Bizarre sea creatures, a new view of the ocean, the race to the moon, and more
What spectacular life! Our special package on the oceans is teeming with images of eerie, delicate, elaborate, glowing and occasionally kind of frightening creatures that have rarely been seen by terrestrial species.
The in-depth report was guided by sustainability senior editor Mark Fischetti along three main themes: mystery, discovery and surprise.
As author Michelle Nijhuis shares, recent surveys show that most organisms in the ocean are able to glow.
Ocean creatures live much more three-dimensional lives than people realized, surging vast distances from the deep ocean toward the surface in search of food.
This "Diel migration"-by an estimated 10 billion tons of animals-moves carbon and other elements through the oceans and the world, as contributing editor Katherine Harmon Courage explains.
The textbook view of the oceans stratifies them into layers according to depth.
Scientists are increasingly realizing that other qualities are just as important for understanding ocean zones: salinity, light, color, temperature, even life-forms.
The eye-opening graphics by Skye Moret and Scientific American senior graphics editor Jen Christiansen offer a new inspiring view of the ocean.
As deep-ocean biologist Timothy Shank writes, the ocean is full of diverse life, unexpected chemistry and weird physics-and there's still so much to learn.
Our graphics editors at Scientific American are always striving to present complex, mind-bending and sometimes invisible phenomena using engaging graphics, building on Nightingale's work.