International Nekton Science Team Sets Sail on Maldives Mission to Explore the Depths of the World's Lowest-Lying Nation

Scientists from the UK-based Nekton Mission - who will be joined by 10 aquanauts from the Maldives - are about to go where no human has gone before.

Over the next five weeks they'll be living aboard the RV Odyssey explorer and diving deep into the Indian Ocean, in three-person submersibles, to map and sample the waters off the Maldives -the world's lowest-lying nation.

OLIVER STEEDS, NEKTON MISSION LEADER said "The goal of this mission here in the Maldives is to do the first systematic survey from the surface down to about 1000 metres. Maldives is a country that is 99 percent ocean, it's also on the frontline of the climate crisis. People of the Maldives have done very little to cause the climate crisis yet here in the Maldives we are on the front line. The ocean is rising and it's going to hit places like the Maldives first." 

The data they gather on ocean health from the surface down to 1000 metres will be captured using a range of cutting edge technologies and will provide vital information to Maldives policy makers, whose country is on the frontline of the climate crisis.