The scale of human activity across our planet continues to impact the health of our ocean.  Environmental stressors stemming from climate change, overfishing, plastic and chemical pollution, and resource extraction are resulting in ocean acidification, eutrophication, and biodiversity loss. 

These impacts are complex and dynamic, and changes are occurring faster than we can measure and understand them. To undertake meaningful action to change direction, and to inform the development of sustainable resource policies and conservation solutions, we need to accelerate our scientific understanding of the ocean at all scales and dimensions: from local to global impacts, from the atmosphere to the polar regions to the deep sea, and of rates of change over time.

Global Oceans is launching several internationally collaborative project initiatives that are uniquely enabled by the utilization of MARVs. These include the Global Seamounts Project, the Atmospheric Ocean Observatory, and a new deep sea research collaboration to be announced soon, to explore and characterize extreme marine environments including hydrothermal vent systems, cold seeps, and abyssal-pelagic ecosystems.