Revealing the secrets of Sur Ridge, snot palaces, and more

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Data collected by MBARI’s scientists and engineers can bring the ocean to life like never before. By leveraging a suite of groundbreaking technologies, we’re visualizing the deep seafloor in stunning detail. In this newsletter, we'll explore a rugged rocky ridge that’s home to lush gardens of deep-sea corals and sponges. We'll also meet one of MBARI’s inspiring and innovative engineers, learn more about a few of our favorite deep-sea residents, and take a closer look at the evolution of the delicate, but deadly, siphonophore. We invite you to sit back, relax, and marvel at the wonderous world hidden deep beneath the ocean's surface.

The MBARI Team

Revealing the secrets of Sur Ridge

Many mysteries persist in the ocean’s depths, but MBARI’s pioneering technology is revealing the secrets of these midnight waters. Using a suite of mapping instruments, MBARI is shedding new light on Sur Ridge, an underwater geologic feature located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Monterey and 30 kilometers (19 miles) off Point Sur. This rocky ridge rises 500 meters (1,640 feet) above the seafloor and is a hotspot for marine life.

Mapping this region provides a critical baseline for MBARI’s continued work to understand our changing ocean. Repeated mapping efforts can help our scientists understand geologic processes, monitor ocean health, and detect the impacts of human activities. Learn how MBARI researchers and visual effects artists teamed up to transform deep-sea mapping data into this stunning animation.

Creature feature

Fangtooth
(Anoplogaster cornuta)

Despite this fish’s fierce name and ferocious face, fangtooth is a rather small (and possibly lazy) predator that thrives in the deep sea.
Learn more.

Weird and wonderful

Don’t be fooled by this star’s sunny disposition.

The California sun star scuttles across the mud on an army of tiny tube feet, but this sea star doesn’t just dine on scavenged scraps.
Watch the video.

Meet Emery Nolasco—an underwater robot engineer and problem solver!

The open ocean and deep sea are extremely challenging environments, and MBARI couldn’t achieve groundbreaking science without our innovative engineers and operations staff to take us there. We’re celebrating Emery, the women of MBARI, and all women in STEM fields for paving the way for a new generation of curious problem solvers.⁠ Stay tuned for the pilot episode of our new series "Navigating STEM," a multimedia series exploring how MBARI staff has found their way to ocean exploration as a career—and where they’re going from here.⁠

⁠In Emery’s words, “We have so many questions, and if we only have one or two or three people answering those questions or coming up with the ideas, we're maybe not capturing all of the different perspectives.”⁠ Watch the vide o.

Virtual seminars

Learn more about deep-ocean research and engineering with MBARI’s online seminar series.
View upcoming lectures.

A house made of snot

Our friends at SciShow take a closer look at the beautiful and bizarre giant larvacean on their most recent episode. Watch the video.

The evolution of a gelatinous predator

Gelatinous zooplankton, like siphonophores, are abundant in the midnight zone. There is a tremendous variety in sizes and shapes within this group—some siphonophores tout the title of “longest animals in the world,” with specimens reaching more than 36 feet (120 feet) in length. A new study looks at the elaborate arrays of stinging cells (tentilla) that siphonophores use to catch prey and what their morphology can tell us about the evolution of prey specialization. This stunning image, taken by local photographer Patrick Webster, was used on the cover of the most recent issue of the journal PNAS.