OCEAN · THE BLUE PLANET, LIVE

Live Ocean Map

Dive the living ocean. The same real-time engine as the Earth map, dropped to the seafloor — the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the trenches and the abyssal plains beneath live sea-surface temperature, wave heights and tides. Then follow it down, zone by zone, to the deep.

Descend through the ocean

32 LIVE

The Surface

0 m

The air-sea boundary - where weather, waves and tides meet the water.

LIVETidesToday’s high and low tide times and heights for any coast, in local time — with the live sea state alongside.LIVESea TemperatureThe live sea-surface temperature for any coast, with a plain swim-comfort verdict — is the water warm enough to get in?LIVESurf & SwellThe live wave height, period and swell for any coast, with an honest verdict on whether today is worth a session.LIVEHurricane TracksLive tropical-cyclone tracks over open water — forecast cones and paths. The sea-side companion to the Earth canvas’s land-impact view.LIVE · BETAOcean CurrentsThe ocean in motion — live animated surface currents tracing the great conveyor of heat around the planet: the Gulf Stream, the Kuroshio, the Antarctic Circumpolar. The signature living layer of the Ocean canvas.LIVEOceans & SeasEvery ocean and sea on Earth, named and mapped \u2014 the 101 IHO sea areas, each its own colour, with a page per sea showing its size, its bordering seas and the live water conditions at its heart right now.LIVEThe Deep — TrenchesThe deepest places on Earth — the hadal ocean trenches, from the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep to Tonga, the Philippine, Java and Puerto Rico. Each shown as a clickable bubble with its deepest measured depth, the named deep within it, and one line of story.LIVEFamous ShipwrecksThe most famous wrecks ever found on the seafloor — the Titanic lit up nearly four kilometres down, plus the Bismarck, Shackleton’s Endurance, the Lusitania and more. Each pinned to where it really lies, with its depth, the year it sank, who found it and its story.LIVEAnimal JourneysFamous individually-named tagged animals, drawn as a journey across the sea. Nicole, the great white shark who crossed the Indian Ocean from South Africa to Australia and back; Adelita, the loggerhead turtle who was the first animal ever satellite-tracked across a whole ocean (Mexico to Japan); the record-breaking humpback whale traced 13,046 km between Colombia and Zanzibar \u2014 the first known to switch oceans; and E7, the bar-tailed godwit who flew 11,680 km non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand \u2014 the longest unbroken flight ever recorded; and Phyllis, the deep-diving northern elephant seal who ranged from California past the dateline almost to Japan and back, diving day and night to hundreds of metres the whole way; the record leatherback turtle tracked 20,558 km from Indonesia to Oregon and back \u2014 the farthest a turtle has ever been followed; the record Arctic tern that flew ~96,000 km from the Farne Islands to Antarctica and back \u2014 the longest migration of any animal on Earth; and a sooty shearwater whose tag drew a 64,037 km figure-eight across the whole Pacific. Tap any waypoint for the story of that stage. Our own authored, sourced tracks, transcribed from published tagging and photo-ID science \u2014 not a live feed.LIVENamed CurrentsThe great surface currents of the world, named and drawn along their real routes — warm currents carrying heat poleward (the Gulf Stream, Kuroshio, Agulhas) and cold currents returning cool water toward the equator (the Humboldt, California, Benguela), plus the Antarctic Circumpolar, the largest current on Earth. The authored, labelled companion to the live particle currents.LIVEThe Great Ocean ConveyorThe global thermohaline circulation — the “great ocean conveyor belt” — drawn as a warm shallow limb flowing toward the North Atlantic and a cold deep limb returning along the seafloor, with the places where water sinks and rises marked. The roughly thousand-year loop that is the ocean’s role in Earth’s climate.LIVEThe 5 Gyres & Garbage PatchesThe five great subtropical gyres — the slow, planet-scale whirlpools of the surface ocean — drawn as rotating loops, each with the garbage patch that collects in its calm centre. The pollution lesson on the map: where our plastic ends