deepatlas

0.17quizzes, sharks and glass

A much better map (O): scroll or click a crowd to zoom, drag to move, a "shallows" button for the crowded coast, names wherever they fit, dots spread apart where they would overlap, and a find box ("shark", or on the world tab "Japan").
The quiz has a second round: which is bigger? Switch between "deeper" and "bigger" at the top; each keeps its own best streak.
Grey reef sharks patrol the drop-off. Disturb the lead shark (X) and it gives its threat display: back arched, snout up, fins down.
A glass sponge reef, built by sponges with skeletons of glass, some reefs around 9,000 years old.
A tasselled wobbegong lies in ambush, a yellow boxfish sculls about the reef, and a decorator crab walks the sand dressed in sponge and weed.
A school of cownose rays, squat lobsters at the cold seep, and a pram bug riding in the hollowed-out barrel of a salp.

0.16rare, tiny and ancient

New: a quiz (Q). Which of two animals lives deeper? Keep a streak going, then jump to either one.
Spiny lobsters march over the sand in single file, each keeping touch with the one in front.
An opah, the only fully warm-blooded fish, flies through the twilight zone on red fins. The mantis shrimp now strikes now and then, with a flash.
On the seamount, a basket star spreads its endlessly branching arms into the current.
A pack of giant trevallies patrols the reef edge.
Mobula rays leap clear of the sea and smack back down, over and over: watch from just above the surface.
Horseshoe crabs, unchanged for 450 million years, gather in the shallows to spawn.
A mother vaquita and her calf: the rarest marine mammal, with fewer than a dozen left.
A leopard seal circles the penguins hunting in the krill swarm.
A black swallower in the midnight zone, its stomach stretched round a fish twice its own length.
A flamboyant cuttlefish walks over the reef sand in rippling warning colours.
A bowhead whale, which can live 200 years, swims under the Arctic ice.
Dwarf lanternsharks, the smallest sharks known, drift in the twilight with glowing bellies: look up at them from below.
A largetooth sawfish patrols the mangrove channel, slashing its saw from side to side.
In the mangroves an archerfish spits a jet of water to knock a beetle off a leaf, then darts to catch it.

0.15sleepers, glowers and dancers

The Octopus Garden: pearl octopuses brooding their eggs by the thousand on a warm seep 3,200 m down, found in 2018.
On the night reef a Spanish dancer swims by flapping the frilled red edge of its mantle.
Chains of salps, clear barrels that clone themselves into strings and swim by jet, drift in the open sea.
A Galapagos marine iguana, the only lizard that feeds in the sea, grazes algae off a lava boulder and swims up to breathe.
A meadow of sea pens on the deep mud: disturb it (or swim into it) and a wave of green light runs across it.
A northern elephant seal sleeps on a deep dive: it rolls onto its back and spirals down like a falling leaf, then wakes and swims up to breathe.
Two pygmy seahorses hide on a pink sea fan, their bumps matching its polyps. The close-up angles find them.

0.14threshers, glass and thorns

A blue dragon sea slug floats upside down beside the man o’ war, which it eats.
A fleet of by-the-wind sailors drifts on the surface, each with its own little sail: look up at them from below too.
On the night reef a bobtail squid hunts over the sand, its belly glowing with bacteria to hide its shadow from below.
An Antarctic icefish rests on the slope: its blood is clear, with no red cells at all, and its gills are white.
A swordfish hunts 450 m down by day and rises near the surface at night, its eyes kept warm by a heater organ.
A crown-of-thorns starfish sits on a table coral, the plate bleached white where it has fed.
Pompeii worms, among the most heat-tolerant animals known, crowd a black smoker's wall in papery tubes.
A giant sea spider stalks the deep floor on legs that do its breathing.
A glass octopus drifts in the twilight zone, see-through but for its eyes and gut: look at it from below.
A thresher shark hunts sardines off the drop-off, whipping its long tail over its head to stun them (with sound on, you hear the crack).

0.13lunges, stargazers and frogfish

A nurse shark rests on the reef sand.
A manatee grazes in the channel off the mangroves. Swim through the sea sparkle bloom at night (WASD) and the water blazes blue round you.
A Bryde’s whale lunges up through the sardine bait ball about every 90 seconds.
A stargazer buried in the reef sand, only its upturned face showing.
Sea butterflies, the sea angels' only prey, flutter under the Arctic ice. The anglerfish now has her tiny mate clamped to her belly.
A giant Pacific octopus, the largest octopus, crawls through the kelp forest.
A feather star swims over the reef on its beating arms. A giant frogfish twitches its lure. Yeti crabs at the vents now wave their arms, and cleaner shrimp work over the moray's open mouth.
Turtle hatchlings swim out to sea in their first frenzy, and a sea toad holds its breath on the deep floor.

0.12ghosts, phantoms and spinners

A walrus swims under the Arctic ice with the polar bear and belugas. At night the parrotfish sleeps in a cocoon of mucus.
Spinner dolphins leap out of the waves and spin in the air: watch from above the surface.
A giant phantom jelly trails its 10 m curtain arms through the midnight zone.
On the abyssal plain: “Casper”, a ghostly white octopus first seen in 2016. In the trench, a supergiant amphipod, 34 cm long. Settings has a full screen button.
A mimic octopus on the sand: disturb it and it impersonates a poisonous flatfish, a lionfish, then a sea snake.
A family of sperm whales asleep, hanging upright just under the surface.
A pack of Humboldt squid flickering red and white at 550 m, and a red-lipped batfish walking on its fins over the sand.

