Updated for Java Edition 26.3 (October 2026).
The deep cold ocean is the deep version of the cold ocean: dark blue water well below the depth of a normal ocean, with kelp, cod and salmon. It is one of the four deep oceans where ocean monuments can generate. In our sample of 300 Java 26.3 seeds, every seed had one within 5,000 blocks of spawn.
| Dimension | Overworld |
|---|---|
| Where it generates | Open sea in cooler parts of the world, almost always surrounded by shallower cold ocean |
| How common | 2.3% of the surface in our sample (about 1 block in 44) |
| Distance from spawn | Median 1,166 blocks; within 1,000 blocks in 42% of seeds, within 2,000 in 81% (our sample) |
| Mobs | Cod, salmon, squid, nautiluses and drowned; guardians in monuments. No dolphins |
| Notable blocks | Kelp, seagrass, patches of clay, sand and gravel on the floor |
| Structures | Ocean monuments, cold ocean ruins, shipwrecks, ruined portals |
| Climate | Temperature 0.5, downfall 0.5 (rain, not snow) |
| Biome ID | minecraft:deep_cold_ocean |
| Added in | Java Edition 1.13 (Update Aquatic, 2018) |
How to find a deep cold ocean
Head out to sea from a cold coastline and keep going until the floor drops away. In our sample, 78% of a deep cold ocean’s edge touched cold ocean, so it is nearly always the middle of a cold sea, with a ring of shallower water around it. The rest of its edge touched deep ocean (13%), deep frozen ocean (6%) and mushroom fields (2%), so a mushroom island out at sea is often a sign of deep water nearby.
These three Java 26.3 seeds have a deep cold ocean a short swim from spawn. Each coordinate is inside the biome, checked at block level.
| Seed | Deep cold ocean at | From spawn | Map |
|---|---|---|---|
-3286631914684898654 |
X -90, Z 106 | 388 blocks | Open on the map |
-9161542029816856561 |
X -118, Z 14 | 250 blocks | Open on the map |
-3063940091273390729 |
X -114, Z -210 | 128 blocks | Open on the map |
In your own world, /locate biome minecraft:deep_cold_ocean (cheats on) gives the nearest one, or paste your seed into the biome finder to see every ocean type around spawn. These are Java seeds; the same number on Bedrock gives a different world.
Deep cold ocean vs deep ocean
They are separate biomes with the same depth and the same structures. The differences are the water colour and the fish: the deep cold ocean has salmon and darker blue water, and it has no dolphins.
| Feature | Deep cold ocean | Deep ocean | Deep frozen ocean |
|---|---|---|---|
| How common (our sample) | 2.3% of the surface | 3.7% | 1.2% |
| Median distance from spawn (our sample) | 1,166 blocks | 888 blocks | 2,086 blocks |
| Fish | Cod and salmon | Cod only | Salmon only |
| Dolphins | No | Yes | No |
| Kelp | Yes | Yes | No |
| Surface ice and icebergs | No | No | Yes |
| Ocean monuments, cold ocean ruins, shipwrecks | All three | ||
Despite the name, the deep cold ocean isn’t cold enough to freeze. Its temperature is 0.5, the same as the regular ocean, so rain falls here instead of snow and the surface stays open water. For sea ice and polar bears you need the frozen oceans.
What lives in a deep cold ocean
Cod and salmon swim here in schools, along with squid. Since Java 1.21.11 the nautilus spawns here too, as in every ocean. It is neutral, and you can tame it with pufferfish and ride it with a saddle, though pufferfish don’t spawn in cold water, so bring some from a warmer sea. The only hostile mob that spawns in the water is the drowned, which can carry a trident. Glow squid turn up in dark flooded caves under the floor.
Dolphins don’t spawn in the deep cold ocean on Java, so you can’t follow one to treasure out here. Look for them in the plain deep ocean or the lukewarm seas instead.
Ocean monuments and other structures
An ocean monument is the main reason to dive this deep. Monuments only generate in the four deep ocean biomes, and the deep cold ocean is one of them. Inside you will find guardians, three elder guardians that give you Mining Fatigue, eight gold blocks, prismarine and wet sponges. Bring Respiration, Depth Strider or a conduit, plus milk to clear the Mining Fatigue. Our ocean monument finder lists them for any seed.
Shipwrecks and cold ocean ruins, built from stone bricks, also generate on the floor. A shipwreck’s map chest holds a treasure map that leads to buried treasure on a beach. Ruined portals can sit on the seabed too, and trial chambers can generate in the rock under the ocean like anywhere else in the Overworld.
What changed in 2025-26
In Mounts of Mayhem (Java 1.21.11, December 2025), the nautilus, a neutral aquatic mob you can tame and ride, started spawning in all ocean biomes, the deep cold ocean included.
In Spring to Life (Java 1.21.5, March 2025), the deep cold ocean was listed as a cold biome for the new farm animal variants. Pigs, cows and chickens don’t spawn here naturally, but one spawned here (with a spawn egg, for example) comes out as the cold variant.
Source: the official 1.21.11 and 1.21.5 release notes.
On Bedrock, version 1.21.130 stopped dolphins spawning in the cold and deep cold oceans (Bedrock 1.21.130 changelog). Java already had no dolphins here, so the two editions now match.
How we measured
The numbers on this page come from our own seed map engine, running Java Edition 26.3 world generation. We generated 300 random seeds and sampled every 16th block across a 10,240 by 10,240 block square centered on each world’s spawn. “How common” is the deep cold ocean’s share of those samples; “distance from spawn” is how far the nearest deep cold ocean sample was. The seeds above were picked from the same run, and each coordinate was re-checked at block level.
