Seafloor

This sonar image of the Pythias Oasis site shows bubbles rising from the seafloor about two-thirds of a mile deep and 50 miles off Newport, Oregon. These bubbles are a byproduct of a unique site where warm, chemically distinct fluid gushes from the seafloor. Researchers believe this fluid comes directly from the Cascadia megathrust zone, or plate boundary, and helps control stress buildup between the two plates. Credit: Philip et al./Science AdvancesThe field of plate tectonics is relatively new, and researchers are still…

This sonar image of the Pythias Oasis site shows bubbles rising from the seafloor about two-thirds of a mile deep and 50 miles off Newport, Oregon. These bubbles are a byproduct of a unique site where warm, chemically distinct fluid gushes from the seafloor. Researchers believe this fluid comes directly from the Cascadia megathrust zone, or plate boundary, and helps control stress buildup between the two plates. Credit: Science Advances (2023). DOI:…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain First it was the eerie images of barrels leaking on the seafloor not far from Catalina Island. Then the shocking realization that the nation's largest manufacturer of DDT had once used the ocean as a huge dumping ground—and that as many as half a million barrels of its acid waste had been poured straight into the water. …

A schematic depiction of the burial and deep subduction of organic carbon. Credit: R. Dasgupta/Rice UniversityRising global temperatures are leading to a decrease in the amount of organic carbon being deposited in the ocean floor.An international group of researchers meticulously collected data from over 50 years of oceanic scientific drilling expeditions to carry out a groundbreaking study of organic carbon that sinks to the ocean floor and is drawn deep into the earth.According to their study, published recently in the…

The Nautilus’s ROV Hercules on a dive. Credit: Ocean Exploration Trust Seafloor video collected by a remotely operated vehicle off the coast of Puerto Rico indicates that an underwater landslide was not the cause of a devastating tsunami that hit the island's west coast after a 1918 earthquake. The proposed scar of the landslide is…

Summary of the MP weathering status and size variability in the sedimentary record A. Boxplot of the carbonyl index in the sediment profile classified as polyethylene (dark blue) and polypropylene (light blue). (B) Boxplot of the size variability (y-axis logarithmic scale) in the sediment core. C. Increase of the oxidation status of the polymers, measured as carbonyl index, as the particle size decreases (y-axis logarithmic scale). Credit: Environmental…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain The Ordovician is a critical transition for the coevolution of life and environments, as it witnessed stepwise rise of atmospheric O2 and secular decline of CO2, as well as the blooming of marine fauna and the colonization of early land plants. …

Modeled tsunami sea-surface height perturbation, in meters, four hours after the asteroid impact. This image shows results from the MOM6 model, one of two tsunami-propogation models used in the University of Michigan-led study. Credit: From Range et al. in AGU Advances, 2022. The miles-wide asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago wiped out nearly all the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the planet's plant and…

The R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer photographed from a drone at Thwaites Glacier ice front in February 2019. Credit: Alexandra Mazur/University of Gothenburg The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica—about the size of Florida—has been an elephant in the room for scientists trying to make global sea level rise predictions. …

A bizarre seafloor creature covered with luminous orange, spaghetti-like tentacles recently made its internet debut in newly released video footage.The unusual pom-pom-shaped creature is actually a type of segmented marine worm known as a polychaete, and it belongs to an appropriately named group: spaghetti worms.   Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) captured footage of the pasta-mimicking worm in 2012 using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), while they were exploring the Gulf of…