Ocean science news, explainers, and statistics covering marine environments, currents, climate, coasts, seafloor research, and the changing global ocean.
The ocean moves heat, salt, sediment and living things through one immense body of water. Every current, coral reef, deep canyon and coastal beach poses a different scientific question. An oceanographer studies that changing system through research that can trace a storm-driven wave, test seawater chemistry, map an undersea volcano, or follow the health of…
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The Pacific Ocean covers more of Earth than any other ocean basin and its scale changes how the planet works. It holds huge stores of heat, links polar and tropical waters and contains the deepest known point in the sea. A map makes it look like open blue space. It is a restless system with…
The Atlantic Ocean is still growing. Along its long central ridge, pieces of Earth’s crust slowly pull apart and fresh seafloor forms between them. That hidden process began after the supercontinent Pangaea broke up, then built the broad S-shaped basin between the Americas and Europe and Africa. Today the Atlantic is a living part of…
A study in Global Change Biology led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers reports that industrial fisheries have been taking large midwater fishes from the ocean’s twilight zone for decades. The work brings attention to animals that sit between tiny deep-sea fish and famous predators such as tuna. They are regularly caught by commercial gear,…
