Search
Large organisms, like these tunicates, live inside the recesses of a ship's hull while microscopic organisms form a film across all the painted surfaces on the boat.
Photo

Tunicates On Hull of Boat

View Image
Graduate students Danielle Young from Temple University and Dannise Ruiz from Penn State preparing oil and dispersant solutions for exposure experiments with deep sea corals aboard the exploration vessel E/V Nautilus.
Photo

Testing Impacts of Dispersants

View Image
Model of a lion’s mane jellyfish on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. This jellyfish, a member of the phylum Cnidaria, can have tentacles up to 190 feet long (58 meters) and a bell almost 7 feet (2 meters) in diameter.
Photo

Lion's Mane Jellyfish in Sant Ocean Hall

View Image
A healthy, deep sea octocoral and their brittle star partners
Photo

Brittle stars and their best friends the octocorals

View Image
A prickly dogfish swims in blue water near the ocean's bottom.
Photo

Prickly Dogfish

View Image
Scientists use satellite images of the ocean to estimate chlorophyll concentrations in the water. You can see the yellow swirls of phytoplankton concentrated at the sea surface in this image.
Photo

Satellite Image of Chlorophyll Concentration

View Image
This is a series of images showing how a typical nightly courtship display would look like, where certain males initiate the display (2), others follow (3), and different species display their own unique “light shows” nearby (4 and 5).
Photo

A typical nightly courtship display for P. annecohenae

View Image
A deep sea anglerfish called a dreamer
Photo

Deep Sea Dreamers

View Image
Two ARMS sit on the ocean floor.
Photo

Picture of ARMS in Papua New Guinea

View Image
Although in reality an ichthyosaur and plesiosaur would have likely never battled, this widely shared lithograph by artist, geologist and paleontologist Henry De la Beche even inspired author Jules Verne to pen a similar scene in his book, Journey to the C
Photo

Duria Antiquior – A More Ancient Dorset, 1830

View Image
Satellite view of Earth.
Photo

A Different View of Earth

View Image
Dive through the zones of the ocean to the deep ocean bottom where many strange species live, and there are many yet to be discovered. Explore them in the Deep Ocean Exploration section.
Photo

ROV Exploring the Deep Ocean

View Image