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Articles on Underwater exploration

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A school of grunts on a sunken World War II German submarine in the Atlantic Ocean off North Carolina. Karen Doody/Stocktrek Images via Getty Images

Shipwrecks teem with underwater life, from microbes to sharks

When ships sink, they add artificial structures to the seafloor that can quickly become diverse, ecologically important underwater communities.
It should be obvious to this diver that this is a shipwreck and not a reef, but what about to someone looking at a image of this spot taken from an aircraft? LookBermuda/Flickr

AI spots shipwrecks from the ocean surface – and even from the air

It’s difficult to tell a shipwreck from a natural feature on the ocean floor in a scan taken from a plane or ship. This project used deep learning to get it right 92% of the time.
Tube worms, anemones and mussels clustered near a hydrothermal vent on the Galapagos Rift. NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, Galapagos Rift Expedition 2011/Flickr

Explorer Robert Ballard’s memoir finds shipwrecks and strange life forms in the ocean’s darkest reaches

Oceanographer Robert D. Ballard, who is best known for finding the wreck of Titanic, has written a memoir recounting his biggest discoveries and calling for more ocean exploration.
Bet you wouldn’t find this on Mars. EPA

Just how little do we know about the ocean floor?

As ships resume the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in the depths of the Indian Ocean this week, we often hear that the oceans are “95% unexplored” and that we know more about the surface…
So little is known about what lies beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. AAP/ Richard Wainwright

What is it really like under the Indian Ocean?

Not long after the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was declared missing, the world’s attention was focused on a remote, poorly known area of the Eastern Indian Ocean as the possible location of the lost…
An unmanned Bluefin-21 of the type used in the underwater search for MH370. EPA/Leut Kelli Lunt/Australian Department of Defense

Searching underwater for MH370 is a shot in the dark

The ongoing search for missing flight MH370 has shown how finding objects such as debris on the ocean is difficult, but finding them underwater in the deep ocean is much more challenging. As of Tuesday…

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