In short, President Trump’s executive order bypasses international regulation, placing the United States on a collision course with both the ISA and China. In 2024, ISA controlled deep-sea mining in roughly 54 percent of the world’s ocean through specialized contracts, regulations, and procedures. However, the US refused to ratify UNCLOS in 1982, specifically due to its provisions on deep-sea mining, and is not a member of the ISA. Previously, this lack of membership was not a significant point of contention.
These layers of ocean ooze are important carbon sinks—drawing down the decomposing bits of carbon, laying them to rest on the seafloor, and finally burying them. Bioluminescence first arose roughly 540 million years ago in a group of corals known as the octocorals. Animals can use their light to lure prey towards their mouths, or even to light up the area nearby so that they can see their next meal a bit better. Sometimes the prey being lured can be small plankton, like those attracted to the bioluminescence around the beak of the Stauroteuthis octopus.
The study notes that filter feeders and light-sensitive species might be particularly vulnerable to these kinds of stressors. From the 1970s into the 1980s, the United States led the production and refinement of REEs, processing roughly three times more REE than the rest of the world combined. However, as early as the 1960s, China took notice and began investing, taking over the United States’s historical dominance by the 1990s. In 2024, China possessed 60 percent of the global REEs market and processed 90 percent of the global REEs market. Seeking further REE supply, China has increased its investment in the burgeoning industry of deep-sea mining. Deep-sea mining would involve extracting rocky deposits called polymetallic nodules or manganese nodules from the bottom of the ocean floor.
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. Through blogs, interviews, fact files, and stories from those working in and with the deep, we shine a light on why the deep sea matters and why it needs our protection. Despite its importance, the deep sea faces significant threats, from deep-sea mining and overfishing to pollution and climate change. By protecting this fragile ecosystem, we’re preserving the life it holds, the climate it regulates, and the mysteries it continues to reveal.
In these areas, seawater seeps into cracks in the seafloor, heating up as it meets molten rock beneath the crust and then rising again to gush out of seafloor openings. The water that emerges from them can reach temperatures of 400 °C and is extremely rich in minerals. Cold seeps are similar to hydrothermal vents as they also occur in tectonically active locations, but they emit hydrocarbon-rich fluids. The palette ranges from plastic bags and fragments, to glass bottles and the remains of fishing nets, to paint buckets. Packages and bags have been discovered that have apparently been on the seafloor for decades, virtually untouched by time.
The Bathypelagic Zone (1000–4000 meters) – Midnight Zone
- Alongside a diverse array of marine life at these depths are significant reserves of copper, cobalt, nickel, zinc, silver, gold and rare earth elements.
- Near the earth’s surface it began to mix with the seawater that was able to percolate into the sediment.
- Seeking further REE supply, China has increased its investment in the burgeoning industry of deep-sea mining.
- For that purpose, we have crawlers – autonomous tracked vehicles that can be precisely deployed on the seafloor by free fall or in a cable-tethered frame.
- However, less than one percent of the seafloor has been examined in detail – e.g. with regard to the fauna living there.
- It is an area void of light (called aphotic) and at 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius), it is very cold.
Yet significant uncertainties remain about the environmental impacts of this proposed industry, in which miners would send heavy machinery into the deep ocean to collect valuable minerals, such as manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel. Some animals can thrive by feeding on marine snow.2 In 1960, a bathyscaphe called Trieste went down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest point on Earth. There aren’t any plants at all in these depths, so all fish in the deep are carnivores. This article will dive into the depths of the deep sea, exploring its characteristics, life forms, and why it is essential for the Earth’s health. In July 2025, a request was made for the ISA Secretariat to investigate whether deep-sea mining companies applying for licenses and permits under the United States‘ mining code are at risk of violating existing ISA exploration contracts. UNCLOS prohibits unilateral mining activities, and mining companies may have exploration contracts revoked if found to be in violation of this.
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Some in the mining industry say the mining is necessary to a green transition – and essential to democratizing that transition globally since the supply chain is currently dominated by a single country, China. Meanwhile, some scientists caution against mining before the full scope of environmental damage can be understood. In addition to discharging wastewater below 2,000 m, it proposes that international organizations and conservation bodies, such as the ISA and IUCN, regularly update evaluations of deep-sea mining threats to chondrichthyans.
Nature’s Hidden Climate Ally – The Deep Sea
- The deep water column, from 200 meters below the surface down to the seafloor, accounts for more than 95% of the volume of the ocean.
- It is vital to many of Earth’s regulatory processes, including nutrient cycling, carbon cycling and storage, and heat absorption.
- Meet some of our favorite denizens of the deep and learn about their adaptations to survive in an environment of frigid cold, inky darkness, and crushing pressure.
- The bulk of the most attractive mineral deposits are found on vast seafloor abyssal plains in international waters.
