News Oceans

Satellite data reveal nearly 20,000 previously unknown deep-sea mountains

The find roughly doubles the number of known seamounts in Earth’s oceans

An elevation image of Kelvin Seamount, in a rainbow of color with purple at the bottom and red at the top, on a black background.

Ship-mounted sonar reveals how Kelvin Seamount, off the coast of Massachusetts, rises from the seafloor (purple and blue denote low elevation while red is high). A new mapping technique based on satellite data has found thousands of previously unknown undersea mountains.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

By Katherine Kornei

The number of known mountains in Earth’s oceans has roughly doubled.