By Kerry Howell
Publication Date: 2026-03-06 17:02:00
Somewhere in the North Atlantic, more than a kilometer below its surface, a cold-water coral reef stretches across an unnamed seamount. Although this underwater forest never appears on a map, it has existed for centuries and grows an inch or two every year.
The reef is home and feeding ground for dozens of species that rely on it, just as forest animals rely on trees. It has survived ice ages – but whether it will withstand the increasing pressures of industrial fishing, deep-sea mining and climate change is partly a question of data. If we don’t know it exists, how can we protect it?
A new project called Deep Vision could fundamentally change our understanding of the deep sea by examining images and videos that lie largely unexamined in research archives around the world. Using AI, thousands of hours of seafloor imagery can be analyzed to create the first comprehensive maps of endangered marine ecosystems across the Atlantic basin.
