Woman holding rock with yellow snail egg cases attached to it
Deborah Kelley, UW oceanography prof & director of the NSF OOI-RCA, was awarded the 2026 Wallace S. Broecker Medal on Feb. 24 by The Oceanography Society, recognizing her scientific, educational, and mentorship contributions to marine science. Congrats Deb! 🌊🚢🧪
environment.uw.edu/news/2026/02...
2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting logo
Woman standing next to an the ROPOS oceanographic ROV
Come learn about ocean science, hear from OOI-RCA Director Deb Kelley (awarded the Broecker Medal), and attend the OOI Facilities Board Town Hall (ooifb.org/meetings/ooi...) at the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. See you there! 🌊🚢🧪
21.02.2026 00:07 — 👍 12 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
A deep-sea Graneledone octopus with arms spread out sitting on a basalt rock at Axial Seamount
This deep-sea octopus wants to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day on behalf of the OOI Regional Cabled Array team! ❤️
🌊🚢🧪
It’s great work! Your ctenophore sketches are also excellent. I’ll have to browse your gallery.
13.02.2026 23:24 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Sadly I can’t go to the meeting, but I would ABSOLUTELY buy a t-shirt with that logo. Very cool. Also, all my old MBARI tshirts are falling apart. 😭
06.02.2026 23:00 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Thanks @briansidlauskas.bsky.social!
06.02.2026 22:48 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Feeding frenzy! A swarm of hagfish tear apart a N Pacific Frostfish (?) at Hydrate Ridge offshore of OR. They look like eels but evolved ~550 million years ago, before sharks and bony fish! 🌊🚢🧪
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J-1719, V25; thanks to Dr. Brian Sidlauskas (Tulane) for the tentative carcass ID!
The top of a hydrothermal vent: black basalt rock with smaller, vertically projecting chimneys covered in white, filamentous bacteria, yellowish limpets, tube worms, and blue protist colonies. Black clouds of superheated water that look like smoke billow out of the top. In the center, a long thin metal rod is sticking out of one of the chimneys, lying along the top of the vent with a small white float attached. Rod and float are covered in biofouling organisms.
The Inferno edifice in the ASHES hydrothermal vent field in 2025. Superheated fluids streaming out of the chimneys contain dissolved gases and metals used by microbes within chemosynthetic organisms, which can completely encase sensors faster than you’d expect!
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J-1707, V25 🌊🚢🧪
Fried Egg or “Egg-Yolk” jelly seen by the ROV Jason at Axial Base. These large jellyfish feed on other jellies and inverts at deep-water sites, and other species often live on or around them for protection. 🌊🚢🧪
More videos: www.youtube.com/@interactive...
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI: J-1709, V25
Three people opening and prepping a numbered series of large, gray bottles for holding water on the side deck of a ship.
R/V Atlantis SSSG Allison Heater helps V’25 student Nate Bodensteiner and RCA scientist Joe Duprey cock Niskin bottles for water sampling at Axial Seamount (2600 m depth). Analyses of the recovered fluids help verify data from the RCA moorings and seafloor sensors. 🌊🚢🧪
PC: M. Elend, UW, V25
Two purple skates (one facing left, the other in the background and partially buried, facing right) lying on the greenish-brown mud of the seafloor at Southern Hydrate Ridge. Small carbonate rocks are scattered around, along with a crab, an anemone, a red rockfish, and other animals.
A purple roughtail skate facing the left side of the image, lying on the greenish-brown mud of the seafloor at Southern Hydrate Ridge. Small, yellowish carbonate rocks are scattered around it.
Two roughtail skates sit in the mud among carbonate rubble at Southern Hydrate Ridge. These shark relatives are often seen lying partially buried on the seafloor at productive sites like this, where their prey (shellfish, worms, and small fish) are abundant. 🌊🚢🧪
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J2-1715, V25
A group of four UW students in purple gloves sitting on the floor in the ship's dry lab. They surround a triangular frame that they are assembling into a flow sampling instrument using a set of cylindrical coils of tubing and tools that are sitting on the floor next to it.
VISIONS students help tech Alex Rose (2nd from left) prep a “Mosquito” instrument. It injects dye into the seafloor at Southern Hydrate Ridge then sucks fluid into coiled tubes to measure sediment seawater flow. It's complicated to assemble so more hands are always helpful! 🌊🚢🧪
PC: M. Elend, UW, V24
might watch this video 100 times before the day is over
27.12.2025 17:51 — 👍 253 🔁 67 💬 5 📌 1One month in a minute and a half! Enjoy this video highlight reel from our 2025 OOI-RCA maintenance cruise, and check out our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@interactive...) for more underwater video and sea life highlights. Happy Holidays! 🌊🚢🧪
20.12.2025 02:03 — 👍 15 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0
A black spiral of volcanic basalt rock on the seafloor in the caldera of an underwater volcano. It is sprinkled with some greenish-brown mud and surrounded by white tube worms and mussel shells.
A lava "whirlpool" formed during the 2011 Axial Seamount eruption and frozen in time. When subsurface magma erupts onto the seafloor as 1200°C lava, it hits near-freezing seawater and crusts over with a layer of glass, forming incredible river-like shapes! 🌊🚢🧪
PC: UW/NSF/OOI/WHOI; J2-1737, V25.
Two UW students in the ship's laboratory wearing purple gloves adjust a triangular frame containing cylinders of coiled tubing that make up a diffuse fluid sampler.
VISIONS'25 student technicians Alex Rose and Emily Pinneo help sample diffuse fluids entrained in a recovered osmosampler from the ASHES hydrothermal field. The samples provide a year-long record of hydrothermal fluid composition. 🌊🚢🧪
PC: M. Elend, University of Washington, V25
OOI-RCA student worker Jolee Thirtyacre and a student wearing UW- appropriate purple gloves while they sample water from a CTD rosette on the side deck of the R/V Atlantis off the coast of Oregon.