up, and the honest truth that a garbage patch is a diffuse soup of microplastics, not a solid island you can walk on.LIVETectonic Ridges & the Ring of FireThe two engines of plate tectonics on one map — the complete global network of tectonic plate boundaries (the real, digitised PB2002 model), from the mid-ocean spreading ridges where new seafloor is born (the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the fast East Pacific Rise, the Indian Ocean ridges) to the subduction zones where crust is destroyed; and, picked out in bold, the Pacific Ring of Fire — the horseshoe of subduction zones around the Pacific rim, derived directly from the boundary dataset, where about 90% of the world’s earthquakes and 75% of its active volcanoes occur. The WHY behind Earth’s live quakes and volcanoes.LIVEMaritime ChokepointsThe narrow sea-gates almost all of world trade squeezes through — the Strait of Hormuz (about a fifth of the world’s oil), the Strait of Malacca (roughly a quarter of all traded goods, the busiest gate on Earth), the Suez Canal (~12% of world trade and a fifth of all container traffic), plus Bab-el-Mandeb, the Panama Canal, the Bosphorus, Gibraltar and the Danish Straits, and the Cape of Good Hope as the great detour round Africa. Tap a gate for its share of world oil or trade and why a blockage there ripples worldwide. The authored WHY behind the live Ships traffic on the Earth canvas.LIVEWho Owns the Ocean — EEZsThe 200-nautical-mile sea-borders that carve up the ocean — who owns the right to fish, drill and lay cable where. A handful of nations control vast ocean estates, mostly through tiny scattered islands: France’s EEZ is the world’s largest or second-largest at over 10 million km² (from a country that is 0.45% of Earth’s land), the United States about 11.4 million km², plus Australia, Russia, the UK, Japan and New Zealand. Beyond every EEZ lie the high seas — about 64% of the ocean — which belong to no nation. Plus the live disputes: the South China Sea nine-dash line, ruled to have no legal basis in 2016, and the race for the Arctic seabed. Tap a marker for its sourced area and story. The legal WHY behind where the live fishing fleets and ships may work.LIVEThe Ocean in 5 Depth ZonesThe five life zones of the sea by depth — the Sunlight Zone (epipelagic, 0–200 m), the Twilight Zone (mesopelagic, 200–1,000 m), the Midnight Zone (bathypelagic, 1,000–4,000 m), the Abyss (abyssopelagic, 4,000–6,000 m) and the Hadal Zone (the trenches, 6,000 m+). Each is a translucent coloured band drawn over the patch of open ocean where the seafloor actually reaches that depth, darkening as it goes deeper. Tap a zone for what lives there, how much light and pressure, and how little of it humans have ever seen. Over 90% of the ocean lies below 200 m, in the dark.LIVESea Temperature AnomalyNot how warm the sea is, but how far from normal — a live map of how many degrees Celsius warmer or cooler the sea surface is than its own long-term average for the date. Blue is cooler than normal, red is warmer; the warm reds are where marine heatwaves build and the broad equatorial-Pacific stripe is the signature of El Niño or La Niña. The anomaly strips away the seasons and latitudes to show what is genuinely unusual — the number climate and fisheries scientists actually track. Updated daily from a global 5 km satellite product.LIVESea Surface SalinityHow salty the sea surface is — a live global map of the ocean’s dissolved-salt content, the partner of temperature in setting how dense seawater is and what drives the deep currents. Fresh purples mark the great river plumes (Amazon, Congo, Ganges) and the rainy equator; salty yellows mark the evaporating subtropical gyres and the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Salinity is a rain-gauge for the whole planet, tracing Earth’s evaporation and rainfall belts and feeding the global overturning. Updated daily as an 8-day running mean from NASA’s SMAP mission.LIVEEl Niño / La NiñaWhether the tropical Pacific is in an El Niño (warm), La Niña (cool) or Neutral phase right now — the biggest year-to-year swing in the ocean–climate system. A box over the Niño-3.4 region (5°N–5°S, 170°W–120°W) is tinted by the current phase and labelled with the live Oceanic Niño Index (ONI). El Niño (ONI ≥ +0.5°C) and La Niña (≤ −0.5°C) reshape rainfall, drought, hurricane