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Guess how much of the ocean floor humans have explored

Hint: it’s less than 1% — a lot less.
By
  1. Davide Castelvecchi
A view of the seafloor marine life observed during a NOAA remotely operated vehicle dive.

One of the images captured during a deep-sea dive off the coast of Alaska in 2023 using using a remotely operated vehicle. Credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration

It is a common refrain that we know more about the surface of Mars than the bottom of the oceans. Now, oceanographer Katherine Bell and her collaborators have quantified just how little of the deep sea floor scientists have visually observed: less than 0.001%, an area equivalent to about one-tenth the size of Belgium. The findings were published on 7 May in Science Advances1.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01431-2

References

  1. Bell, K. L. C., Johannes, K. N., Kennedy, B. R. C. & Poulton, S. E. Sci. Adv. 11, eadp8602 (2025).

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