A spider crab, living >6000 feet beneath the ocean’s surface, climbs down a precipice at the edge of the Dymond hydrothermal vent field near the base of Axial Seamount. These crabs are slow moving but major predators and scavengers at Axial! 🧪🌊🚢
VC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J2-1650, V24, ed. by E. Pinneo
Two opalescent nudibranchs navigate across platforms on the Regional Cabled Array shallow profiler moorings (200 m depth) near the base of the Cascadia Margin and Axial Seamount. See more biology videos and photos on our website and YouTube channel! (link in bio) VC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, V25 🌊🚢🧪
The OOI-RCA has 3 Shallow Profiler Moorings: an instrumented platform at 200 m depth and a winched Science Pod containing 9 sensors that travels to near surface and back 9 times daily: to date, >55,000 profiles traversing >32 million meters! Learn more on our website (link in bio) 🌊🚢🧪
VC: UW/CSSF
PC4: OOI-RCA Systems Engineer Dana Manalang (UW-APL) high-fiving her underwater robot friend (robotsdiscover.com)
PC3: Wendi Ruef, Lead Data QA/QC Scientist, helping prep an instrument for deployment with an APL engineer and UW student. Credit: M. Elend, UW, 2023.
PC2: Deborah Kelley, UW Professor of Oceanography and director of the US National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Cabled Array.
Photo 1: VISIONS’25 (left to right) Co-chief Scientist Mariela White, Network Engineer Nataliya Vorobyeva, Chief Scientist Dr. Katie Bigham, Lead Laboratory Technician Jolee Thirtyacre. Credit: M. Elend, UW, 2025.
Four people leaning on a ship's rail in Newport Harbor
Woman at a desk, surrounded by plants
One kneeling and two standing people working on oceanographic equipment on the back deck of a ship
Woman high-fiving a remotely-operated oceanographic robot
March is #womenshistorymonth! The 2026 theme is “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future” and we are celebrating the leadership and contributions of the women leaders of the OOI Regional Cabled Array, as well as all women in sustainability efforts across STEM fields. 🌊🚢🧪
Flat purple jellyfish with swirling tentacles
red jellyfish with many tiny tentacles
Stunning jellies photographed at Southern Hydrate Ridge during the 2025 RCA cruise. Pic 1 is a Dinner Plate jelly, active hunters that can grow to 8 inches across; Pic 2 is Voragonema pedunculata, a small red jelly that can have up to 2000 tiny tentacles! 🌊🚢🧪
PC1 & 2: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J2-1744, V25
white snail crawling on mud
white snail sitting on yellow egg case tower
A white Neptunea snail crawling near Southern Hydrate Ridge, and another sitting on top of its yellow egg case. When they find suitable rocks, the snails create huge nurseries of 8-12" towers, each containing thousands of eggs, before they topple off and die. 🌊🚢🧪🐌
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J2-1738, V25
A blue and black ink sketch of octopuses and a fish next to a colorful painting of two birds
Our VISIONS’25 UW Oceanography students included some amazing artists who helped boost morale and maintain shipboard mental health via creative pursuits! Their incredible creations included a) two octopuses and a rattail by Oliver Parsons and b) a blue heron and secretary bird by Leo Couchon. 🌊🚢🧪
Woman holding rock with yellow snail egg cases attached to it
Deborah Kelley, UW oceanography prof & director of the NSF OOI-RCA, was awarded the 2026 Wallace S. Broecker Medal on Feb. 24 by The Oceanography Society, recognizing her scientific, educational, and mentorship contributions to marine science. Congrats Deb! 🌊🚢🧪
environment.uw.edu/news/2026/02...
2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting logo
Woman standing next to an the ROPOS oceanographic ROV
Come learn about ocean science, hear from OOI-RCA Director Deb Kelley (awarded the Broecker Medal), and attend the OOI Facilities Board Town Hall (ooifb.org/meetings/ooi...) at the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. See you there! 🌊🚢🧪
A deep-sea Graneledone octopus with arms spread out sitting on a basalt rock at Axial Seamount
This deep-sea octopus wants to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day on behalf of the OOI Regional Cabled Array team! ❤️
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I tried a couple of other people to get other opinions, but you were the fastest (and @frable.bsky.social is on a cruise). It's hard to see through the frenzy! 😂
Feeding frenzy! A swarm of hagfish tear apart a N Pacific Frostfish (?) at Hydrate Ridge offshore of OR. They look like eels but evolved ~550 million years ago, before sharks and bony fish! 🌊🚢🧪
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J-1719, V25; thanks to Dr. Brian Sidlauskas (Tulane) for the tentative carcass ID!
The top of a hydrothermal vent: black basalt rock with smaller, vertically projecting chimneys covered in white, filamentous bacteria, yellowish limpets, tube worms, and blue protist colonies. Black clouds of superheated water that look like smoke billow out of the top. In the center, a long thin metal rod is sticking out of one of the chimneys, lying along the top of the vent with a small white float attached. Rod and float are covered in biofouling organisms.