UW RCA student worker Jolee Thirtyacre and one of our VISIONS’25 students assisting with CTD water sample processing. VISIONS students experience life at sea, stand ROV watches, and assist with many aspects of science conducted onboard the ship. 🌊🚢🧪
PC: M. Elend, University of Washington, V25.
On October 24, 2025 the RCA team participated in One Ocean Week Seattle aboard the historic sailing ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl from Bergen, Norway! Over 200 people came to view poster presentations and demonstration tables-ours included! 🌊🚢🧪
14.11.2025 23:55 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA
10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)
ROV video of an absolute mob of sablefish (black cod) swirling around the OOI-RCA benthic experiment package (BEP) at our Oregon Offshore site, about 40 miles offshore and 582 m deep. The yellow frame contains 8 different cabled oceanographic sensors. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J2-1741, V25 🌊🧪🚢
28.08.2025 06:34 — 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
A lava swirl formed and frozen in place during a previous Axial eruption
A fuzzy spider crab (minus one leg) was intrigued by the ROV and posed for a photo.
A deep-sea octopus resting on some jumbled basalt, next to a bacterial mat.
Pillars holding up a "roof" of basalt, formed by a pool of lava that slowly drained away, leaving "bathtub rings" and a hollow chamber behind.
The UW-RCA group just spent about a week turning OOI equipment at Axial Seamount, an active volcano about 200 miles off the Oregon coast. The seafloor in the caldera is covered with fantastic basalt formations, hydrothermal flows, and unique biological communities. 🌊🧪🚢
26.08.2025 22:35 — 👍 16 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
The Jason ROV being brought back aboard the Atlantis at dawn following dive J2-1725. Credit: M. Vardaro, University of Washington, V25.
The high definition video camera as seen from Jason imaging the Mushroom hydrothermal vent in ASHES. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI; J2-1728, V25.
A high-temperature probe sticking out of a small hydrothermal chimney at Tiny Towers, a vent in the International District vent field. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI; J2-1729, V25.
Sunset over the Pacific, as seen from the R/V Atlantis above Axial Seamount. Credit: M. Vardaro, University of Washington, V25.
The OOI-RCA cruise has been conducting multiple dives at Axial Seamount (an underwater volcano off the Oregon coast), including deployments at several different hydrothermal vent fields. The weather has been excellent for ROV operations - hopefully that will hold for the next few days!
22.08.2025 05:18 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Two sea slugs (possibly Hermissenda opalescens, also known as the opalescent nudibranch) crawling on the side of the Axial Base Shallow Profiler (200 meters depth). Credit: NSF-OOI/UW/WHOI; Dive J2-1702; V25
Spectacular feather stars, urchins, brittle stars, and scallops colonize the Shallow Platform at 200 m water depth at the Oregon Offshore site. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J2-1698, V25.
A swarm of krill engulfs the Oregon Offshore Shallow Profiler mooring as the ROV Jason conducts a survey after replacing the profiler pod. Credit: NSF-OOI/UW/WHOI; Dive J2-1698; V25
The OOI-RCA Shallow Profiler mooring platforms sit at 200 meters depth, over time becoming midwater islands of biodiversity as organisms like feather stars and nudibranchs settle on the hard surfaces of the flotation and instrument housings. 🌊🚢🧪
18.08.2025 03:06 — 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Breaching Humpback whale off the coast of Newport, OR. Credit: J. Tilley, UW-APL, V25
Leg 1 VISIONS'25 students on the bow of the R/V Atlantis as the ship departs Newport. Credit: M. Elend, University of Washington, V25
The 11th O&M Expedition for the cabled component of the NSF-OOI has begun, 7/31 - 8/31/2025! Live video from the R/V Atlantis & Jason ROV can be seen here: interactiveoceans.washington.edu/visions25-li...
🌊🧪🚢
PC 1: J. Tilley, UW-APL, V25.
PC 2: M. Elend, University of Washington, V25
It's finally out! 18 months in the making, @fieseler.bsky.social's outstanding documentary on deep-sea mining and an exploration of why some stories capture the public imagination while others don't.
Nodules: Deep-Sea Life Giver or Key to Our Energy Future?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jcm...
The eel facts advent calendar has 5 species of eel on it, ribbon eels which are royal blue and bright yellow, american and european eels hanging out in some eelgrass, a yellow moray, and 2 splendid garden eels which are orange and yellow. The boxes are all numbered in fun boxes with orange and light organ zigzags and a yellow oval in each with the number of the day
Drumroll please…
This year’s advent calendars…
Designed by @ehrenenglish.bsky.social…
Will be…
EEL FACTS!!!!
Get one at squidfacts.bigcartel.com
Advent calendars keep Skype a scientist running (weird funding strategy, but hey! It works!), so share these far and wide ❤️
A large group of protesters marching beneath a huge mural of a Black girl called “No Hunger” in Oakland, CA
No Kings (Oakland, CA)
14.06.2025 23:54 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The EPR is erupting! www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/s...
02.05.2025 18:27 — 👍 18 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0
I don't know who needs to hear this, but:
1) Megalodon was real, but is definitely super-duper extinct now. (If it wasn't, there'd be evidence, and there isn't any).
2) Mermaids were never real.
3) Narwhal and giant squid are real and you get to live on Earth at the same time as them!
I’m anti death penalty, but I just learned about a person who RIPS OUT THE PAGES OF BOOKS AS HE READS THEM, leaving an empty shell when he’s done. So I’m revising my position.
13.01.2025 17:44 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
