For decades the abundance of a certain deep-sea mineral nodule was taken as proof that the ocean floor was a stable, slowly changing environment; only in near-motionless conditions, it was reasoned, could nodules accrete over the millions of years their size implied. New seafloor imaging has inverted the argument. The nodules turn out to require periodic disturbance—faint bottom currents that lift them just enough to prevent burial by sediment. Left undisturbed, a nodule would be entombed and its growth arrested. Their very abundance, once cited as evidence of stillness, now testifies to intermittent motion. The revision is a reminder that a body of data can support opposite conclusions depending on the mechanism one assumes connects it to the world.