The worldwide network of telecommunications cables lying on the bottom of the world's oceans offers unique potential for scientific use if the fibre-optic cables themselves are used as or equipped with sensors. Based on this, the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel are now setting up the research infrastructure SAFAtor (SMART Cables And Fiber-optic Sensing Amphibious Demonstrator), that can be used to monitor the world's oceans. It will be included in the portfolio of the major Helmholtz infrastructures and funded by the Helmholtz Association with 30 million euros as a strategic development investment. Among other things, the plan is to equip initially one demonstrator cable with appropriate sensor technology before deploying it in the deep sea in order to obtain important real-time data on climate and geological hazards. So far, almost no data exists from the seafloor. SAFAtor aims to close this data gap in the oceans. GFZ scientist Prof. Dr Fabrice Cotton, head of GFZ Section “Seismic Hazard and Risk Dynamic” is the project lead (PI). Co-PIs are GFZ researchers Prof. Dr Charlotte Krawczyk, Director of GFZ-Department Geophysics, who will take over the lead after two and a half years as scheduled, and Prof. Dr Frederik Tilmann, Head of GFZ Section “Seismology”, as well as Prof. Laura Wallace, Head of GEOMAR Research Unit “Marine Geodynamics”. The SAFAtor project will run for five years and will start with a kick-off meeting at the GFZ on Potsdam's Telegrafenberg on 5-6 March 2025.

Ideal locations and scales for offshore wind installations depend on both physical conditions and social acceptability. Rudolph Santarromana and colleagues conducted a spatial multi-criteria analysis considering both techno-economics and a socio-environmental impacts, including a broad range of possible concerns, including visual, fishing, marine life, and vessel traffic impacts.

An exploratory expedition describes two deep-sea, low oxygen ecosystems in the Red Sea, including some surprising fish. 

Some of the world’s leading scientific infrastructures, institutions and experts relating to biodiversity information are uniting around a new 10-year roadmap to ‘liberate’ data presently trapped in research publications. The initiative aims to enable the creation of a ‘libroscope’ - a mechanism for unlocking and linking data from scientific literature to support understanding of biodiversity, as the microscope and telescope previously revolutionized science.

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have discovered that what was previously thought to be a unique seaweed species of bladderwrack for the Baltic Sea is in fact a giant clone of common bladderwrack, perhaps the world's largest clone overall.  The discovery has implications for predicting the future of seaweed in a changing ocean.

Comprehensive screening analysis of organohalogen compounds in blubber samples of 11 toothed whale species stranded on Japanese coasts revealed species-specific accumulation profiles, with a total of over 300 organohalogen compounds detected. For the first time, the composition profiles of marine natural products were found to be useful indicators of the feeding habitats and migration history of individual whale species. The research findings were published in Environmental Science & Technology on February 14, 2025.