Andrew Thaler for Southern Fried Science
In the forty years since that first discovery, hundreds of research expedition ventured into the deep oceans to study and understand the ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. In doing so, they discovered thousands of new species, unraveled the secrets of chemosynthesis, and fundamentally altered our understanding of what it means to be alive on this planet. Now, as deep-sea mining crawls slowly towards production, we must transform those discoveries into conservation and management principles to safeguard the diversity and resilience of life in the deep sea.
Read the full article here: What we’ve missed in the Abyss: Mining 40 years of cruise reports for biodiversity and research effort data from deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
Read the full, open access paper “262 Voyages Beneath the Sea: A global assessment of macro- and megafaunal biodiversity and research effort at deep-sea hydrothermal vents” at PeerJ.