seasons and fisheries for billions of people; the equatorial-Pacific stripe in the Sea Temp Anomaly layer is this same signal as a global field. Updated monthly from NOAA.LIVESea Level (Altimetry)How high or low the sea surface is right now versus its long-term average — a live global map of sea-level anomaly in metres, measured from space by radar altimeters to within a centimetre or two. The sea is not flat: it bulges over warm, light water and dips over cold, dense water, and it piles and slumps as currents and eddies push it around. Reds stand higher than normal (warm-core eddies, the El Niño bulge), blues lower. The same satellite altimetry that revealed the global rise of the ocean — a measurement no keyless raster on this canvas provides. Updated daily.LIVECurrents — GeostrophicThe surface current field of the whole ocean, drawn with direction arrows — the geostrophic currents, computed from the slope of the sea surface itself. Where the sea piles into a bulge, water flows around it, balanced between gravity and Earth’s rotation; almost all the large-scale surface flow of the ocean is geostrophic, so this one calculation recovers the great currents: the Gulf Stream, the Kuroshio, the Agulhas, the Antarctic Circumpolar. The satellite-measured companion to the animated particle currents — same ocean, a different instrument. Updated daily.LIVEDissolved OxygenHow much oxygen is dissolved in the surface water — a live global map of the gas every animal in the sea must breathe (mmol/m³). Bright where cold, well-mixed, productive seas hold the most (the Southern Ocean, the North Atlantic and Pacific); dark over warm tropical water and the great oxygen-minimum zones off Peru, off West Africa and in the Arabian Sea. Oxygen is the ocean’s vital sign: where it falls too low the water becomes a dead zone, and a warming ocean holds and mixes less of it. The open ocean has already lost roughly 2% of its oxygen since the mid-20th century. The “ocean losing its breath” climate signal — a biogeochemistry field no keyless raster on this canvas provides. Updated daily.LIVELive Currents — HourlyThe full surface current of the whole ocean, updated every hour — not just the slow geostrophic flow set by the sea-surface slopes, but the TOTAL current including the faster, wind-driven motion in the top of the sea, at the finest resolution on this canvas and drawn with direction arrows. From a global ocean physics model that blends satellites, floats and physics into a best estimate of how the surface water is actually moving right now. The freshest and most detailed of the three current views here: the OSCAR particles are built for the sense of motion, the daily Geostrophic layer is the precise altimetry-measured flow, and this is the full hourly modelled current — the layer to watch for how a spill might drift or how a storm is stirring the surface today. Updated hourly.LIVEWave Height (Global)How big the waves are across the whole ocean right now — a live global map of significant wave height in metres (roughly the height of the largest third of the waves, the standard measure of a sea state), combining local wind-sea and long-travelled swell. Calm seas read blue, big seas bright; the standout is the vast unbroken belt of giant swell ringing the Southern Ocean, the roughest seas on the planet, alongside the calm doldrums and the steady trade-wind seas. This is the GLOBAL wave field — the Surf & Swell layer, by contrast, is a detailed point forecast for a single chosen coast, and WaveWatch III had no keyless tile path — so this closes a real gap. Updated every three hours.LIVEMixed-Layer DepthHow thick the well-stirred surface layer of the ocean is — a live global map of mixed-layer depth in metres, the uniform slab that wind and waves churn at the top of the sea before it meets the calm, stratified deep. Dark where the layer is thin (a few metres, under the warm summer cap); bright where it is deep (hundreds of metres, in the stormy winter North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean). One of the quietly most important numbers in the ocean: it sets how much heat the sea stores and whether nutrients from below ever reach the sunlight where plankton can use them — so it controls where and when the great blooms happen. A genuinely new phenomenon no other layer here shows. Updated daily.

