An expedition to a deep-sea ridge, just north of the Hawaiian Islands, revealed a surprise back in 2022: an ancient dried-up lakebed paved with what appears to be a yellow brick road.
The exploration vessel Nautilus discovered the eerie scene while surveying the Liliʻuokalani ridge in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM).
PMNM is one of the largest marine conservation areas in the world, larger than all the national parks in the US combined, and we’ve only explored about 3 percent of its seafloor.
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Researchers at the Ocean Exploration Trust are pushing the frontiers of this wilderness, which lies more than 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) below the waves, and the best part is, anyone can watch the exploration.
A highlight reel of the expedition’s footage, published on YouTube in April 2022, captured the moment researchers operating the deep-sea vehicle stumbled upon the road to Oz.
allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen” frameborder=”0″>“It’s the road to Atlantis,” a researcher on the radio can be heard exclaiming.
“The yellow brick road?” another voice counters.
“This is bizarre,” adds another member of the team.
“Are you kidding me? This is crazy.”
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Despite being located under about a thousand meters of ocean, the lakebed discovered by researchers on the summit of the Nootka seamount looked surprisingly dry.
The formation has been identified as “a fractured flow of hyaloclastite rock (a volcanic rock formed in high-energy eruptions where many rock fragments settle to the seabed).”
On the radio, the team notes that the ground looks almost like a “baked crust” that could be peeled off.
In one tiny section, the volcanic rock has fractured in a way that looks strikingly similar to bricks.
“The unique 90-degree fractures are likely related to heating and cooling stress from multiple eruptions at this baked margin,” reads a caption to the YouTube video.
Earth’s surface is mostly deep ocean, and a 2025 study revealed just how little we have glimpsed of the floor of our planet’s largest ecosystem.
Researchers at the non-profit Ocean Discovery League, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Boston University calculated how much of the seafloor we have imaged so far based on publicly available data.
In all the 67 years humans have been recording deep-sea dives, it seems our species has visually explored between 0.0006 and 0.001 percent of the deep seafloor.
That upper estimate represents just 3,823 square kilometers (1,476 square miles) of territory, slightly larger than the smallest US state, Rhode Island, or about a tenth the size of Belgium.
Related: We’ve Only Glimpsed 0.001% of Earth’s Deep Seafloor, Study Reveals
Like the deep seafloor itself, sometimes you have to see a concept to really believe it.
frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>At first glance, the yellow brick road effect at the Liliʻuokalani Ridge is easily mistaken for a path to a wonderful new world. And in a way, that’s not altogether wrong.
Following the brick road is a sign we’re headed in the right direction and could soon learn a whole lot more about Earth’s hidden geology.
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“Our exploration of this never-before-surveyed area is helping researchers take a deeper look at life on and within the rocky slopes of these deep, ancient seamounts,” the Ocean Exploration Trust researchers said.
You can read more about the 2022 E/V Nautilus expedition here.
An earlier version of this article was published in May 2022.