Oceanographers led by the Schmidt Ocean Institute exploring the depths of the Pacific Ocean discovered a huge seamount in September 2024. The 3,109-meter-high seamount is a major find. It is one of many discoveries made during a 28-day survey in late summer by oceanographers on the research vessel Falkor. But satellites are no less important in exploring the ocean depths — satellites are mapping the Earth’s ocean floor in unprecedented detail.
The team found the mountain along the Nazca Ridge, which lies about 900 miles west of the coast of Chile — a region that itself contains a chain of seamounts. But this particular peak towered above the rest. The seamount is about 200 meters taller from base to summit than Olympus Mons, and about four times larger than the world’s tallest building (Dubai’s Burj Khalifa), according to a press release from the institute.
Of the 71 percent of the Earth’s surface that is ocean floor, only 26 percent has been mapped at the level of resolution used by the institute on this expedition. The seamounts of the southeast Pacific Ocean are home to astonishing biodiversity.
Seamount. Schmidt Ocean Institute
Using a sonar system, the researchers digitally mapped the area’s seafloor and observed rare and largely unknown species of wildlife living on the underwater ridges.
The Falkor (too) team mapped the mountain and surrounding terrain using a sonar system on the bottom of the vessel’s hull. “The sound waves come down and bounce off the surface, and we measure how long it takes to come back and measure. From that, we get a really good idea (of the topography of the seafloor),” Jyotika Virmani, the institute’s executive director, told CNN.
Just under three-quarters of the Earth’s surface (about 71 percent) is ocean floor, but of that space, only about 26 percent has been mapped in high resolution, including a recent mission to explore the Nazca Ridge. Oceanographers have also studied nine other features in the area, including a sprawling coral garden on a smaller neighboring mountain that stretches the size of three tennis courts.
The Promachoteuthis squid is an extremely rare genus of squid, known only from a few collected specimens dating back to the late 1800s. Schmidt Ocean Institute
The rocky slopes of the Nazca Range and other similar mountains across the ocean are perfect homes for ancient coral and sponge gardens, where some marine life can live virtually undisturbed. In addition to mapping the mountains, the researchers used a robot to explore the region and made some pretty important wildlife discoveries. That includes the Promachoteuthis squid, which is so rare that everything we knew about it previously came from a handful of specimens collected back in the late 1800s.
“The seamounts of the southeast Pacific Ocean are home to amazing biodiversity,” Alex David Rogers, scientific director of the Ocean Census, said in a Schmidt Ocean Institute press release.
Bathyphysa siphonophores, better known as “flying spaghetti monsters.” Schmidt Ocean Institute
The researchers also discovered the Caspar octopus – the first confirmed occurrence of a cephalopod in the South Pacific – and the Bathyphysa siphonophore, more commonly and incongruously known as the “flying spaghetti monster”.
This was the institute’s third expedition this year to this region of the ocean floor. During the previous two, researchers documented more than 150 previously unknown species. Scientists hope that the results of these expeditions to the Nazca Ridge will help develop policies to protect these natural areas.
“We surveyed nearly 25 seamounts in the Nazca and Salas y Gomez ridges,” said Tomer Ketter, co-leader and marine technician at the Schmidt Ocean Institute, in a press release. “Our findings highlight the remarkable diversity of these ecosystems while also highlighting gaps in our understanding of how seamount ecosystems are interconnected. We hope that the data collected during these expeditions will help inform future policies to protect these pristine environments for future generations.”
A newly launched satellite has created the most detailed map of the ocean floor to date, revealing hundreds of hills and underwater volcanoes that had previously been missed. A new satellite has mapped the Earth’s ocean floor in unprecedented detail, according to a new study.
The first year of measurements by NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission, launched in December 2022 and developed by NASA and France’s National Center for Space Studies, has allowed researchers to study the boundaries between continents and identify underwater hills and volcanoes that were too small to detect by earlier satellites.
With a resolution of 5 miles (8 kilometers) and a 21-day route covering most of the planet, SWOT data from just one year provides a clearer picture of the ocean floor than data collected over 30 years by ships and older satellites, the researchers reported Dec. 12, 2024, in the journal Science.
In its first year of operation, SWOT collected more seafloor data than older satellites had collected in 30 years. NASA/SWOT
To detect underwater features, SWOT measures the height of the ocean surface. Despite appearances, this surface is not flat, the researchers said. The gravitational pull of underwater structures such as hills and volcanoes causes water to collect on these structures in scattered clumps. Changes in sea surface height thus indicate what lies deep beneath the surface.
The team focused on three types of underwater features: abyssal hills, small seamounts, and continental margins. Abyssal hills—parallel ridges just hundreds of feet high—are formed by the movement of tectonic plates. Using SWOT data, the team mapped individual hills and found several places where the direction of the ridges had changed, suggesting that at some point in Earth’s history, the tectonic plate that formed them changed direction.
The scientists also studied seamounts, or underwater volcanoes, which influence ocean currents and are often hotbeds of biodiversity. Older satellites had mapped large seamounts, but the team found thousands of smaller, previously unknown seamounts less than 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) high in the SWOT data.
The data helped the team further refine maps of tectonic boundaries and ocean currents near coastal areas. For the remainder of its planned three-year scientific mission, SWOT will continue to collect ocean current data, map the ocean floor, and estimate global freshwater availability throughout the year.
