Expedition 501 directly sampled freshened groundwater beneath the New England shelf, but its age, regional continuity and sustainable recoverability remain open questions.
In 2025, scientists drilling beneath the Atlantic off New England pumped up about 50,000 litres of remarkably fresh groundwater. It appears to belong to a vast buried system stretching from New Jersey toward Maine, potentially containing enough water to equal centuries of New York City’s consumption — and researchers are still determining whether some of it entered the ground only centuries ago or was trapped there during the last Ice Age.
The Long View