The pictures have an almost disorienting quality. At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, more than three miles below the surface, dark, lumpy spheres, each about the size of a potato, rest on reddish-brown mud. They resemble something that grew rather than formed, almost biological in appearance. However, what NOAA discovered in mid-April from the seafloor off American Samoa is not biological. It’s geology, and more and more it’s geopolitics. Initially, the first pictures of polymetallic nodules from federal waters close to American Samoa arrived silently. Described as a scientific achievement from an ongoing hydrographic survey spanning more than 30,000…
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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A Lockheed Martin WP-3D turboprop known as “Miss Piggy” is flying somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico right into conditions that most aircraft spend their whole operational lives attempting to avoid. Equipment is thrown across the cabin by turbulence. It’s raining so much that it sounds like gravel striking the fuselage. Scientists are gathering the atmospheric data that goes into every hurricane forecast you’ve ever seen on TV somewhere in the middle of that mayhem. The planes served the purpose for decades. Less so is the surrounding communications infrastructure. That might be about to change. Earlier this month, SD Government,…
What a small Spanish startup is doing on the periphery of Europe’s offshore energy frontier is subtly daring. While onshore wind farms and solar panels have dominated discussions about renewable energy, a company called Optimized Generators, or OptiGen as most industry insiders refer to them, has been focusing on an issue that major players have mostly avoided: how to construct a wind turbine that makes sense floating sixty meters below the ocean’s surface. This question’s numbers are startling. In waters too deep for traditional fixed-bottom turbines, more than 80% of the world’s offshore wind potential is located. That’s an enormous…
Along the Gulf Coast, something changes every May. Plywood is discreetly restocked by hardware stores. Families pull out their emergency supplies. A group of NOAA scientists then take the podium somewhere in Lakeland, Florida, and inform the nation of what to anticipate over the next six months. For the first time in a long time, the news was almost comforting this year. Nearly. According to NOAA’s official forecast for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, which was released on May 21, there will be 8 to 14 named storms, with 3 to 6 predicted to reach hurricane strength and only 1…
On a rainy afternoon in late June 2019, a research team lowered a bulbous three-seat submarine named Nadir into the Atlantic off the coast of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. It was starting to stop raining. The scientists watching from the deck probably didn’t care if it was a coincidence or a result of luck because they had spent a year preparing for this moment and the weather was free to do as they pleased. The bluntnose sixgill shark, which most people are unfamiliar with, was their target. Instead of five gills, there are six. Unsettlingly, emerald eyes catch light. an…
Standing on the brink of a problem so big that fifty years of research haven’t significantly advanced your understanding of its solution is subtly unsettling. That’s about where ocean science is at the moment. We still don’t fully understand what deep-sea mining will do to the ecosystems down there, and the industry is accelerating anyhow, according to a significant new review led by Professor Adrian Glover of the Natural History Museum. The review went through more than 200 published and unpublished reports spanning more than fifty years. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area of abyssal Pacific seafloor about the size of…
The Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of NOAA: How Vancouver’s Deep Sea Minerals Corp. Is Handling It and Why It Matters The idea of a small Vancouver-based company submitting paperwork to a U.S. federal agency in order to mine a portion of the Pacific Ocean floor that is located four to six kilometers below the surface, far outside the borders of any country, seems almost surreal. However, Deep Sea Minerals Corp. did just that in March 2026 when it formally applied under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The documents were…
Ocean scientists experience a certain kind of dread that develops gradually. It doesn’t make an announcement. Data points, satellite readings, and the silent glances exchanged during conferences when another temperature anomaly defies explanation are just a few examples of how it builds up. Since last summer, that dread has been steadily growing off the U.S. West Coast, and it’s difficult to ignore at the moment. Since 2025, a massive marine heatwave has engulfed Pacific waters, extending thousands of miles from the California coastline and encompassing a large triangle that includes Hawaii, British Columbia, and Mexico. This is only the third…
Billions of potato-sized mineral formations have been quietly building for millions of years somewhere on the Pacific Ocean’s abyssal floor, about 4,000 meters below the surface where no sunlight has ever reached. They have never been touched commercially. This is going to change, and an increasing number of environmental organizations are working quickly—possibly too late—to prevent it. The Metals Company, a Canadian company that operates through its American subsidiary TMC USA, has filed two permit applications. Environment America, Environmental Action, and several affiliated organizations have been urging the public to flood NOAA with comments opposing these applications. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone,…
On a March morning in 2026, an aerial survey team off the coast of Crescent Beach, Florida, noticed something that caused people to pause in the middle of a conversation. In the shallow coastal water, a young whale, barely ten years old and just past reproductive maturity, was swimming alongside a newborn calf. Mirror, catalog number 4617, is her name, and she recently became a first-time mother. That season, it was the 23rd confirmed calf. the most in 17 years. Even so, the researchers were unable to fully celebrate without a silent, uneasy asterisk in the air. In late April,…