The Challenger Deep is the deepest known point in the Earth's seabed hydrosphere, with a depth of 10,902 to 10,929 m by direct measurement from deep-diving submersibles, remotely operated vehicles and benthic landers and (sometimes) slightly more by sonar bathymetry.
A cold seep is an area of the ocean floor where hydrogen sulfide, methane and other hydrocarbon-rich fluid seepage occurs, often in the form of a brine pool. Cold does not mean that the temperature of the seepage is lower than that of the surrounding sea water. On the contrary, its temperature is often slightly higher. The "cold" is relative to the very warm conditions of a hydrothermal vent. Cold seeps constitute a biome supporting several endemic species.
Bigfin squids are a group of rarely seen cephalopods with a distinctive morphology. They are placed in the genus Magnapinna and family Magnapinnidae. Although the family is known only from larval, paralarval, and juvenile specimens, some authorities believe adult specimens have also been seen. Several videos have been taken of animals nicknamed the "long-arm squid", which appear to have a similar morphology. Since none of the seemingly adult specimens has ever been captured or sampled, it remains uncertain if they are of the same genus or only distant relatives.
Ocean exploration is a part of oceanography describing the exploration of ocean surfaces. Notable explorations were undertaken by the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Polynesians, the Phoenicians, Phytheas, Herodotus, the Vikings, the Portuguese and Muslims. Scientific investigations began with early scientists such as James Cook, Charles Darwin, and Edmund Halley. Ocean exploration itself coincided with the developments in shipbuilding, diving, navigation, depth, measurement, exploration, and cartography.
Pulley Ridge is a mesophotic coral reef system off the shores of the continental United States. The reef rests on sunken barrier islands and lies 100 miles west of the Tortugas Ecological Reserve and stretches north about 60 miles at depths ranging from 60–80 meters. Pulley Ridge was originally discovered in 1950 during a dredging operation conducted by an academic group from Texas. While well known to fishermen, this remarkable habitat remained undiscovered by scientists until 1999 when the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and graduate students from the University of South Florida happened upon it. This reef system, like other mesophotic ecosystems, is inhabited by photosynthesizing corals and algae that are adapted to low-light environments. It is habitat for numerous species of bottom fish including Epinephelus morio spawning area.
The deep sea or deep layer is the lowest layer in the ocean, existing below the thermocline and above the seabed, at a depth of 1000 fathoms or more. Little or no light penetrates this part of the ocean, and most of the organisms that live there rely for subsistence on falling organic matter produced in the photic zone. For this reason, scientists once assumed that life would be sparse in the deep ocean, but virtually every probe has revealed that, on the contrary, life is abundant in the deep ocean.
From the time of Pliny until the late nineteenth century...humans believed there was no life in the deep. It took a historic expedition in the ship Challenger between 1872 and 1876 to prove Pliny wrong; its deep-sea dredges and trawls brought up living things from all depths that could be reached. Yet even in the twentieth century scientists continued to imagine that life at great depth was insubstantial, or somehow inconsequential. The eternal dark, the almost inconceivable pressure, and the extreme cold that exist below one thousand meters were, they thought, so forbidding as to have all but extinguished life. The reverse is in fact true....(Below 200 meters) lies the largest habitat on earth.
A brine pool is a large area of brine on the ocean basin. These pools are bodies of water that have a salinity three to eight times greater than the surrounding ocean. For deep-sea brine pools, the source of the salt is the dissolution of large salt deposits through salt tectonics. The brine often contains high concentrations of methane, providing energy to chemosynthetic animals that live near the pool. These creatures are often extremophiles. Brine pools are also known to exist on the Antarctic Shelf where the source of brine is salt excluded during formation of sea ice. Deep-sea and Antarctic brine pools can be toxic to marine animals.
Deep-sea exploration is the investigation of physical, chemical, and biological conditions on the sea bed, for scientific or commercial purposes. Deep-sea exploration is considered a relatively recent human activity compared to the other areas of geophysical research, as the depths of the sea have been investigated only during comparatively recent years. The ocean depths still remain a largely unexplored part of the planet, and form a relatively undiscovered domain.
Davidson Seamount is a seamount located off the coast of Central California, 80 mi (129 km) southwest of Monterey and 75 mi (121 km) west of San Simeon. At 26 mi (42 km) long and 8 mi (13 km) wide, it is one of the largest known seamounts in the world. From base to crest, the seamount is 7,480 ft (2,280 m) tall, yet its summit is still 4,101 ft (1,250 m) below the sea surface. The seamount is biologically diverse, with 237 species and 27 types of deep-sea coral having been identified.
