2018 was a banner year for studies highlighting the importance of hydrothermal vents not just to the highly specialized communities that thrive around seafloor massive sulphides, but also to the surrounding benthic community. Vents provide nursery grounds for octopuses and deep-sea skates, but they also provide food for deep-sea and shallow water animals. At shallow-water […]
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Rachel Pendergrass | 15 November 2018 Giant gyers of floating plastic have long been at the forefront of the public conversation around ocean pollution, but there has been a dearth of research on the deeper issue of plastic that reaches below the surface. Since the onset of mainstream plastic production begin in the 1940s and […]
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If you were to ask a new stakeholder to name the most frustrating aspect of trying to understand the current state of deep-sea mining, they would likely begin with the arcane acronyms and idioms of The Authority (that’s the International Seabed Authority for those still struggling with the lingo). Not far behind would be the […]
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The Deep-sea Biology Symposium convened last week for its triennial meeting. Over the course of 5 days, participants shared the latest discoveries in deep-sea biology, ecology, and stewardship. Not surprisingly, deep-sea mining played a major role in the weeks discussion. Though it’s hard to capture the breadth of the topics discussed (and many presentations remain […]
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A series of tantalizing tracks on the seafloor led Dr. Leigh Marsh on a journey of discovery that could have significant implications for our understanding of the ecology of nodule fields while extending the record for deep diving marine mammals by over 1000 meters. It began in 2015, when the science team aboard the RRS […]
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The last half year saw a slate of great studies highlighting the diversity, distribution, and resilience (or lack thereof) of the animals that live in polymetallic nodule fields. While there are many, many more, we have selected a cross-section of the more unusual and unexpected findings. Sponges Sponges, particularly glass sponges, may prove to be […]
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One of the most tantalizing emerging trends from the last half year are new studies showing connections between ecosystems found on and surrounding hydrothermal vents and wider deep-sea communities. Much effort has been spent understanding how hydrothermal vent ecosystems are connected to each other but relatively few studies investigate how those communities are connected to […]
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Three new journal papers published since the beginning of the year highlight the complexity of deep sea ecosystems and reveal new information on some of the same seabed features targeted for seabed mining exploitation. Deep Sea Fish Use Hydrothermal Vents to Incubate Eggs A new study in the journal Scientific Reports reveals that species of […]
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Two new papers in major scientific journals opened the new year with a focus on the potential environmental impacts of deep sea mining. The papers, published in Science and Frontiers in Marine Science, took big-picture looks at current scientific evidence on the impacts of seabed mining in the context of increased demand for key minerals […]
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MATTHEW O. BERGER on OCEANS DEEPLY | 22 January 2018 Determining whether new immunotherapies are successfully fighting cancer cells can be difficult and expensive. Creatures from the depths of the ocean might be able to change that. Those were the findings of a recent research project, and they underscore what a number of scientists and […]
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