The Deep Brief #7 | Saturday 12 July 2025
Your end-of-week ocean intelligence, built to inform, agitate, and equip you.
Each week, I scan global headlines, frontline campaigns, and scientific papers to bring you the most urgent, overlooked, or powerful stories shaping our relationship with the sea. It is unfiltered, sometimes uncomfortable, but most definitely unmissable.
Three deep dives. Three quick hits. One hard truth from the sea.
DEEP DIVES
1. An interactive 3D tool helping scientists and leaders protect our seas, skies and shores.
WavyOcean 2.0 is a powerful new 3D ocean research tool created by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. It shows how the ocean, land, and atmosphere around Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area are all connected, using real-time data on things like ocean currents, pollution, and weather. Scientists and governments can use it to explore the environment in an interactive way, understand complex changes, and make better decisions for protecting nature and supporting sustainable development.
Read the story
2. Europe doubles down on ocean energy
The European Union has announced a major push to scale up ocean-based renewable energy, from tidal and wave technologies to floating solar. It signals a shift in clean energy policy, placing marine power at the heart of long-term climate and energy security planning. Investment is rising, but deployment still lags behind wind and solar.
Read the policy shift
3. The deep sea just got stranger… black eggs and asexual flatworms
New research has found deep-sea flatworms that reproduce without fertilisation and lay darkly pigmented eggs. These creatures live thousands of metres beneath the surface and are challenging what we know about marine life cycles. Scientists are beginning to suspect these reproductive traits may be widespread in the hadal zone.
Read the discovery
QUICK HITS
The ocean’s surface is browning
Black carbon from fossil fuel combustion is making its way into marine systems, darkening surface waters and altering light absorption.
Trace the carbon
The sea may be getting saltier
New research suggest changes in Southern Ocean salinity could have catastrophic effects of ocean food chains.
Explore the shifts
Marine live under threat from intense Mediterranean heat wave
It has been the western Med's most extreme marine heatwave ever recorded for the time of year, affecting large areas of the sea for weeks on end.
Read the coverage
ONE HARD TRUTH
We are fishing the ocean’s safety net
The Indian Ocean is home to some of the fastest-growing coastal populations on Earth. It is also the region where climate change, illegal fishing, and nutrient loss are hitting hardest.
A new study has revealed that these waters supply critical protein and micronutrients to millions of people across Asia and Africa. This is not just about calories. It is about cognitive development, maternal health, and long-term food resilience.
The ocean is not a backdrop to the food system. In many countries, it is the foundation. We are not treating it like one.
FINAL THOUGHT
The sea is not a mystery to solve.
It is a teacher, a provider, and a mirror. It holds the power to nourish, to stabilise and to remind us what balance looks like.
If we keep taking without listening, it won’t be silence that follows, it will be consequence.
If this newsletter helps you feel more connected to the ocean, please give it a like and a restack. If you haven’t already you can subscribe to Ocean Rising for weekly dispatches from the deep.
– Luke