MaréOcean Institute, Horta, Azores
We measure the Atlantic from the surface to 4,000 m: its waves, its tide, and the light that stops on the way down. This is the sea as our instruments see it, today.
Read today's seaRaise the wind. Watch the sea build.
A sea that has had time and room to grow answers its wind in a known way. Set the wind and the surface beside you, the wave height and the period all follow it.
- Wave height
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- Period
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A fully developed sea (Pierson–Moskowitz). Real seas are younger and messier; this is the ideal one.
The harbour breathes twice a day.
The Moon pulls the water out of the harbour and back every twelve hours and twenty-five minutes. The ring shows where it is in that breath right now, from your clock.
- Next high water
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- Next low water
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Sunlight
Everything that eats, eventually, eats from here. Plankton turn sunlight into the sea's first food, and our moored buoys count them by the colour they leave in the water.
Twilight
Red is the first colour to go and blue the last. At night, billions of animals rise from here to feed at the surface and sink again before dawn: the largest migration on Earth, every day.
Midnight
No sunlight at all. The only light is made by the animals themselves. Our landers sit on the slope for six months at a time and photograph whatever comes to look at them.
The floor
Two degrees, four hundred atmospheres, and a slow snow of everything that died above. A sediment core from here holds a hundred thousand years in a metre of mud.
Come aboard for a leg.
Each summer the research ship takes four guests per leg. You stand a watch, help recover a mooring, and learn to read the sea from the bridge.
- Leg 1Horta to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 9 days
- Leg 2Moorings of the Princesa Alice bank, 6 days
- Leg 3Deep landers, 3,800 m, 12 days