The deep sea has a PR problem. Most people have little to no conception of what deep ocean ecosystems look like, what lives there, or how human well-being may depend on them. Deep-sea ecosystems provide many indirect services that benefit humanity, yet they are poorly quantified and infrequently discussed. A new paper by graduate student […]
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Jonathan Amos | 4 September 2018 Maggie Georgieva is turning a jar of preservative around in her hands. “This is it,” she says. “This is ‘The Hoff’ – the famous yeti crab with a hairy chest,” referring to the object suspended in alcohol. Most of us would be hard pressed to name a recently discovered […]
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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 […]
Read More GAIL McCORMICK and NATURE RESEARCH for PENN STATE | 12 February 2018 Some deep-sea skates — cartilaginous fish related to rays and sharks — use volcanic heat emitted at hydrothermal vents to incubate their eggs, according to a new study in the journal Scientific Reports. Because deep-sea skates have some of the longest egg incubation […]
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MEREDITH KUUSA on LOOP | 19 December 2017 “World famous naturalist, and BBC Broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough has expressed horror at the deep sea mining project that’s about to take place in Papua New Guinea. He sighted BBC video footage of the heavy-duty machinery brought in by deep sea miner Nautilus Minerals recently. He fears […]
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The 3rd Annual Asia-Pacific Deep Sea Mining Summit in Singapore on 21-22 November 2017 saw new technologies presented by delegates from offshore industries, bringing forth new innovations for exploration and exploitation of deep sea minerals. Presentations ranged from technology solutions for commercializing deep sea mining, to new concepts of ship building, multi-stage riser systems, umbilicals, […]
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A new paper published by scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) is challenging scientific assumptions on the way deep sea vents are colonized. The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, describes two geographically close hydrothermal vent fields that support very different animal communities. Both vents were discovered in […]
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TODD WOODY of OCEANS DEEPLY ON UPI | 3 August 2017 “Over the next three weeks, the International Seabed Authority is meeting in Jamaica to, among other things, draft environmental regulations to govern the mining of the deep sea. The mission: to fulfill the United Nations-chartered organization’s mandate to preserve the biological diversity of the […]
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KIM FULTON-BENNETT for MBARI | 24 July 2017 An article just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B describes two remarkably different hydrothermal vent fields discovered in the southern Gulf of California. Despite being relatively close together, these vents host very different animal communities. This finding contradicts a common scientific assumption that neighboring […]
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DUKE UNIVERSITY | 26 June 2017 DURHAM, N.C. — Biodiversity losses from deep-sea mining are unavoidable and possibly irrevocable, an international team of 15 marine scientists, resource economists and legal scholars argue in a letter published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The experts say the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is responsible under the […]
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