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Ocean science news, explainers, and statistics covering marine environments, currents, climate, coasts, seafloor research, and the changing global ocean.

Illuminated HMS Belfast with Tower Bridge in the backdrop at night in London

Oceans Explainer

In 1872 HMS Challenger left Portsmouth with six scientists and 243 crew members, traveled nearly 127,000 kilometers over almost four years, made 492 depth soundings and returned with a global record that helped establish modern oceanography

For nearly four years, HMS Challenger carried a small scientific team through waters that had rarely been measured beyond the surface. The converted Royal Navy corvette left Portsmouth on December 21, 1872, with six scientists and a crew of 243. By its return in 1876, the voyage had gathered observations from across the Atlantic, Indian…

NOAA bathymetric map of Monterey Bay and its submarine canyon

Oceans Explainer

In 1857, James Alden found a deep valley in Monterey Bay while sounding from the Coast Survey Steamer Active, revealing the first known seafloor canyon before sonar existed and giving mariners an early glimpse of the hidden terrain beneath California’s central coast

NASA satellite composite centered on the Indian Ocean, southern Africa and Madagascar

Oceans Explainer

Indian Ocean facts

Oceans Explainer

In 1961 CUSS I held position in 11,673 feet of Pacific water and drilled through 558 feet of sediment into basalt, proving deep-ocean drilling could work and launching a field while Project Mohole’s goal of reaching Earth’s mantle remained out of reach

A lone great barracuda swimming gracefully in deep blue ocean water

Oceans Explainer

In 1934 William Beebe and Otis Barton descended 3,028 feet off Bermuda inside the cable-hung Bathysphere and their telephone reports of luminous animals opened a view of the deep ocean that no person had previously seen alive

Oceans Explainer

What is sargassum? The seaweed that makes a floating ocean habitat

Nature and landscape concept - view to cliffs of moher and atlantic ocean in ireland

Oceans Explainer

Upwellings bring the ocean’s deep pantry to the surface

Close-up shot of swirling ocean waves and white foam, showing natural movement

Oceans Explainer

Ocean gyres: Earth’s slow-moving rings that organize the sea

Ocean gyres trace some of the largest moving patterns on Earth. From space, they resemble broad loops drawn across entire ocean basins. A bottle, a drifting buoy, or a patch of warm water can spend months to years following part of one of these routes. The motion is steady enough to shape climate, steer marine…

Aerial drone photo of huge container tanker ship carrying truck size colourful containers in deep blue open ocean sea

Oceans Explainer

Ocean currents move heat, life and weather around Earth

The ocean has invisible pathways that cross whole basins, curl along coasts and dive to the seafloor. They carry warm water away from the tropics and return colder water toward lower latitudes. This continuous circulation helps set regional climate, supplies surface waters with nutrients and changes the conditions faced by marine life and people at…

Portrait of young Asia lady volunteers help to keep nature clean up holding plastic bottle waste and black garbage bags on the beach. Concept about environmental conservation pollu

Oceans Statistics

How much plastic is in the ocean?

Plastic pollution reaches far beyond a bottle floating near shore. Pieces drift across open water, settle into seafloor mud, wash onto beaches and break into fragments smaller than a grain of rice. That spread makes a single global total difficult to calculate. The most careful answer is a range of measurements for different parts of…

Oceans

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