By: L.N. Reklai
KOROR, Palau (Sept. 16, 2025) — Scientists have discovered a massive undersea mountain north of Palau that rises higher than most peaks in the Rocky Mountains, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The seamount, located about 250 miles north of Palau, measures roughly 2.6 miles tall from the seafloor to its peak, which remains submerged just 800 feet below the ocean’s surface.
“This seamount stretches from the abyssal plain at roughly 4,400 meters (2.7 miles) depth to its peak — meaning it is about 4,200 meters (2.6 miles) tall,” NOAA marine policy fellow Garret O’Donnell wrote in a field report published Sept. 2. “By comparison, Pikes Peak, one of Colorado’s fabled ‘14’ers,’ stands at 14,110 feet (4,302 meters) tall. This unnamed undersea mountain would look right at home among the American Rockies instead of submerged beneath the choppy waters of the western Pacific Ocean.”
The finding was made during NOAA’s Beyond the Blue expedition, which is conducting mapping operations in unexplored deep-water regions of the Palau National Marine Sanctuary. Using multibeam sonar, researchers confirmed the feature first hinted at in nautical charts in 2023.
O’Donnell said the sheer scale of the discovery surprised the team. “It’s funny to me that were we not actively mapping these features, we would have no idea that a mountain half the height of Mount Everest lies directly beneath us,” he wrote.
Seamounts are typically extinct volcanoes that either never reached the surface or became submerged over time. NOAA estimates there may be more than 100,000 such features across the world’s oceans, but less than one-tenth of a percent have been explored.
For Palau, the discovery underscores the vast, largely uncharted world within its national waters, an area already recognized globally for its biodiversity and conservation efforts.
“I can’t help but think about the variety of organisms and geologic features that sit below us, undisturbed and undiscovered,” O’Donnell added. “Maybe one day the map we made of this behemoth will be used to navigate the feature with a remotely operated vehicle to get a closer look.”
The expedition continues to survey the region, expanding scientific knowledge of one of the Pacific’s most mysterious and ecologically important frontiers.
