Research below the thermocline
Sublevel 7 is an autonomous deep-sea research station operating at 3,200 metres below the surface in the abyssal zone of the Pacific Ocean. We maintain a permanent sensor array across 12,000 square kilometres of seafloor, collecting continuous data on benthic ecosystems, hydrothermal vent chemistry, and abyssal current dynamics.
Our mission is straightforward: document what lives in the dark before we lose it. Industrial seabed mining, deep-sea trawling, and climate-driven oxygen depletion are transforming abyssal ecosystems faster than we can catalogue them. Every expedition adds to a growing archive of species — many of them new to science — captured in sonar profiles, sediment cores, and specimen logs like the ones below.