usual in August 2023, somewhere over the Gulf of Alaska. Over two miles below the Okeanos Explorer, the Deep Discoverer ROV stopped over a rocky outcrop as it glided through black water. No one on board could identify the smooth, golden-toned mound that was stuck to the rock; it had a little puncture near the top, giving the impression that something had crawled out of it. or into it. In a matter of days, the…
The deep ocean has been viewed for the majority of human existence as a sort of afterthought, a chilly, dark basement of the earth that is supposed to be biologically meaningless. That presumption is rapidly coming apart. An increasing amount of research, much of which has only been published in recent years, indicates that the seafloor is more akin to a silently humming network that connects ecosystems over thousands of kilometers of dark water than it is to a collection of isolated pockets. FieldDetailTopic FocusDeep-sea ecosystem connectivity and biodiversityLead Research InstitutionsMuseums Victoria Research Institute and the University of Oxford, Department…
The way we discuss climate change is peculiar. Nearly everything occurs at the surface, including the heatwaves we experience, the storms we capture on camera, and the coral reefs that photographers can truly access. However, the portion of the ocean that does the majority of the hard lifting is located far below all of that, in a blackness that most people will never be able to see. Additionally, it’s starting to act in ways that scientists weren’t entirely prepared for. Profile: The Deep Ocean Carbon SystemKey InformationRegion of focusTasman Sea & global abyssal zonesAverage depth where issues emerge500m to several…
Scientists have been gathering water samples for nearly 40 years somewhere off the coast of Labrador on a study vessel that has spent more nights at sea than most sailors care to count. The samples don’t appear particularly noteworthy. They may be mistaken for any handful of seawater drawn anywhere along that shore since they are cold, black, and slightly metallic when handled. However, the trace gasses dissolved inside them reveal a narrative that most of us have been ignoring. For a while now, the North Atlantic has been breathing more slowly than it formerly did. DetailInformationStudy TitleNorth Atlantic ventilation…
I was sitting in a café watching rain blur the windows when I first learned about China’s new ocean forecast system, and the timing seemed almost too perfect. The news hardly made an impression in the Western press when a nation declared that its experts could now anticipate the path of one of the planet’s most notoriously unpredictable currents seven months in advance. Perhaps the story was just too technical to make headlines. It’s also likely that no one was entirely sure how to interpret it. For those who haven’t spent much time studying ocean charts, the Indonesian Throughflow is…
The announcement has an almost theatrical quality. Somewhere in the open Pacific, a thirty-story floating island withstands typhoons that would destroy regular ships. The Deep-Sea All-Weather Resident Floating Research Facility is the name given by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The Open-Sea Floating Island is a more amiable moniker that the Chinese media has chosen, possibly detecting the aridity of that appellation. If the chronology is accurate, it will be sitting somewhere by 2030, half-submerged, movable, anchored, and observing. Project NameDeep-Sea All-Weather Resident Floating Research Facility (“Open-Sea Floating Island”)DeveloperShanghai Jiao Tong UniversityHeight30 stories (semi-submersible design)DisplacementRoughly 86,000 tons — comparable to a…
When you read about Kaleigh Block, the first thing you notice is how nonchalantly she discusses locations that practically no one on Earth will ever visit. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware. She has also visited a titanium sphere the size of a little bathroom on the floor of the East Pacific Rise, several thousand meters below the surface. The majority of respondents mention a desk when describing their workplace. Block talks about a vent field where the rocks are alive and the water reaches 400 degrees Celsius. NameKaleigh BlockAffiliationUniversity of Delaware, College of Earth, Ocean…
Something subtly noteworthy is taking place in the waters near Madeira, but it’s not the kind of tale that usually makes headlines. There are no hard-hat politicians. No big trade or defense announcements. A cooperation that has been gradually coming together since 2019 and just two sleek autonomous submarines developed in the UK are currently headed for one of the deepest sections of the North Atlantic. Partnership SnapshotDetailsLead UK InstitutionNational Oceanography Centre (NOC)Portuguese PartnerRegional Agency for the Development of Research, Technology and Innovation (ARDITI)Deal Value€4.3 millionEquipment Transferred2 Autosub Long Range (ALR) autonomous underwater vehiclesOperating Depths1,500 metres and 6,000 metresOperational HubOcean…
The Atlantic abyss doesn’t look like much, according to scientists. Just mud. Brown muck, endless, chilly, and beyond the reach of any rover’s headlamp. However, after a few minutes of watching the live broadcast from a research vessel, something changes. A transparent worm floats by. Almost lavender in color, a sea cucumber trudges on the muck as if it had a place. Watching this gives us the impression that the deep ocean is more like a slow, patient metropolis than an empty plain, one that we have been passing by without ever knocking. Mission / DetailInformationProject NameSMARTEX (Seabed Mining And…