An interactive of the deep sea

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Our favorite visualization of the depths of the ocean and the various animals species within it

Explore the deepest parts of the ocean

The deeps of the Earth's oceans are some of the most extreme environments on the planet. Take a trip 36,000 feet to the deepest parts of the sea in this informative, 10-minute animated video.

The 10 most amazing deep sea creatures

In this video, researchers from the world-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium discuss the most fascinating deep sea creatures, and how they developed some of their strangest features.

Take an interactive tour through Australia's Great Barrier Reef

This adventure offers spherical panoramas of marine wildlife, including manta rays, loggerhead turtles, and bottlenose dolphins. The shipwreck of a luxury passenger vessel and coral reef systems are also explored with underwater audio recordings of the environment.

View a collection of glass sculptures of corals threatened by fishing and deep-sea mining

In "Depicting Dark Waters," British sculptural model maker Alice Baker depicts European cold-water corals, which make up 65% of all known coral species, to raise awareness of deep-sea ecosystems threatened by commercial and industrial activities. The project involved a collaboration with marine biologists from the Netherlands and Sweden.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Track individual sharks around the world in real time

OCEARCH provides essential data on shark populations and marine ecosystems to support broader conservation efforts. Foster your understanding of marine ecosystems by exploring different species and their movement.

An interactive look at Earth's history

This interactive module allows students to explore the science of Earth’s deep history, from its formation 4.5 billion years ago to modern times.

Listen to recordings of different fish species

Scientists have captured and curated this collection of species-specific recordings, helping us gain a deeper understanding of underwater ecosystems. Uncover their sounds, which include a lot of thumps, burps, and grunts.

The Southern Ocean's powerful circular current isolates organisms in its environment

The spiralling current churns up nutrients across the frigid waters, leading to the evolution of fantastical organisms, including century-old starfish and colossal squid, and unique adaptations, including the icefish's clear blood and organic antifreeze, over the past 30 million years.

Video and still images are combined with sonar data to create seafloor maps

Sonar works by sending thousands of sound pulses per second towards the seafloor, capturing the strength and timing of the returning echo. This data can accurately reveal depth, seafloor texture, and the presence of fish habitats to millimeter resolutions.

Check out this interactive 3D animation of a virtual renewable energy-powered island

The US Department of Energy’s Renewable Energy Discovery (REDi) Island invite explorers to discover clean, renewable energy options by navigating a virtual island filled with energy efficient power generation and desalinization technologies.

Scientists discover what looks like an underwater road

Crew aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus discvered a “yellow brick road” that looks it leads to Atlantis. Climage change may affect future ocean studies.

See an anamorphic illusion of a massive crashing wave in South Korea

An enormous aquarium with perpetually crashing waves has popped up amidst an urban landscape in South Korea, but don’t expect to hear the water sloshing around if you walk by. Designed by District, the elevated tank is actually a massive anamorphic illusion. The digital media company created the pub

NOAA's interactive sea level rise viewer

How will rising seas affect you? Launch NOAA's sea level rise viewer and zoom in on impacts to different parts of the United States, or type in your city or address to learn more.

The ocean's ability to store carbon long-term is being hindered by marine heatwaves

More than 4,000 robotic floats with biogeochemical data sensors, including oxygen, pH, nitrate, suspended particles, chlorophyll, temperature, and conductivity, have been deployed as part of the Global Ocean Biogeochemical Array. They have identified changes to ecosystem structure affecting the ocean's ability to transport carbon from surface waters into the deep.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

Watch this octopus win every single Escape Room challenge

Octopuses are famously intelligent, solitary creatures covered in hundreds of chemical-sensing suckers. They're also pretty fascinating pets, and even enjoy playing. The crew at OctoLab put one of its more playful mollusks into four different Escape Room-like cages to see how long it would take for it to escape. Watch this video to see the brilliant, if a bit unsettling, methods the animal uses.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

Explore the scale of the universe in this interactive adventure

The sheer enormity of the universe escapes our ability to conceive of its scale, despite the best efforts of human imagination. This interactive provides an intuitive sense of how small we are, from a single astronaut to the Milky Way and beyond.

A new scan of the Titanic reveals details about its final hours

Using over 700,000 images captured by underwater robots, researchers created a highly detailed 3D "digital twin" of the Titanic. The analysis gives us new insights into the life of the ship that lays 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic. Emerging details from close-up images, such as a smashed porthole likely caused by the iceberg, match the eye-witness accounts of what happened. Read for more insights into the devastating wreck.

Playing around with an AR sandbox

The white sand acts as a projector screen and a topographic map image is projected on the surface. An XBOX Kinect is positioned to read the contours of the sand and draw new topographic lines according to how the sand is moved.

Santa Barbara divers helped innovate deepwater diving technology

Divers in the Santa Barbara channel innovated a more efficient type of diving helmet in the 1960s that used helium to allow for longer, deeper excursions for oil surveying, abalone collecting, and more. These innovators have since set the standard worldwide for military and industrial diving.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

Explore a searchable map of underwater cables carrying internet traffic worldwide

The Submarine Cable Map provides users with data from TeleGeography's Transport Networks Research Service on individual submarine cables, including cable owners, suppliers, URLs, landing points, lengths, and notes of interest.

The fish doorbell letting people help spawning fish

Utrecht, a city in central Netherlands, has implemented an innovative "fish doorbell" system at a river lock to assist migrating fish during their spring journey to spawning areas. This unique setup allows online viewers to participate in helping fish navigate through the locks. An underwater camera is installed at the Weerdsluis lock, streaming live video to a dedicated website, where viewers may press a digital button when they see a fish.

Why deep-sea mining companies may begin extraction without global guidelines

International Seabed Authority negotiators have spent over a decade drafting regulations that all countries would have to follow before collecting minerals from the seabed. Because deadlines to finalize these agreements have been missed, some entities have discussed unsanctioned mining, despite about three dozen ISA countries calling for a pause on activity and automakers and tech firms pledging they will not use seabed minerals.

Biosphere 2 is the largest Earth science experiment ever built

The vivarium—an enclosed system including animals and plants—is sealed from below with 454 metric tons of stainless steel liner and includes an ocean habitat with more than 700,000 gallons of seawater. B2 is visited by 100,000 people yearly, including more than 10,000 K-12 students.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

Go inside a real beehive with this interactive

Beehives are where the magic honey-making happens, where thousands of honeybees beat their wings, throw up partially-digested nectar to further purify it into sugars, and make wax. The goings-on of a beehive—the name for a man-made habitat for...

Massive blooms of microscopic plankton called dinoflagellates produce the neon blue light seen in glowing tides.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.