Collection · 4 films

Deep Water

The ocean is not flat. It bulges where the water is warm, sags where it is cold, and follows a lumpy equipotential surface called the geoid that nobody can see with their eyes. These films make the invisible ocean visible: satellite altimetry turned into a slow global loop, a cutaway through the equatorial Pacific during a strong El Niño, and a wave tank in which three decades of sea level creep up the glass.

Sand and seaweed beds off the Bahamas, Landsat. NASA / GSFC.