Only on a small Pacific island in the late afternoon, when the lagoon has turned the color of old glass and the wind has subsided, can you hear a certain kind of silence. Fishermen arrive gradually. Kids run along the seawall. A government accountant is looking at a spreadsheet somewhere beyond the postcard vista, wondering how long the numbers will last. It is difficult to ignore the fact that these islands are undergoing a fundamental change that goes beyond environmental changes. It is economic in nature and is occurring more quickly than the policy discussions surrounding it. FieldDetailRegion CoveredAsia-Pacific, with…
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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When I initially learned of a whale stranding connected to an offshore seismic survey, I thought it sounded almost too good to be true. Undoubtedly a coincidence. Then, year after year, coastline after coastline, the same pattern continued to emerge. In February, as seismic surveys were being conducted in the same waters off Greece, another unusual stranding had place. It makes sense that scientists are cautious in what they say about these topics. However, reading the literature gives the impression that there is less space for coincidences. Key InformationDetailsTopicAnthropogenic underwater noise pollutionPrimary SourcesShipping, seismic surveys, naval sonar, deep-sea miningMarine Species…
Beijing has become rather adept at a certain type of announcement, the kind that arrives on a Tuesday, is cloaked in technical jargon, and only then discloses its true meaning. That pattern is almost perfectly matched by the publication of China’s “seabed chemical element map” of its eastern waters. It appears to be standard scientific housekeeping at first glance. Surveys for twenty years. Twenty thousand places for sampling. A final compilation of a geochemical atlas. However, if you sit with it for a while, the image becomes clearer. Key InformationDetailsAnnouncing BodyChina’s Ministry of Natural ResourcesReported ByCCTV News, Global TimesRegion CoveredBohai…
A six-story steel platform in the middle of disputed waters, with no nation permitted to get close enough to see what’s actually going on inside, has a subtly unsettling quality. That is the current state of affairs in the Yellow Sea, and it has been going on since at least 2022, mostly behind closed doors. The building is known as Atlantic Amsterdam. It was constructed for the offshore oil sector. China claims to be in charge of fish farms now. To be honest, most Western analysts who have been observing this situation are unsure of what to believe, just as…
Trillions of black, knobby lumps that appear almost embarrassingly ordinary sit somewhere three miles below the surface of the central Pacific, dispersed across an underwater plain bigger than most European nations. They look like charcoal that has been burned. Depending on who you ask, they are either the most environmentally friendly solution to climate change yet discovered or a slow-motion ecological error for which we will have to apologize for the rest of the century. Cobalt is the metal that is most sought after, and the lumps are polymetallic nodules. It’s difficult to ignore how rapidly the topic has changed.…
When most people think of the state-of-the-art in ocean science, they do not picture the seminar room on the upper floor of the Leibniz Institute in Warnemölle. The chairs don’t match. The carpet has the worn appearance of a structure that has seen thousands of debates over bacteria, oxygen, and salinity over the years. A postdoc from Kiel and a visiting researcher from Woods Hole sit next to each other on a Thursday afternoon, squinting at a slide that depicts oxygen depletion in the Gotland Deep. Although it’s a minor scene, the effects of these discussions are starting to spread…
These days, oceanography labs have a certain silence. Not the kind that is productive. The other type is the one you hear when researchers at Scripps or Woods Hole open their inboxes and discover another paper from Qingdao or Hangzhou that describes something they hadn’t yet fully imagined. This week, the Second Institute of Oceanography quietly launched DePTH-GPT, a deep-sea exploration model developed by a Chinese team. Video from submersibles is read by it. It deciphers sediment. It hears the odd clicks and moans of animals that most of us will never see. It accomplishes all of this in a…
The video isn’t as dramatic as Hollywood would like it to be. No glowing leviathan, no lunging predator. Nine kilometers below the surface, somewhere off the coast of Japan, a tiny, pale, faintly glowing shape drifts through black water. Even so, it’s difficult to watch the video without getting a little startled by the realization that the people who took it, who have dedicated their professional lives to cataloging what lives down there, still have no idea what they’re looking at. Animalia incerta sedis is the temporary name they have given it. The taxonomic equivalent of a shrug, it is…
There are bacteria doing things that no one in a pharmaceutical lab has ever seen before, somewhere around three kilometers below the Pacific’s surface in water so cold and dark that light has not touched it in millennia. They are under intense pressure to survive. They consume chemicals that leak out of seafloor fissures. And they are turning into the most subtly optimistic tale in contemporary medicine. For many years, soil has been the source of nearly all antibiotics found on hospital shelves. Soil-dwelling Streptomyces, penicillium molds, and fermentation tanks were adjusted semi-synthetically until something beneficial appeared. To be honest,…
Marine biology is characterized by a certain type of frustration that typically manifests itself when a researcher attempts to retrieve something delicate from the depths. At 800 meters, a jellyfish that appeared intact and alien reaches the surface as a slick of tissue. Perhaps the longest animal on the planet, a siphonophore, rips itself to pieces against the interior of a collection jar. This has been the silent price of attempting to comprehend the most delicate marine life for decades. What you study is damaged. After years of contemplation, Brennan Phillips has come up with a solution that, strangely enough,…