Ocean Exploration Facts

The ocean exploration facts in this section provide short answers to common or intriguing ocean questions. The questions are organized in a series of categories; click on a category to learn more about these topics.

For many ocean facts, content has been repurposed from essays posted elsewhere on the website; to access the original content, click on links available on individual ocean fact pages.

Fact Categories

Underwater image of a shipwreck with paint remnants and marine growth.

What Is Maritime Heritage?

Ocean mapping uses acoustics, satellites, light, and imaging, amongst other technologies to characterize the ocean floor. This information is critical for understanding and preparing for our ever-changing environment and increases our understanding of marine life.

What is bathymetry?

$Microdebitage images from a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Image number 3 is experimental debitage; 4 shows feathered edges and unidirectional striations; and, 5 shows thinned edges and unidirectional conchoidal fractures. Flakes from the Great Lake basin.$

What is microdebitage?

Mapping watchstander Cameron Kuhle, an Explorer-in-Training on the Seascape Alaska 1: Aleutians Deepwater Mapping expedition, “cleans” multibeam sonar data to ensure consistency and accuracy.

What is a mapping watchstander and what do they do?

A hydromedusae jellyfish, seen here drifting in the water column, is one species that may be found in an oxygen minimum zone.

What is an oxygen minimum zone?

A shakedown is an expedition that tests a ship’s mission systems and equipment before a field season.

What Is a Shakedown?

Cold seeps are relatively stable, long-lived places in the ocean where hydrocarbon-rich fluid that is of a similar temperature to surrounding water seeps up from cracks in the seafloor while hydrothermal vents are volatile, short-lived openings in the seafloor created through volcanism where magma-heated, high-temperature water emerges.

What is the difference between cold seeps and hydrothermal vents?

The deep scattering layer (or DSL) is a region in the water column where there is a high density of marine organisms that reflect sound.

What is the deep scattering layer?

The high seas are defined by international law as all parts of the ocean that aren't included in the exclusive economic zone, the territorial sea, or the internal waters of a country, or in the archipelagic waters of an archipelagic country.

What Is High Seas Governance?

What are “marine meiofauna”?

What Are Sponges and Why Do They Matter?

What is a "natural product"?

Tiny, microskeletal structures embedded in an octocoral's soft tissue that provide the animal support and protection.

What are sclerites?

The Earth’s greatest migration and a major influencer on ocean and planetary systems.

What is vertical migration of zooplankton and why does it matter?

Exploration is key to increasing our understanding of the ocean, so we can more effectively manage, conserve, regulate, and use ocean resources that are vital to our economy and to all of our lives.

Why do we explore the ocean?

What is a marine protected area (MPA)?

What is habitat connectivity and why is it important?

Are sea spiders really spiders?

What is Hydrography?

How much of the ocean has been explored?

What is the “EEZ”?

Why do we explore the water column?

What is the “deep” ocean?

What are the different types of plate tectonic boundaries?

How does the ocean affect climate and weather on land?

What features form at plate tectonic boundaries?

What is the difference between a stalactite and a stalagmite?

What is the difference between photosynthesis and chemosynthesis?

What causes ocean currents?

How big is the Pacific Ocean?

What is a mid-ocean ridge?

How does the ocean affect hurricanes?

What is Sargassum?

What is a hotspot volcano?

What causes ocean waves?

What is the Ring of Fire?

What is an ROV?

What is an isopod?

What is bioluminescence?

Why are so many deep-sea animals red in color?

What does “CTD” stand for?

What is symbiosis?

What is upwelling?

How does the temperature of ocean water vary?

How does pressure impact animals in the ocean?

How do deep-ocean habitats differ from ocean habitats near the sea surface?

What is the difference between a topographic and a bathymetric map?

What are marine microbes?

What are gas hydrates?

How deep is the ocean?

What is an AUV?

How does depth affect the color of marine animals?

Do volcanic eruptions happen underwater?

How do living organisms produce light?

What is a seamount?

How has the ocean made life on land possible?

Are glass sponges made of glass?

What is an Expendable Bathythermograph, or “XBT”?

How far does light travel in the ocean?

What is a narwhal?

What tools does a marine archaeologist use?

November 3: World Jellyfish Day

What is the Pacific Garbage Patch?

Why do we study shipwrecks?

Do medicines come from the sea?

Do all corals live in warm water?

What is ocean acidification?

How have animals living only in caves adapted?

Why are seamounts "hot spots" for biodiversity?

Why is the USS Monitor famous?

What is "marine snow"?

Are corals animals, plants, or something else?

Which ocean is the smallest?

Are squat lobsters really lobsters?

What is El Niño?

How does NOAA deliver live video from ship to shore?

How do hurricanes impact the deep ocean?