The Sunlight Zone

0-200 m

The lit layer where life blooms - phytoplankton, reefs and the animals that follow them, and the fishing fleets that follow the fish.

LIVEPhytoplanktonChlorophyll-a from space — the swirling blooms of phytoplankton that feed the entire ocean food web, updated from NASA’s newest ocean-colour mission.LIVEMarine LifeWhere the animals are — whales, turtles, sharks, rays and more, plotted from tens of millions of verified marine wildlife sightings shared by scientists worldwide.LIVEFishing FleetsWhere the fishing fleets work — the density of fishing vessels across Europe’s seas, built from satellite AIS positions, shown as hours of presence in every square kilometre. The honest, commercial-OK view of the human footprint on the ocean.LIVEMarine Heatwaves & Coral BleachingA live map of coral-bleaching heat stress — how much accumulated heat the world’s reefs are under right now, shown as NOAA’s Degree Heating Weeks. The headline climate-ocean signal: at about 4 degree-heating-weeks significant bleaching becomes likely; by 8, reef-wide bleaching and death. Warm colours over the tropics mark reefs being cooked. Updated daily from a global 5 km satellite product.LIVESea IceThe polar ice edge — live sea-ice concentration at both poles, the fastest-changing surface on the planet and a front-line climate signal.

The Deep

200-6,000 m

The twilight and midnight zones - explored by robotic floats drifting the dark.

LIVEDescend HereTap any point in the ocean and fall straight down to the real seafloor beneath it — GEBCO’s measured depth for that exact spot, the nearest live Argo float’s temperature and salinity column, and the animals at each depth, with the light fading and the pressure climbing as you sink. Where a rare deep Argo float is near, the measured column reaches past 2,000 m into the abyss. Honest where the data stops: no invented numbers below the floor or below the float’s reach.LIVEArgo FloatsThe ocean measured, not modelled \u2014 nearly 4,000 robotic floats drifting the world ocean, each diving to 2,000 m and radioing up a real temperature and salinity profile every ten days. See where they are right now and tap any one for the water column it just measured.

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Field guides

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Short explainers on how the ocean gets measured — what the satellites and drifting floats can see, and what each reading does and does not tell you.

Exclusive Economic Zones — Who Owns the Ocean, and What Belongs to No One

A plain guide to Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs): the 200-nautical-mile sea-borders that decide who can fish, drill and lay cable where, why France and the United States control more ocean than almost anyone, what the high seas are and why they belong to no nation, and the live disputes from the South China Sea to the Arctic.

How Marine Heatwaves Reshape the Ocean — Coral Bleaching, Degree Heating Weeks & the Reefs in the Firing Line

A plain guide to marine heatwaves and coral bleaching: what a Degree Heating Week is, why 4 and 8 on the scale are the numbers that matter, what bleaching actually does to a reef, and what NOAA's record-breaking fourth global bleaching event of 2023–2025 means for the quarter of marine life that depends on coral.

Maritime Chokepoints — The Narrow Gates World Trade Depends On

A plain guide to the world's shipping chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Suez and Panama canals and the other narrow sea-gates almost all of world trade squeezes through, how much oil and cargo each one carries, and why a blockage at any of them raises prices on every continent.

Mid-Ocean Ridges & the Ring of Fire — Where the Seafloor Is Born and Destroyed

A plain guide to plate tectonics on the ocean floor: the mid-ocean ridges where new seafloor is created, the Pacific Ring of Fire where it is destroyed, why about 90% of earthquakes and 75% of volcanoes cluster there, and how the two halves form one giant conveyor belt of rock.

The Flight of E7 the Godwit — The Longest Non-Stop Flight Ever Recorded

The true story of E7, the bar-tailed godwit who flew 11,680 km non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand in 2007 — about eight days in the air with no food, no water and no rest, the longest unbroken flight ever recorded for any animal. How scientists tracked her, what her crossing proved, and why it still astonishes. Sourced from Gill et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2009).

