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The Seafloor

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BLOG POST What We DON'T Know About the Deep Sea Imagine: You’re in a small submersible, and you gently settle on the soft muddy bottom at a depth of 12,000 feet. It’s absolutely dark. What will you see when the exterior lights are turned...MORE STORIES


	ARTICLE MORE STORIES Seamounts: Underwater Oases Thousands of seamounts—most of them undersea volcanoes—tower above the muddy sea...
	PHOTO MORE PHOTOS Diverse Deep-Sea Coral Community A diversity of deep-sea corals—including primnoid coral (Narella sp.), black cor...
	PHOTO MORE PHOTOS Exploring Chile's Marine Fossil Record in the Atacama Desert Smithsonian curator of fossil marine mammals Nick Pyenson and a team of collabor...

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					Star Sand Grains Collected from Southern Japan May 24, 2012 - 10:54AMThese star-shaped grains of sand, collected from southern Japan, look like miniature works of art -- but they were not sculpted by an artist. They are the shells of microscopic organisms called foraminifera, which build intricate...

Ocean “Pingos”

Jan 26, 2012 - 11:45AM

Geologist Charles Paull (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)...

Exploring Chile's Marine Fossil Record in the Atacama Desert

Sep 30, 2011 - 6:38AM

Smithsonian curator of fossil marine mammals Nick Pyenson and a team of...

SPOTLIGHT


Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Scientists from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) collect sediments drilled from Earth’s crust. This marine...

Exploring Chile's Marine Fossil Record in the Atacama Desert Sep 30 2011 - 6:38am Smithsonian curator of fossil marine mammals Nick Pyenson and a team of collaborators are heading into Chile's Atacama Desert, shown here. They'll study a rich bonebed of fossil marine vertebrates that lived off the Chilean coast around 8 million years ago.	Seamounts, A Deep-Sea Habitat Dec 4 2009 - 3:41pm Thousands of seamounts—most of them undersea volcanoes—tower above the muddy seafloor. They provide something hard to come by in the deep ocean: a solid surface to cling to. This photo gallery shows some of the organisms that have found a suitable home on seamounts.
Deep-Sea Coral Reef Map Jun 7 2011 - 9:46am This 3-D colored map of Chapman’s Reef—a deep-sea coral reef near Florida—was produced in 2005 with multibeam sonar technology from an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Explore more in the multimedia feature "Coral Gardens of the Deep Sea."	Graph of magnitude 5 or greater earthquakes from 1900- April 2011 Apr 13 2011 - 4:39pm The United States Geological Survey (USGS) keeps track of earthquake locations and magnitudes, accessible on the USGS website. Modern recording equipment has been in use since about 1900. While this may seem like long ago, this only provides a VERY short reliable earthquake record. This graph...
Alvin, Gulf of Alaska Seamount Expedition Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am Alvin, a human occupied vehicle (HOV), returns to the ship after a deep ocean dive to a seamount.	Map of the Magnitude 5.8 Virginia Earthquake of 2011 Aug 26 2011 - 11:00am On August 23, 2011 a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck the East Coast of the United States. The earthquake map shown here, generated by the U.S. Geological Survey and regional seismic network operators, shows the ground motion intensity that followed the earthquake. These maps are used for...
Seafloor Earthquakes Study Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am Geophysicist Jian Lin of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and chief U.S. scientist aboard the Chinese oceanographic ship DaYang Yihao studied the earthquake site that triggered 2004’s Indian Ocean tsunami. Read an interview with Dr. Lin in Oceanus magazine. Learn about earthquake forecasting in...	Understanding the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Mar 14 2011 - 5:08pm Using maps and graphics, Smithsonian geologist Dr. Liz Cottrell provides an overview of the major earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011—one of the largest ever recorded globally. She explains the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the movement of tectonic plates and subduction, the...
Foraminifera Mar 25 2010 - 4:23pm Microscopic, single-celled organisms called foraminifera have a fossil record that extends from today to more than 500 million years ago. Although each foram is just a single cell, they build complex shells around themselves from minerals in the seawater. These shells have accumulated in layers of...	The Ocean Drilling Vessel Chikyu Dec 8 2009 - 10:57pm The Chikyu allows scientists to gather and study data about seafloor sediments as soon as they are collected. After a powerful 9.0 earthquake triggered a devestating tsunami in Japan in March 2011, Japanese officials decided to use the Chikyu to explore the underwater fault zone.
Diverse Deep-Sea Coral Community Jun 7 2011 - 11:59am A diversity of deep-sea corals—including primnoid coral (Narella sp.), black coral (Trissopathes pseudtristicha), and feather stars (Florometra serratissima)—flourish 2,669 m (8,757 ft) deep on the pristine Davidson Seamount off the coast of California. Explore more in the multimedia...