Ocean

Scientists have predicted the presence and movement of ocean currents in the vast subsurface ocean of Enceladus. The moon, which is sheathed in a 20 km thick shell of ice, is one of the most promising prospects in the search for ET.

Geologists have discovered a new type of rock. While drilling deep into the seafloor, a team of scientists found a new form of basalt vastly different from any other on Earth, and the planet hasn’t produced any more of it for millions of years.

Just like a tree trunk, the tusk of the narwhal acquires a new growth ring every year. Analyses of those rings have now revealed some interesting facts about the animals' diet, and about changes in their environment.

When it's determined that a boater is officially missing at sea, it helps very much to know when and where their vessel sank. According to new research, barnacles growing on flotsam could provide that information.

When we hear about microplastic particles polluting the ocean, the usual suspected sources are degraded plastic goods and synthetic textile fibers. A new study, however, suggests that much of the blame lies with hull coatings on ships.

If you were a marine animal that just sat and waited for food to drift by, you might not choose to live in a place where little life is believed to exist. Nonetheless, such critters have recently been found deep beneath an Antarctic ice shelf.

Home to oceans of liquid methane, Saturn’s moon Titan is one of the most fascinating bodies in the solar system. Now scientists have used radar to probe the depth of its largest sea, Kraken Mare, and estimated it to be at least 300 m deep.

San Francisco-based aquatic drone-maker Saildrone has returned with a bigger and better version of its unmanned vehicle designed to explore the seas, the newly introduced 72-ft (22-m) Saildrone Surveyor.

A new study as shone a light on the role deep-sea trenches can play in the movement of plastic pollution, revealing how they can act as traps, accumulating large amounts of microplastic particles and holding them there.

It is said that we know more about the surface of Mars than the seafloor. A new technique could help us fill in the blanks by using deep-dwelling rays to survey the seabed for us, and possibly even power the required hardware themselves.

Although AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles) excel at gathering marine data without human intervention, they're still limited by battery life. Texas startup Terradepth has set out to address that problem, with a novel tag-team system.

While it's important for biologists to know which organisms have colonized the seabed in a given area, excavation is both labor-intensive and ecologically unsound. That's where the Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) are made to come in.