“This is why we keep exploring — to unlock the secrets of the deep,” said Capt. William Mowitt

Newly discovered organisms are still showing us just how little we know about life in the oceans; this includes a new type of sponge that eats other animals, the “death ball sponge”, that was discovered recently in the Southern Ocean.

The ocean is vast, deep, and often inaccessible to humans. But in recent decades, robots and other technologies have started to give researchers a view of life thousands of meters below the ocean’s surface, unlocking new knowledge about how the ocean ...