The Journey of Adelita the Loggerhead — The First Animal Ever Tracked Across an Ocean

The true story of Adelita, the loggerhead sea turtle who swam more than 11,500 km from Baja California, Mexico to Japan in 1996-97 — the first animal of any kind ever followed by satellite across an entire ocean basin. How scientists tracked her, what her crossing proved, and why it still matters. Sourced from Nichols et al., Bulletin of Marine Science (2000).

The Journey of Nicole the Great White — The Shark Who Crossed an Ocean and Came Back

The true story of Nicole, the great white shark who swam from South Africa to Australia and back — about 20,000 km in nine months. How scientists tracked her, what her journey proved about great whites, and why it rewrote the life history of the species. Sourced from Bonfil et al., Science (2005).

The Journey of Phyllis the Elephant Seal — The Deep-Diving Record-Setter of Año Nuevo

The true story of Phyllis, a northern elephant seal tracked by UC Santa Cruz from California across the open North Pacific — past the International Date Line almost to Japan and back, about 7,400 miles, the longest of any elephant seal tracked from Año Nuevo in over two decades. How elephant seals dive almost without rest day and night, why her tag fell silent 683 miles from home, and how researchers found her again. Sourced from UC Santa Cruz / the Costa Lab and Le Boeuf et al. (1989).

The Record Arctic Tern — The Longest Migration of Any Animal on Earth

The true story of a single Arctic tern tracked ~96,000 km in one year from the Farne Islands in England to Antarctica and back — the longest migration known in the entire animal kingdom. How a seabird lighter than a phone crosses the planet pole to pole, chasing summer at both ends of the world. Sourced from Newcastle University (Redfern & Bevan, Ibis, 2019).

The Record Humpback — The Whale Who Crossed From the Pacific to the Indian Ocean

The true story of the record-breaking humpback whale traced 13,046 km between breeding grounds off Colombia and Zanzibar — the farthest a single humpback has ever been documented, and the first known to switch ocean basins. How scientists matched him by his tail, and why his route is honestly drawn as a best-guess. Sourced from Kalashnikova et al., Royal Society Open Science (2024).

The Record Leatherback — The Turtle That Crossed the Whole Pacific

The true story of a female leatherback turtle satellite-tracked 20,558 km over 647 days from her nesting beach at Jamursba-Medi in Papua, Indonesia, to her feeding grounds off Oregon and back — the longest migration ever recorded for any ocean-going vertebrate at the time. Why she crossed an entire ocean, and what it means for a critically endangered species. Sourced from NOAA Fisheries / WWF-Indonesia (Dutton, Benson & Hitipeuw, 2007).

The Sooty Shearwater — A Figure-Eight Across the Whole Pacific

The true story of a sooty shearwater tracked 64,037 km in a figure-eight across the entire Pacific Ocean — from a New Zealand breeding island to feeding grounds off Japan, Alaska and California and back — the longest migration ever recorded electronically at the time. How a small, abundant seabird chases an endless summer between the hemispheres. Sourced from Shaffer et al., PNAS (2006).

What Is a Sea Temperature Anomaly? — How Much Warmer Than Normal the Ocean Is, El Niño, and Marine Heatwaves

A plain guide to the sea-surface temperature anomaly: why 'how far from normal' tells you more than 'how warm,' how the blue-to-red diverging map is built, how the equatorial Pacific stripe reveals El Niño and La Niña, and why persistent warm anomalies are the working definition of a marine heatwave.

What Are El Niño and La Niña? — The ENSO Cycle, the Oceanic Niño Index, and How One Patch of Pacific Ocean Moves the Whole World's Weather

A plain guide to El Niño and La Niña: what the ENSO cycle is, how the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) measures it from one box of equatorial Pacific, why ±0.5°C is the dividing line, and how a few degrees of warming or cooling out at sea reshapes rainfall, drought, hurricanes and fisheries for billions of people.

