The choice to remove Ocean Station Papa from the Gulf of Alaska’s floor is subtly unsettling. It’s almost physically unsettling, not just politically. Located in the center of the Alaska Gyre, a massive rotating current that has influenced Pacific weather, fisheries, and marine ecosystems for millennia, the station is anchored to the seabed more than 14,000 feet below the surface. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been down there gathering data. And at some point in the upcoming year, it won’t be. The Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network of about 900 instruments dispersed throughout the Pacific and…
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 are billions of undisturbed polymetallic nodules on the seafloor somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, four to six kilometers below the surface. They have been sitting there for millions of years, gradually building up manganese, nickel, and cobalt in coarse, potato-sized lumps. They won’t be seen by most people. As it happens, the majority of people also failed to notice when the US government declared them ready for harvest. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration completed extensive changes to its deep seabed mining regulations on January 21, 2026. The regulations had remained largely unchanged since 1981. As is always the…
A 23-foot robotic boat sailing straight into a Category 4 hurricane while all other ships on Earth are heading in the opposite direction is subtly amazing. No crew, no hesitation, no instinct to protect oneself. Simply sensors, a strengthened wing, and a massive volume of data returning to scientists on land. This is precisely what Saildrone has been doing since 2021, and this summer, the company is going out once more in collaboration with NOAA for the fifth year in a row. During the height of Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from August to November, ten Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface…
The annual FEMA-NOAA hurricane season briefing has an almost ceremonial quality. Senior officials convene, comforting words are disseminated, and a line like “we’re ready” almost immediately appears in a press release. It was the same this year. Earlier this month, FEMA’s Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator, Robert J. Fenton Jr., appeared in front of cameras to convey precisely that message: composed, methodical, and self-assured. “It’s in our DNA,” he stated regarding being ready for hurricanes. The words came out easily. However, genuine preparedness and well-spoken words are not always the same. A few days later, Sabotaging Our…
Just before Jialing Cai rolls backward off the side of a boat at midnight, the ocean beneath her is pitch-black. No depth, no bottom, and no point of reference. Just a thin string of dim lights falling into nothing, and a surface buoy above. The majority would remain on the boat. Cai enters anyhow. She is a blackwater photographer, one of the few people in the world who actually does this on a regular basis, let alone with an award-winning eye. The idea behind the practice is almost ridiculously straightforward: dive into the open ocean at night, drift, and wait…
On a chilly February morning in 2026, biologists discovered a three-year-old female right whale washed up on the sand at a beach on Virginia’s eastern shore. She was a whale named Porcia’s 2023 calf. She was supposed to have decades ahead of her. Rather, she became the 43rd confirmed death in a crisis that has persisted for nine years with no end in sight. In 2017, NOAA Fisheries declared the North Atlantic Right Whale Unusual Mortality Event. The term “unusual” suggested something transient, such as a spike, an anomaly, or a crisis that would be investigated by agencies before being…
On a Tuesday morning in late May, meteorologists convened at NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center in Lakeland, Florida, a location that has a subtle jet fuel and weather map odor, to deliver what appeared to be generally positive news. They predicted that the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season would probably be below average. fewer storms with names. fewer hurricanes. There is a 55% chance that this season will fall into the “below normal” category. The figures must have felt like a tiny exhale to coastal communities still processing memories of previous destruction. The World Meteorological Organization swiftly endorsed the assessment and amplified…
Somewhere off the coast of Western Australia, hundreds of meters below the surface of the Indian Ocean, there is a certain kind of silence. Not a wave. There is no wind. Just darkness, pressure, and more and more the hum of machines that no one is operating. Although the transition from human divers and tethered equipment to fully autonomous underwater systems has been developing for years, there has been a noticeable change over the past five years. People in the industry still discuss the capability jump with a hint of skepticism because it has been so steep. The chief technology…
When you first learn about OWLS, it seems almost unrealistically ambitious. The work of several dozen laboratory scientists can be performed by eight automated instruments combined into a single system. These instruments can track microscopic movement in real time, analyze liquid samples, and search for the chemical fingerprints of life. It was created by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with a single, somewhat startling goal in mind: to examine ice fragments that were erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which is about a billion miles away from the closest repair facility. However, while traveling to the outer solar system, an intriguing event…
The race to mine the deep sea has a subtle unsettling quality. It’s not visible to you. No visible scars on a hillside, no protests outside a mine entrance. All of this is happening thousands of meters below the surface, in complete darkness, and under intense pressure, and that invisibility might be the exact issue. In an effort to create the most comprehensive understanding of the potential effects of deep-sea mining on marine life, a recent review headed by Professor Adrian Glover of the Natural History Museum in London has examined more than 200 published and unpublished reports covering more…