The Inferno edifice in the ASHES hydrothermal vent field in 2025. Superheated fluids streaming out of the chimneys contain dissolved gases and metals used by microbes within chemosynthetic organisms, which can completely encase sensors faster than you’d expect!
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J-1707, V25 🌊🚢🧪
Fried Egg or “Egg-Yolk” jelly seen by the ROV Jason at Axial Base. These large jellyfish feed on other jellies and inverts at deep-water sites, and other species often live on or around them for protection. 🌊🚢🧪
More videos: www.youtube.com/@interactive...
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI: J-1709, V25
Three people opening and prepping a numbered series of large, gray bottles for holding water on the side deck of a ship.
R/V Atlantis SSSG Allison Heater helps V’25 student Nate Bodensteiner and RCA scientist Joe Duprey cock Niskin bottles for water sampling at Axial Seamount (2600 m depth). Analyses of the recovered fluids help verify data from the RCA moorings and seafloor sensors. 🌊🚢🧪
PC: M. Elend, UW, V25
Two purple skates (one facing left, the other in the background and partially buried, facing right) lying on the greenish-brown mud of the seafloor at Southern Hydrate Ridge. Small carbonate rocks are scattered around, along with a crab, an anemone, a red rockfish, and other animals.
A purple roughtail skate facing the left side of the image, lying on the greenish-brown mud of the seafloor at Southern Hydrate Ridge. Small, yellowish carbonate rocks are scattered around it.
Two roughtail skates sit in the mud among carbonate rubble at Southern Hydrate Ridge. These shark relatives are often seen lying partially buried on the seafloor at productive sites like this, where their prey (shellfish, worms, and small fish) are abundant. 🌊🚢🧪
PC: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J2-1715, V25
A group of four UW students in purple gloves sitting on the floor in the ship's dry lab. They surround a triangular frame that they are assembling into a flow sampling instrument using a set of cylindrical coils of tubing and tools that are sitting on the floor next to it.
VISIONS students help tech Alex Rose (2nd from left) prep a “Mosquito” instrument. It injects dye into the seafloor at Southern Hydrate Ridge then sucks fluid into coiled tubes to measure sediment seawater flow. It's complicated to assemble so more hands are always helpful! 🌊🚢🧪
PC: M. Elend, UW, V24
One month in a minute and a half! Enjoy this video highlight reel from our 2025 OOI-RCA maintenance cruise, and check out our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@interactive...) for more underwater video and sea life highlights. Happy Holidays! 🌊🚢🧪
A black spiral of volcanic basalt rock on the seafloor in the caldera of an underwater volcano. It is sprinkled with some greenish-brown mud and surrounded by white tube worms and mussel shells.
A lava "whirlpool" formed during the 2011 Axial Seamount eruption and frozen in time. When subsurface magma erupts onto the seafloor as 1200°C lava, it hits near-freezing seawater and crusts over with a layer of glass, forming incredible river-like shapes! 🌊🚢🧪
PC: UW/NSF/OOI/WHOI; J2-1737, V25.
Two UW students in the ship's laboratory wearing purple gloves adjust a triangular frame containing cylinders of coiled tubing that make up a diffuse fluid sampler.
VISIONS'25 student technicians Alex Rose and Emily Pinneo help sample diffuse fluids entrained in a recovered osmosampler from the ASHES hydrothermal field. The samples provide a year-long record of hydrothermal fluid composition. 🌊🚢🧪
PC: M. Elend, University of Washington, V25
Two crabs, one on top of the other, face the camera seemingly embarrassed to be caught in this situation.
Crustacean love! Two Dungeness crabs we encountered in a mating posture during a dive at the Oregon Shelf (80 m) site.
PC: UW/NSF/OOI/WHOI, J2-1742, V25.
🌊🚢🧪
OOI-RCA student worker Jolee Thirtyacre and a student wearing UW- appropriate purple gloves while they sample water from a CTD rosette on the side deck of the R/V Atlantis off the coast of Oregon.
UW RCA student worker Jolee Thirtyacre and one of our VISIONS’25 students assisting with CTD water sample processing. VISIONS students experience life at sea, stand ROV watches, and assist with many aspects of science conducted onboard the ship. 🌊🚢🧪
PC: M. Elend, University of Washington, V25.
The week brought together ocean leaders, innovators, and students from both sides of the Atlantic to strengthen global collaboration for a sustainable ocean.
PC: M. White. University of Washington
On October 24, 2025 the RCA team participated in One Ocean Week Seattle aboard the historic sailing ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl from Bergen, Norway! Over 200 people came to view poster presentations and demonstration tables-ours included! 🌊🚢🧪
ROV video of an absolute mob of sablefish (black cod) swirling around the OOI-RCA benthic experiment package (BEP) at our Oregon Offshore site, about 40 miles offshore and 582 m deep. The yellow frame contains 8 different cabled oceanographic sensors. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI, J2-1741, V25 🌊🧪🚢
Photo credits: UW/NSF/OOI/WHOI; J2-1737, V25.