What Is Dissolved Oxygen in the Ocean? — Dead Zones, Oxygen-Minimum Zones, and a Sea Losing Its Breath

A plain guide to dissolved oxygen in the ocean: what 'how much oxygen is in the water' actually measures, why cold seas hold more than warm ones, where the great oxygen-minimum zones and dead zones are, and why a warming ocean is slowly losing the oxygen that every animal in the sea must breathe.

What Is Sea Level Anomaly? — Satellite Altimetry, Ocean Eddies, and the Currents It Reveals

A plain guide to sea-level anomaly and satellite altimetry: what 'how high the sea surface is' actually measures, why the ocean is not flat, how radar satellites read its hills and valleys to within a centimetre, how those slopes give the surface currents, and why the slow global rise of the sea is the headline signal of a warming world.

What Is Sea Surface Salinity? — How Salty the Ocean Is, River Plumes, and the Global Water Cycle

A plain guide to sea-surface salinity: what 'how salty the sea is' actually measures, why the open ocean sits near 35 PSU, why the subtropics are salty and the equator is fresh, how the great river plumes show up from space, and why salinity is both a rain-gauge for the planet and an engine of the deep ocean currents.

How Many Oceans and Seas Are There?

There is one connected world ocean — but how many oceans and seas do we name? A plain guide to the difference between an ocean and a sea, why the count is 5 oceans and dozens of seas, and where the official boundaries come from.

The Great Ocean Conveyor — How the Sea Moves Heat Around the Whole Planet

A plain guide to the thermohaline circulation, the slow global loop that ties every ocean together. How warm surface water sinks in the far north, returns along the deep seafloor over a thousand years, why it keeps Europe mild, and what the AMOC is.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch — And the Truth About the Trash-Island Myth

A plain guide to the five ocean gyres and the garbage patches that gather in them. How big the Great Pacific Garbage Patch really is, why it is a diffuse soup of microplastics rather than a solid island, what it is made of, and why prevention beats cleanup.

The Ocean in Five Zones — From the Sunlit Surface to the Hadal Deep

The sea is not one place but a stack of worlds, each colder, darker and under more pressure than the last. A plain guide to the five depth zones — sunlight, twilight, midnight, abyss and the hadal trenches — what lives in each, and where measured data runs out.

Warm Currents and Cold Currents — How the Ocean Carries Heat Around the World

A plain guide to the great surface currents: why the Gulf Stream, Kuroshio and Agulhas run warm and poleward while the Humboldt, California and Benguela run cold and equatorward, what a sverdrup is, and why these currents set climates and feed the world's fisheries.

What Is an Argo Float — and What Does “Measured, Not Modelled” Mean?

Nearly 4,000 robotic floats drift the world ocean, diving to 2,000 m and reading its temperature and salinity every ten days. A plain guide to what an Argo float is, how it works, the difference between core and BGC floats, and why “measured, not modelled” matters.

What Fishing-Vessel Density Shows — How AIS Reveals Where Boats Work

Fishing-fleet maps are not live boat tracks — they are a month of satellite positions added together into a density grid. A plain guide to what fishing-vessel density is, how AIS builds it, what the colours mean, and where it stops being reliable.

How Hurricanes Form: Warm Seas, Spin & the Eye

A clear, calm explanation of how a tropical cyclone is born — why it needs warm ocean water, how the planet's spin organises it, what the eye and eyewall are, and what a forecast cone really shows.

How to Read a Surf Report: Wave Height, Period & Swell

What the three key surf numbers actually mean — significant wave height, swell period and swell direction — why period matters as much as height, and why the open-sea reading isn't the wave that breaks at your beach.

What Causes the Tides? The Moon, the Sun & Spring Tides

A plain-language guide to why the sea rises and falls twice a day: how the Moon's gravity pulls the ocean into bulges, why high tide arrives later each day, and what spring and neap tides really are.

Sea-Surface Temperature: What It Is & Why It Matters

What the sea-temperature number actually measures, why the water stays warm long after summer ends, how currents swing it along a coast, and why unusually warm seas matter for coral and storms.