Crossota millsae is a species of deep-sea hydrozoan. These small ocean-dwelling creatures are bioluminescent; the light emitted by these jellyfish serves as a defense or warning to other creatures. Males and females have both been described, and it reproduces sexually. They are viviparous and females brood baby medusae attached to the gastric canals inside the sub-umbrellar space.
A deep sea community is any community of organisms associated by a shared habitat in the deep sea. Deep sea communities remain largely unexplored, due to the technological and logistical challenges and expense involved in visiting this remote biome. Because of the unique challenges, it was long believed that little life existed in this hostile environment. Since the 19th century however, research has demonstrated that significant biodiversity exists in the deep sea.
NOAAS Okeanos Explorer is a converted United States Navy ship, now an exploratory vessel for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), officially launched in 2010. Starting in 2010, NOAA entered into a five-year partnership with the San Francisco Exploratorium. The focus is on gathering scientific information about oceans for the public as well as for scientific uses. As much as 95% of the ocean remains unexplored, NOAA officials said. The ship is equipped with cameras and will provide real-time viewing of the ocean floor for scientists and for the public.
Telepresence technology is a term used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to refer to the combination of satellite technology with the Internet to broadcast information, including video in real-time from cameras used on its remotely operated vehicle (ROV) on Okeanos Explorer. Its ROV will be operating working in a deep sea environment. Data from the ROV is transmitted to a hub based on the land, which then send it to scientists and to the public.
Hotspot Ecosystem Research and Man's Impact On European Seas (HERMIONE) is an international multidisciplinary project, started in April 2009, that studies deep-sea ecosystems. HERMIONE scientists study the distribution of hotspot ecosystems, how they function and how they interconnect, partially in the context of how these ecosystems are being affected by climate change and impacted by humans through overfishing, resource extraction, seabed installations and pollution. Major aims of the project are to understand how humans are affecting the deep-sea environment and to provide policy makers with accurate scientific information, enabling effective management strategies to protect deep sea ecosystems. The HERMIONE project is funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme, and is the successor to the HERMES project, which concluded in March 2009.
Global Explorer ROV is a unique deep water remotely operated vehicle that has made numerous dives below 9,000 feet (2,700 m) on science and survey expeditions for National Geographic, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other research organizations. It was designed and built by Chris Nicholson of Deep Sea Systems International, Inc. of Falmouth, Massachusetts.
ABISMO is a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) built by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) for exploration of the deep sea. It is the only remaining ROV rated to 11,000-meters, ABISMO is intended to be the permanent replacement for Kaikō, a ROV that was lost at sea in 2003.
Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus is a 64-meter research vessel owned by the Ocean Exploration Trust under the direction of Dr. Robert Ballard, the man who is known for finding the wreck of the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck. The vessel home port is at the AltaSea facility in San Pedro, CA, at the Port of Los Angeles. E/V Nautilus is on a global mission of exploration. Nautilus is equipped with a team of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) Hercules, and Argus, a multibeam mapping system, and mapping tools Diana and Echo. All of these tools help the Ocean Exploration Trust conduct deep sea exploration of unknown parts of the ocean to a depth of 4000 meters.
NOASS Okeanos Explorer Gulf of Mexico 2017 Expedition was the first of three expeditions on the NOAAS Okeanos Explorer intended to increase the understanding of the deep-sea environment in the Gulf of Mexico. Gulf of Mexico 2017 was a 23-day telepresence-enabled expedition focused on acquiring data on priority exploration areas identified by ocean management and scientific communities. The goal of the expedition was to use remotely operated vehicle (ROV) dives and seafloor mapping operations to increase the understanding of the deep-sea ecosystems in these areas to support management decisions. Many of the areas had no sonar data, these areas were top priority for high-resolution bathymetry collection. The expedition established a baseline of information in the region to catalyze further exploration, research, and management activities. The expedition lasted from 29 November 2017 to 21 December 2017.
Diva Joan Amon is a marine biologist from Trinidad. She is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum, London.
Charles R. Fisher "Chuck" is a marine biologist, microbial ecologist, and leader in the field of autotrophic symbiosis in deep sea cold seeps and hydrothermal vents. He is currently the Professor and Distinguished Senior Scholar of Biology and the Associate Dean for Graduate Education at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Fisher has authored/coauthored over 100 publications in journals such as Nature, Oceanography, and PNAS among others. He heads the Fisher Deep-Sea Lab at Penn State, which primarily investigates the physiological ecology of the major chemoautotrophic symbiont-containing fauna in the deep ocean environment. The lab works closely with other interdisciplinary researchers on expeditions to research sites at cold seeps in the Gulf of Mexico and hydrothermal vent sites on the East Pacific Rise, the Juan de Fuca Ridge, and in the Lau back-arc Basin.
