Ocean

Every winter and spring, great white sharks that usually dwell off the coast of California gather in a remote section of ocean the size of Colorado — and scientists are slowly piecing together why.

For the first time, researchers have linked the amount of silver being buried in marine sediments to human-made climate change.

Researchers have mapped the path of a giant submarine avalanche that tore through the Agadir Canyon — a deep trench in the Atlantic seafloor off the coast of Morocco — 60,000 years ago.

Earth from space A recent landslide along the banks of a river in British Columbia completely dammed the waterway, leading to evacuation warnings and potentially dooming an endangered fish population trapped on the wrong side of the debris.

Earth from space This 2014 satellite photo shows a gigantic, multicolor phytoplankton bloom swirling off the coast of Argentina. More recent research has shown that similarly massive algal outbreaks may become less likely in the future thanks to climate change.

The carbonate compensation depth — a zone where high pressure and low temperature creates conditions so acidic it dissolves shell and skeleton — could make up half of the global ocean by the end of the century.

When Hunga erupted in 2022, ash "decimated" slow-moving species living on the seafloor. More mobile species were able to hoof it out of harm's way.

Earth from space A 2020 satellite photo shows "blackwater" flowing from South Carolina's Winyah Bay after Hurricane Sally made landfall and triggered flash flooding.

In a global first, scientists working in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the North Pacific Ocean have found that metallic nodules on the seafloor produce their own oxygen, dubbed "dark oxygen."

Researchers have discovered a deep-sea hydrothermal vent field near Svalbard in an area previously assumed to be geologically inactive. The newfound vents have been named after various entities from Norse mythology.