More of the United States lies beneath the ocean than above it. No, that’s not because global warming has caused sea levels to rise catastrophically. That’s the way it has been since long before the country was known as the United States. What’s more, this Submerged America, as it’s sometimes called, is not some forsaken place. It’s filled with vibrant animals, gardens, forests, mountains, volcanoes, mesas, and canyons.
The United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone extends its borders well into the ocean. It surrounds US lands from American Samoa in the Pacific Ocean and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands in the Bering Sea to the Atlantic seaboard in the east and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea. Only a fraction of Submerged America has been explored by humans; just half has been mapped using sonar. We have better and more complete
