The Coastal Naturalist

278 Sharks at Sunrise: Maya Bay Just Counted Its Biggest Shark Gathering Ever

During Maya Bay's annual two-month closure, Thai researchers counted a record 278 blacktip reef sharks in one dawn drone...

19 Sep 2026

The Coral That Grows Like a Tent With No Poles: Paragorgia quitinosa and the Molecule That Built It

A new bubblegum coral named from a Nazca Ridge seamount solves a century-old puzzle: how do corals with no skeleton grow...

15 Sep 2026

Live From 5,500 Metres Down: You Can Watch Robots Explore an Unseen Ocean — Free, All Week

A NOAA expedition is live-streaming free daily ROV dives from 2,000 to 6,000 metres deep around American Samoa until Sep...

08 Sep 2026

Alaska’s Deep Coral Gardens Are Teaching Scientists How Ocean Currents Arrange Life

A new NOAA-backed study turns Alaska’s deep seafloor into something wonderfully readable. By tracing coral and sponge co...

02 Sep 2026

How Sur Ridge’s Coral Observatory Turns the Deep Sea Into a Living Laboratory

A hidden ridge off California is becoming one of the ocean’s most exciting living laboratories. With fine-scale mapping,...

31 Aug 2026

149 New Species Are Turning Indian Ocean Seamounts Into a Living Staircase

Fresh reporting on a deep-ocean survey near Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands shows how 22 remote seamoun...

27 Aug 2026

Deep Alaska’s Coral and Sponge Gardens Are Giving Scientists a Brighter Map of the Ocean

Fresh analysis of NOAA expedition footage is revealing that Alaska’s deep seafloor holds remarkably dense coral and spon...

26 Aug 2026

A 7-Kilometre-Deep Whale Necropolis Is Turning the Indian Ocean Floor Into a Living Archive

Scientists have mapped a vast whale graveyard in the Diamantina Zone of the southeastern Indian Ocean, where ancient bon...

23 Aug 2026

New Atlantic Vent Fields Are Turning the Deep Sea Into a Living Map

A 35-day Atlantic expedition has turned one of the ocean’s least explored transform-fault zones into a vivid new map of...

17 Aug 2026

A Deep-Sea Octopus Nursery Just Got Its Sharpest Map Yet

MBARI’s latest surveys of the Octopus Garden near Davidson Seamount are turning one of the ocean’s most surprising nurse...

15 Aug 2026

How AI Is Learning to Spot Deep-Sea Animals in Real Time

New NOAA and MBARI projects are teaching underwater robots to spot, track, and classify deep-sea animals in real time. W...

13 Aug 2026

The Cook Islands Just Opened a Live Window Into the Deep Pacific

A NOAA-Cook Islands expedition is turning one of the least-seen parts of the Pacific into a public science event, with l...

04 Aug 2026