Stand near the shoreline for even a minute and your body registers the change almost immediately. The air feels heavier with moisture. Your lips catch a trace of salt. Breathing can feel smoother, or at least distinctly different from inland air. This shift comes from a complex mixture of ingredients in coastal air – sea…
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Far below the reach of sunlight, the seafloor can split open and release jets of mineral-rich water into the dark. Around those openings, called deep-sea hydrothermal vents, the ocean turns into something that feels almost otherworldly. Towering chimneys grow out of rock. Hot fluids burst into near-freezing water. And whole communities of animals gather where,…
Coral reefs look solid, almost permanent. From a distance they seem like underwater stone cities, full of color and motion, built to last for ages. Yet their strength depends on a fragile chemical balance in the sea around them. As the ocean takes up more carbon dioxide from the air, that balance shifts. The change…
The ocean is full of motion. Currents sweep across basins, waves grind coastlines and tiny fragments of human-made material drift through it all. Some of those fragments are now so small that they pass through water, sediment and living tissue with ease. They also pick up other contaminants along the way, which turns a simple…
