January 2025: A new Arctic sanctuary, sports for ocean science, and researching dark oxygen.

Here's our round-up of some of this month's exciting ocean science news!

Newly-discovered mud volcano in the Arctic is home to a sanctuary for vulnerable species?

Discovered by UiT Norges arktiske universitet of Norway in 2023, the underwater Borealis mud volcano sits 400 meters under the surface within Norwegian waters in the North Atlantic.

New research led by UiT with REV Ocean, an Ocean Decade partner, now shows that this mud volcano has a unique ecological role, providing shelter and food opportunities, for several marine species in the Barents Sea.

When sports and science meet for the ocean

Twenty-five skippers participating in the Vendée Globe, the biggest non-stop solo around-the-world sailing race, partnered with UNESCO to support oceanographic research.?

Throughout the competition, which started in November 2024 and will end in March, skippers from the IMOCA class carried and deployed scientific instruments such as surface buoys, weather stations and thermosalinographs to improve weather forecast and collect ocean data in little-frequented areas such as the Southern Ocean, which will be extremely valuable to the scientific community.?

The data collected during and after the race, as well as the buoys deployed, will feed into UNESCO Ocean 's Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) .?

From 2028, it will be compulsory for all skippers participating in the Vendée Globe to engage in actions that support oceanographic research.

New project aims to research dark oxygen, which could be “transformational for our understanding of life on Earth and elsewhere”

Last year, the groundbreaking discovery of ‘dark oxygen’ - a source of oxygen in the deep sea that doesn’t need light to be produced - by the Scottish Association For Marine Science (SAMS) received sustained attention from scientists and institutions across the world.?

A new project led by SAMS, endorsed by the Ocean Decade and funded by the Nippon Foundation, now aims to advance dark oxygen research in what will be “the most detailed examination yet of our deep ocean, which could provide clues to how life on Earth began,” said Professor Nick Owens, director of SAMS.

This project is one of 39 initiatives that have been recently endorsed by the Ocean Decade, setting the stage for transformative ocean solutions.

Photo: The Borealis mud volcano in the Barents sea ? UiT/AKMA3