0.11maps of the sea and the world

A map: press O (or “map”) for a cross-section of this ocean from the shore to the Challenger Deep, every place marked. Click a dot to swim there. Its other tab, “the world”, shows where each one really lives on Earth.
A new tour, around the world; search finds animals by where they live (try “Japan”); the info panel says where each lives in the wild.
A cookiecutter shark in the twilight zone, its belly glowing. At the whale fall, hagfish: disturb them and they flood the water with slime.
The Lost City: white limestone towers up to 60 m tall on an undersea mountain in the mid-Atlantic, where life may have begun.
A polar bear swims under the Arctic ice, and a banded sea krait hunts over the reef. On the sand, a coconut octopus carries its shell shelter, and an electric ray lies buried: disturb it if you dare.
A giant clam on the reef (it closes if you come too close) and a school of bluefin tuna in open water.

0.10nets, rafts and warnings

Bubble-net feeding: three humpbacks spiral up blowing a curtain of bubbles round a herring school, then lunge up through the middle together (about every 75 seconds; listen for the feeding call).
A basking shark cruises near the surface, mouth agape. Keys: N switches day and night, X disturbs what you are locked on to.
A peacock flounder lies on the reef sand, both eyes on one side.
Christmas tree worms on a coral boulder on the reef (swim right up to them), and remoras riding under the whale shark and the manta.
By the brine pool: a Venus’ flower basket, a sponge woven of glass, with the pair of shrimp that live their lives inside it.
Sea angels, tiny shell-less snails that fly on wing-like flaps, under the Arctic ice.
A shipwreck at 30 m, grown over with soft corals and sea fans, a school of glassfish in its shelter.
At night only: a swarm of glowing firefly squid rises near the surface (the atlas marks night animals).

0.9dragons and tornadoes

A leafy seadragon drifts by the seagrass meadow, and a tornado of chevron barracuda turns over the drop-off past the reef, and a chambered nautilus hangs over the deep reef slope. Under the Arctic ice: belugas (listen for the sea canaries) and a lion’s mane jellyfish, the biggest jelly of all. In the kelp: a pair of sea lions looping on their fore flippers. Off the mangroves: a box jellyfish, with 24 eyes.
Adélie penguins fly through the Antarctic krill swarm, which parts round them.
A raft of sargassum floats at the surface, a sargassum fish hidden in it: look up from below.
A leatherback turtle, the biggest and deepest-diving turtle, cruises off the shelf.
At the vents: scaly-foot snails, the only animals known to armour themselves with iron.
A pyrosome in the twilight zone: touch it and a wave of light runs along the colony.
A cleaning station on the reef: cleaner wrasses working over a giant grouper, in and out of its mouth. On the sand, a blue-ringed octopus: disturb it to see its warning.
On the reef sand: a watchman goby standing guard over the burrow it shares with a pistol shrimp.
The pufferfish now swims slim, and swells into a spiny ball if you disturb it or swim too close; the octopus hides in the reef's colours and, disturbed, flushes red and squirts ink.
In the twilight zone: the cock-eyed squid, one eye twice the size of the other, and the red helmet jellyfish (disturb it).
Today's discovery picks something you have not seen yet; share links keep the time of day; the atlas marks night-only animals.

0.8sand, sharks and depths

On the reef: blacktip reef sharks and a school of bluestripe snappers; on the sand nearby, garden eels (swim too close and they duck into their burrows) and a half-buried stingray.
A sixgill shark circles the whale fall; the sea pigs now walk; the turtle comes up to breathe.
How deep is deep? Click "depth" over the ladder for famous depths on one scale.
Ride along with Nautile and press C for its cockpit, [ ] to send it to its next stop.
Search finds words in the facts too (try "glow", "teeth", "oldest"); the atlas shows each animal's length.

0.7the shallows, and night

On the reef: a cuttlefish, a peacock mantis shrimp, nudibranchs and a puffed-up pufferfish. In the kelp: a sea otter and a garibaldi. In open water: a pod of orcas.
A rebuilt dumbo octopus; the moon jelly's four gonads now show through its bell.
Above the water at night: stars, the moon, and its glade on the sea.
Sound follows what is near: a sperm whale clicking (a buzz when it charges), humpbacks singing, a blue whale calling.
In the sunlit shallows a soft fill light brings back the reds and yellows close up.
A night dive (tours): coral spawning, flashlight fish that only come out after dark, the risen lanternfish.
Every couple of minutes the humpback breaches, bursting clear of the sea.

0.6a living ocean

Schools part round hunters and divers. Watch sailfish and dolphins slash through the sardine bait ball.
The hunt: a sperm whale patrols near the giant squid and charges; the squid dodges, jetting away.
Living lights light their surroundings: the anglerfish's lure, the loosejaw's red searchlight, Nautile's floodlights.
Disturb them: Atolla's spinning alarm, the vampire squid's inside-out cloak, a glowing sea cucumber. Click open water and the plankton flash.
Watch the night migration (in time of day): lanternfish rise 400 m at dusk.
From a whale to a microbe: a new tour that zooms through size, every animal at true scale.
Hidden worlds: a seamount coral garden, a brine pool on the seafloor, Arctic sea ice with narwhals, mangroves, seagrass and a dugong.

0.5more of the deep

Colossal, bigfin and glass squid, black dragonfish, stoplight loosejaw, ghost shark, giant isopod, Japanese spider crab, yeti crabs and the "headless chicken monster".
A rebuilt vampire squid.

0.4the odd ones

Blobfish, oarfish, coelacanth, goblin and frilled sharks, fangtooth, Greenland shark, lionfish, parrotfish, moray and flying fish.
A rebuilt sperm whale; the depth ladder no longer lifts you to the surface on the way down.

0.3above the waves

Swim up through the surface to see the sky and the sea from above.
Nautile, Ifremer's real yellow submersible, roams the atlas; ride along with it.
A rebuilt Titanic; the info panel names the place you have reached.

the reef

controls

look

go

more

what's new

how deep is deep?