As we delve deeper into its mysteries, we gain not only knowledge but also a greater appreciation for the interconnectedness of all life on Earth. The exploration of the deep sea is a journey into the unknown, and it is a journey that holds the promise of unlocking some of the greatest secrets of our planet. Seamounts are underwater mountains that rise from the seabed without breaking the surface. They are biodiversity hotspots in the vast ocean that swirls around them, each one acting like a unique oasis in the desert. Taken together, these assets have produced a valuable dataset that documents the long-term trends and changes in this Arctic ecosystem.
- They are often eaten by fish or marine mammals during their slow fall, just to be digested and pooped out elsewhere in the ocean to begin the cycle all over again.
- For example, in an effort to protect coral reefs, scientists could deploy killer robots programmed to inject a lethal substance into crown-of-thorns starfish which feed on coral (Braverman 2020).
- The fact that abyssal zones differ from shallow waters does not imply a lack of interconnection between them.
- In 2023, China’s investments in zero-emission technology were over double the size of any other country’s investments.
- Their carcass, pickled and preserved, serves as a warning of the toxic landscape below.
Sustainable Fishing Practices
It extends from 19,700 feet (6,000 meters) to the very bottom of the Mariana Trench at 36,070 feet (10,994 meters). In 2018, scientists officially described a snailfish (Pseudoliparis swirei) at 27,000 feet below sea level, the deepest living fish ever found. The snailfish lacks scales, has large teeth, and does not bioluminesce, a departure from what many people envision in a deep-sea fish.
Videos taken by the crew led to the documentation of organisms that spanned 70 morphological groups in 11 taxonomic categories across eight habitat types. And while for many creatures partaking in the migration is a way to avoid predators, others take advantage of the reliable movement of potential prey. One tiny plankton, a foraminfera, waits in the path of the migration and ensnares passing copepods, a migrating crustacean, in a web of protruding spines. A layer of these plankton create a dense mine field for the tiny crustaceans to swim through on their path each day. It seems like an impossibility—coming across a lake at the bottom of the ocean. But due to chemical and physical properties of water, this is, in fact, a reality.
What’s the Current Status of Deep-Sea Mining?
From individual cells of dead plankton to clumps of algae, to whole whale cadavers – which do not count as marine snow but are instead referred to as “large foodfalls” – there are meals of all shapes and sizes. Even zooplankton excrement contains enough nutrients for other organisms to get by on. Those species that gather near hot or cold springs pursue a different strategy. There you’ll find specially adapted microorganisms capable of extracting energy from the chemical compounds that the springs pump out into the water. In turn, many other organisms directly or indirectly live off of these bacteria, while others live in symbiosis with them. For example, in the central Arctic Ocean, a research team including AWI staff was surprised to discover lush gardens of sponges growing on dormant underwater volcanoes.
Bamboo coral
- The females have an organic “fishing rod” complete with bait attached to their heads, and in many species, the bait actually glows.
- Here we bring together the latest deep-sea science, traditional knowledge, and expert insights that shape our work to safeguard these incredible habitats and species.
- It does so through interdisciplinary insights from the social sciences and reflections that are profoundly anthropological in theory.
- In the Antarctic, for instance, the tremendous ice masses weigh down the continent considerably.
- Another frequently used definition considers all waters beyond the reach of light from the surface to be part of the deep sea.
They use this feature to attract males, but also (and especially) prey species. “This provided one of the most detailed observations of seafloor biodiversity and habitats at these depths,” said University of Western Australia’s Denise Swanborn, lead author of the study published in the Journal of Biogeography. Starting at roughly 200 meters and stretching to 10,000 meters deep, the deep sea is dark, cold, under intense pressure and food-scarce.
Seafloor Habitats
There, an estimated 60 million nests are spread across 240 square kilometres, an area the size of 36,000 football fields. Being on board a research cruise, sitting in control rooms where scientists navigate remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), or observing their work in laboratories—all of this depends on access and permissions granted. The deep sea today is not a neutral scientific space—on the contrary, it is highly contested and politicised. In the current ‘call for science’ to gather knowledge before industrial exploitation intensifies, anthropologists—and social scientists more broadly—are not always welcomed participants. Research cruises are costly endeavours, often funded by industry, and participation is tightly controlled. Priority is typically given to natural scientists collecting quantitative and computational data, rendering anthropologists potentially superfluous in their eyes.
Deep sea
These organisms have evolved remarkable adaptations to survive in this challenging environment, from bioluminescence to extreme pressure tolerance. Members of Deep-Seafas recently contributed to the CCAMLR (Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) Ecosystem Monitoring and Management working group. Deep-sea ecosystems are amongst the least well understood owing to the combined challenges of remoteness, vastness, and the difficulties of exploring its depths. The ‘deep-sea’ is a catch-all term that encompasses a wide range of habitats from the twilight open ocean, through globe-spanning ocean ridges, the vast rolling hills of the abyssal plains, all the way to 11km down in the deepest trenches. The average depth of the oceans is around 3.8km, and it is estimated that around 80-90% of the species in the deep-sea have yet to be described. A 60,000 km underwater mountain range stretches around our planet, formed as the plates Deep Sea that make up the Earth’s crust move against, or apart from, each other.
The deep sea is already deeply entangled with legal regimes, ranging from international treaties to national jurisdictions. These numerous and often overlapping legal frameworks are largely invisible to the public. ‘Like the ocean’s abyss, the legal abyss, too, is out of sight, out of mind, and out of the frame of reference for most lay persons’ (Braverman 2024, 4).
If an animal needs to blend in, bioluminescence can be used to help in camouflage with the use of counterillumination, a display of light that helps them blend into the background. But in fact, producing light in the deep is the norm rather than the exception. Some creatures produce their own light to snag a meal or find a mate in a process called bioluminescence. The Red Sea is part of the sea roads between Europe, the Persian Gulf and East Asia, and as such has heavy shipping traffic. The construction of the canal during Darius’s reign is evidenced by ancient records, including inscriptions. Darius commemorated the completion of the canal by creating stelae (stone monuments) with inscriptions in several languages, describing the construction and its benefits.
