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Oceans News

Thousands of idle ships in Hormuz raise a global bioinvasion warning

A July 2026 study in Biological Invasions warns that the long lay-up of commercial ships after the Strait of Hormuz closure could create a rare chance for marine life to hitchhike around the world. The international team, led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, describes a possible bioinvasion super-spreader event if heavily…

Oceans Explainer

In 1947 six men left Callao on the balsa raft Kon-Tiki and crossed the Pacific for 101 days before a coral reef at Raroia ended a voyage that showed the journey was physically possible

Port side of the Titanic bow, the two capstans and the port and starboard anchor chains are visible

Oceans Explainer

In 1985 a camera sled followed Titanic’s debris trail 12,500 feet below the Atlantic after French sonar narrowed a vast search field and a single boiler seen before dawn on September 1 led the international team from Argo’s live video to the wreck

Oceans Explainer

In 1969 six men spent more than 30 days drifting 1,444 nautical miles within the Gulf Stream aboard the Ben Franklin submarine, while Apollo 11 drew the public eye toward the Moon and the quiet voyage tested life and science in a closed vessel

NOAA map of the U.S. East Coast continental shelf, shelf break and slope

Oceans Explainer

In 1960 Trieste descended nearly seven miles into Challenger Deep, heard a crack at 32,400 feet and still spent 20 minutes on the ocean floor

NOAA Ocean Exploration’s historical account preserves Jacques Piccard’s description of the January 23, 1960 descent of the Trieste bathyscaphe to Challenger Deep. Piccard and U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh became the first people to reach the deepest known part of the ocean, then measured at roughly 35,800 feet. Their dive showed that people could enter…

Thousands of yellow rubber ducks floating together on water

Oceans Explainer

In 1992 nearly 29,000 bath toys fell into the North Pacific, then their years-long drift helped scientists track currents around the world

NOAA‘s Mapping Friendly Floatees lesson turns a 1992 cargo accident into a map of moving water. A container of almost 29,000 plastic bath toys went overboard in the North Pacific during a storm. Reports of toys reaching shore later gave oceanographers real dates and places to compare with their ideas about how the ocean moves.…

Massive iceberg floating in Antarctic waters

Oceans Explainer

In 1997 hydrophones 2,000 miles apart heard a sound across the Pacific so powerful it became the Bloop and years of Antarctic recordings eventually linked its acoustic signature to immense icebergs cracking and breaking apart

NOAA’s account of the 1997 Bloop begins with a listening network that captured remote acoustic evidence. Researchers using underwater microphones in the southern Pacific caught an exceptionally strong low-frequency sound on instruments separated by more than 3,219 kilometers. The recording soon gained a memorable name. Years of Antarctic acoustic work later gave NOAA scientists a…

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