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Ocean Discovery League announces the launch of the Global Deep Sea Exploration Goals, an ambitious international effort to visually explore 10,000 strategically selected locations across the deep seafloor.
National Geographic Magazine’s September issue features Katy Croff Bell, Ocean Discovery League, and the development of DORIS, a low-cost deep-sea imaging system created with Blue Robotics.
This study is the first to document that, in decades of deep-sea exploration, humans have observed less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor. This total area is roughly the size of Rhode Island or one-tenth the size of Belgium.
This partnership brings together the Blue Nature Alliance’s global leadership in advancing large-scale ocean conservation with ODL’s efforts to democratize access to deep-sea exploration through low-cost, scalable tools.
This episode of the BBC Podcast The Conversation, hosted by Ella Al-Shamahi, features Katy Croff Bell and Zoleka Filander discussing all things deep ocean exploration and challenges and wonders of working at sea.
ODL has received a $1.2 million ocean technology transition grant from NOAA and the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) for the development of its next-generation deep ocean sensor and camera system.
Ocean Discovery League recently participated in the fourth Young Explorers Program with OceanX aboard OceanXplorer providing hands-on research and mentorship opportunities to 15 university students in the fields of storytelling, marine biology, and ocean exploration.
ODL is part of a multi-disciplinary team recently awarded a $5M NSF Convergence Accelerator Grant to develop Ocean Vision AI (OVAI). OVAI uses the power of artificial intelligence to process ocean imagery.
In this paper, we detail and provide open source access to the mechanical, electrical, and digital control design for the Maka Niu system, including the internal 3D-printed dry chassis; the battery management and sealed inductive charging system; and the Raspberry Pi camera and control subsystems.
The current expense of studying the deep seas stymies many research initiatives, so scientists have developed a low-cost imaging and sensor device to make access to the deep sea more equal. Katy explains the how the idea was developed and what the future of Maka Niu looks like.
ODL Co-Hosts Cook Islands Workshop Funded by US Embassy in NZ
In partnership with Sharks Pacific, ODL is currently co-hosting a workshop for Cook Islanders ages 16-24 in ocean exploration, technology, and research using our Maka Niu camera and other technology.
Hakai Magazine profiles Ocean Discovery League's work on Maka Niu and other low-cost, deep ocean sensors to broaden access to deep-sea exploration by removing the barrier of affordability.
The new paper in Nature Scientific Reports, "FathomNet: A global image database for enabling artificial intelligence in the ocean," documents our work on FathomNet, the open image database for training machine learning algorithms to help analyze ocean images and video.
The 2022 Global Deep-Sea Capacity Assessment includes online survey and manual research data for 186 geographical areas divided into six global regions: Europe, Asia, Northern America, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America & the Caribbean.
Latest Blog Posts
Recent Publications
KN Johannes, SE Poulton, BRC Kennedy, KLC Bell. April 2026. Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea8731
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How little we’ve seen: A visual coverage estimate of the deep seafloor.
KLC Bell, KN Johannes, BRC Kennedy, SE Poulton. May 2025. Science Advances 11, eadp8602 (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp8602
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Frontiers in Marine Science
Johannes Kristen N., Kennedy Brian. R., Bell Katherine L C. Frontiers in Marine Science. 2023. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1251562
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Frontiers in Marine Science
Bell Katherine, Lynn Croff, Quinzin Maud Caroline, Amon Diva, Poulton Susan, Hope Alexis, Sarti Otmane, Cañete Titus Espedido, Smith Alanna Matamaru, Baldwin Harriet Isobel, Lira Drew Marie, Cambronero-Solano Sergio, Chung Tyler-Rae Aiysha, Brady Bahia. Frontiers in Marine Science. 2023. ISSN=2296-7745. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1217227
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Designing Ocean Vision AI: An Investigation of Community Needs for Imaging-based Ocean Conservation
Alison Crosby, Eric Coughlin Orenstein, Susan E Poulton, Katherine L.C. Bell, Benjamin Woodward, Henry Ruhl, Kakani Katija, and Angus G. Forbes. 2023. Designing Ocean Vision AI: An Investigation of Community Needs for Imaging-based Ocean Conservation. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 535, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580886