Deep Sea News

1. Climate change and oceans Climate change impacts on land made almost daily headlines this year: fires, floods, more extreme storms. Equally intense effects are being realized in our seas.…

On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with deep sea biologist Diva Amon about what we know (and don’t know) about biodiversity at the bottom of the ocean.…

Deep sea biologist Diva Amon is a Trinidadian who was raised by the shore of the Caribbean Sea, but has become well known not for the sea's edge, but rather for…

When Chong Chen was in high school, he came across a paper published in 2003 that described a peculiar species of snail from the Indian Ocean, thousands of feet below…

In 2010, researchers surveying the eastern Gulf of Mexico to study what sperm whales eat, collected numerous animals from the ocean’s depths. While examining the collection in 2013, Mark Grace…

An ambitious plan to mine precious minerals from the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea looks to have run aground due to the developer's financial problems. In…

Plastic water bottles and snack-food packaging have made their way to the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, drifting to depths of nearly 11,000 meters (36,100 feet), according to a…

Scientists exploring a patch of the seafloor some 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) deep inside the Pacific Ocean have accidentally stumbled upon a large nursery of octopus mothers. A team of…

Scientists have described a new zone in the Caribbean’s deep ocean, shining a light on a little-known world that’s home to numerous previously unidentified reef-fish species. The area in question…

Scientists have for the first time captured extensive visual documentation of predation events that underpin deep-sea food webs. The research, which relies on hundreds of video observations captured over nearly…

We know very little about the deepest parts of the ocean – and are disturbing them faster than we’re learning about them, according a study published this week in Molecular…

Whales, dolphins, sea turtles and fish living off the coast of Gabon now enjoy similar protections to those designed to safeguard the Central African nation’s gorillas, elephants and other land-dwelling…

“Casper”, the ghost-like octopod discovered early this year, could be at risk from deep sea mining, scientists say. The octopod was found at a depth of 4,290 meters (2.7 miles) during…

Remote-controlled vehicles will soon begin churning up the ocean floor off the cost of Papua New Guinea, searching for millions of tons of copper and gold. In 2011, Canada-based Nautilus…

An area targeted for deep sea mining is teeming with diverse life forms, including several new species, a new study has found. Countries have been eyeing the deep seafloor of…

aptain Siddharth Chakravarty said he tracked the Viking for two months before he could guess where it might go next. “We detected the ship and determined it was moving in…

Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) discovered what may be a new species of 'dumbo' octopod at a depth of 4,290 meters (2.5 miles) during a deep…

Scientists discover that Graneledone boreopacifica has the longest brooding time of any animal on the planet The ultimate goal of all species on the planet is procreation, the act of…

The seabed is really where it’s at in terms of animal diversity. Of the 35 known animal lineages, representatives of all but two are found here. In contrast, the huge…

Almost everyone knows what an earthworm is, but these very familiar animals are just one variation on a very rich theme that is at its most fabulously varied in the…

A sea angel, Clione limacine. In this image the grasping tentacles and chitinous hooks are retracted. Photo by: Alexander Semenov. Most of the species on Earth we never see. In…

The dead "sea monster' spotted off the coast of Southern California on Sunday is actually an oarfish, a deepwater fish species that can reach a length of 55 feet (17…

Total ocean heat content shown in violet, while grey shows 0 to 300 meters and blue shows 300 to 700 meters. Vertical colored bars show volcanic eruptions that cooled the…

Squid drops arms when tapped by a bottle brush. Photo by: Stephanie Bush, MBARI. Octopoteuthis deletron—this deep-dwelling, unassuming little squid may appear plain and boring, but when threatened, it has…

The larva known as Cerataspis monstrosa. Photo courtesy of Bracken-Grissom et al. With blue devil-shaped horns and red armor, the monster larva, or Cerataspis monstrosa, kept scientists guessing for nearly…

Hydrothermal vent in the Marianas Trench. Life on hydrothermal vents were not discovered until the late 1970s. Decades later, much remains unknown about these vents and many of them remain…

Uroptychus cartesi. Photo by: Antonio Punzon/IEO. Scientists have pulled up a tiny new species of 'squat lobster' from a deep sea mountain at 1,410 meters below sea level off the…

BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill as seen from space. Photo by: NASA's Terra Satellite. Two years after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing…

New shrimp species crowd the world's deepest undersea vents. Photo by: University of Southampton/National Oceanography Center (NOC). It sounds like a medieval vision of hell: in pitch darkness, amid blazing…

A new species of Yeti crabs cover nearly every inch of the "lost world" of deep sea Antarctic hydrothermal vents. Photo by: Oxford University. Click to enlarge. Scientists have discovered…