- Animals create their own bioluminescent light and, if they haven’t lost them, have highly light-sensitive eyes to see the light produced by other animals.
- The deep sea today is not a neutral scientific space—on the contrary, it is highly contested and politicised.
In popular imaginaries of the deep sea, expanding tendrils of fluid and smoke continue to evoke associations with war, fire, and contamination, ‘connected to hell itself’ (Ballard 2023). A realm governed by the vast timescales of geological and ecological processes—what Richard Irvine (2014) calls ‘deep time’—the deep sea has become a major geopolitical issue (Hannigan 2016), caught in a clash of competing temporalities. Despite the inherently slow epistemic process, scientists are working with urgency to fill critical knowledge gaps about its ecosystems before the accelerating mineral rush begins. In this high-stakes context, ‘getting (down) there’ is not only about reaching physical depths but also about navigating the tension between ocean preservation and industrial exploitation. Soon the skeleton is picked clean, but the fall is far from nutrient depleted.
Some scholars have even called for the Middle Passage to be formally recognised as cultural heritage within the legal framework of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which governs DSM activities in international waters (Turner et al. 2020). Indeed, ‘the blue archive and the blue frontier are two sides of the same coin’ (Han 2024, 30), and special attention must be paid to how we collectively make sense of the deep sea. This perspective challenges visions of the ‘cyborgs of the deep’ as the only ‘heroes’ that will allow society to meet the requests of the ‘Green Shift’, i.e. of transitioning towards more environmentally friendly ways of living (Palermo and Steinberg 2024, 9). The deep sea is populated by ‘unseen bodies … whose hauntings persist’ even as their stories are obscured by the plumes of the remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) used to collect minerals (Palermo and Steinberg 2024). Recognising these ghosts and incorporating Black history into our understanding of the deep sea means examining the relationship between colonialism, exploration and the ocean.
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It is a cold and dark place that lies between 3,000 and 6,000 meters below the sea surface. It is also home to squat lobsters, red prawns, and various species of sea cucumbers. Bits of decaying matter and excretions from thousands of meters above must trickle down to the seafloor, with only a small fraction escaping the hungry jaws of creatures above. Less than five percent of food produced at the surface will make its way to the abyssal plain. When the phytoplankton are gone, the animals that grew quickly to eat them die and sink to the seafloor. Finally, for the exploration of deep-sea mineral resources to continue, regulations should be transparent and collaborative, with participation from interested parties and key stakeholders — including ISA members, mining corporations and scientists.
The deep sea is not yet a distinct subfield within anthropology, nor is it likely to become one. It will probably be integrated into the broader domain of the anthropology of the ocean. Yet this does not diminish its significance as a site for anthropological reflection. On the contrary, the issues raised by scholars engaging with the Deep Sea deep sea are deeply anthropological in nature. They involve questions of otherness and estrangement, which unsettle terrestrial assumptions and challenge conventional ethnographic methods. The deep sea also invites to contemplate concepts such as chaos and disorder, and to critically examine the politics of corporate legitimacy.
Deep sea
Its margin, referred to as the continental shelf, can extend up to 500 metres below the water’s surface; only after this point does the deep sea begin. In contrast, in most other regions, this transition begins just 200 metres below sea level. Between 1840 and 1880, British and American scientists and hydrographers extensively studied the deep sea, a period marked by heightened cultural fascination with maritime depths. Scientific exploration during this era intersected with a broader acknowledgment of the economic and social importance of the maritime world, shaped by mid-nineteenth century maritime practices, technologies, and cultures. This setting was characterised by a masculine naval culture, physical challenges, and harsh conditions—a blending of scientific inquiry with maritime work cultures.
Tethered to a life at the surface because they require breathable oxygen, many large animals will make impressive dives to the deep sea in search of their favorite foods. Sperm whales, southern elephant seals, leatherback sea turtles, emperor penguins, and beaked whales are especially good divers. A Cuvier’s beaked whale is known to dive 9,816 feet (2,992 m) deep, and can stay down as long and 3 hours and 42 minutes, making it the deepest diving mammal in the world. As the sun sets, fish and zooplankton make massive migrations from the depths up to the ocean’s surface. Despite their small size (some no bigger than a mosquito), these creatures can travel hundreds of meters in just a few hours.
Like shallow-water corals, deep-sea corals may exist as individual coral polyps, as diversely-shaped colonies containing many polyps of the same individual, and as reefs with many colonies made up of one or more species. They also serve as a habitat for deep sea creatures like sea stars and sharks. They obtain the energy and nutrients they need to survive by trapping tiny organisms in their polyps from passing currents. The most important food source for deep-sea organisms is particulate organic matter, which drifts down from the surface to the seafloor and is also known as “marine snow”.