Deep sea Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Notably, this period included the first global deep-sea exploration, conducted by the HMS Challenger expedition (1873–76), which carried out meteorological and biological observations, as well as soundings to identify potential submarine cable routes. 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. Once the trip is complete, this decomposing hodgepodge can be a welcome food source for animals in deep water and on the sea floor that don’t have reliable food in the sparse darkness. Some animals, such as the vampire squid and its special feeding filaments, have special adaptations to help them better catch and eat the falling particles. The snow is also important to small, growing animals, such as eel larvae, which rely on the snow for months during their development. Deep Sea Marine snow clumps are also swarming with microbes—tiny organisms ranging from algae to bacteria—that form communities around the sinking particles.

What Are the Potential Benefits of Deep-Sea Mining?

Several canals were built in ancient times from the Nile to the Red Sea along or near the line of the present Sweet Water Canal, but none lasted for long. During the first half of the 20th century, the Red Sea slave trade attracted substantial international condemnation. A previous version of this story incorrectly said that copper, cobalt and nickel are rare earth elements. The metals that companies are targeting are used in many green technologies like electric cars and wind turbines – but mining them is destructive to the environment.
The whale’s roundness symbolises the idea of the globe as something to be conquered, mapped, and controlled, while its elusiveness reflects the unattainable nature of these desires when driven by capitalist and colonial imperatives. The abyss is also the space of ‘the Drexciyan myth’, developed by Drexciya—an electronic music duo from Detroit, composed of James Stinson and Gerald Donald. They reimagine the transatlantic voyage of slaves (‘the Middle Passage’) as the origin of an underwater nation, born from the unborn children of enslaved African pregnant women thrown overboard during the transatlantic crossing. Such Afrofuturist mythology—expressed through music, visual art, comic books and novellas—show that our understandings of the deep sea are deeply historically informed, often harking back to times of slavery and colonialism.

Rattail fish

• For much of the deep ocean, food rains down from above in the form of marine snow.
• The sensory modes through which the deep sea has been scientifically understood have evolved over time—from the tactile to the auditory and, finally, to the visual (Helmreich 2009).
• 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.
• As a result, scientists working in the deep sea constantly encounter new species and other surprises.
• Mining for these materials on land is already well established, but with demand surging, some are now looking to tap the seafloor for its millions of square kilometers of metal ores.

China is increasingly motivated to lead the energy transition for key strategic reasons. China’s investment in a future without fossil fuels can be explained by China’s desire to both decrease its dependence on foreign energy imports and increase global dependence on Chinese green technology. Circularity is an important pathway to meet the demand for minerals while reducing dependency on new mining. IEA estimates that significantly scaling up recycling could reduce the need for newly mined minerals by 40% for copper and nickel and 25% for lithium and cobalt by 2050.

Fish

In the name of science and for the ‘love of facts’—and because environmental assessments are essential for regulating the future of deep-sea mining—scientific research can sometimes become entangled in extractive logics. For instance, whether or not to extract a sample from an active hydrothermal vent can become a point of contention among scientists. 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 deep sea is the largest habitat on Earth.

Discoveries about life here are providing new routes for medicine and clues about the beginnings of life on Earth. The test being used to diagnose COVID-19 was developed using an enzyme isolated from a microbe found in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. As in the oil and gas sector, environmental risk legislation in the DSM sector is tightly linked to the setting of ecological thresholds.

• Decades later, the scars are still clearly recognisable, and there have been lasting changes to the biotic community.
• Nematodes make up 90 percent of the organisms living in the sediment; much more rarely, crabs and polychaetes can also be found.
• Most people onshore remain unaware of ‘those dark, remote, and unexciting practices that take place in locations so vastly removed from the ocean’ (Braverman 2024, 4).
• “What does that mean for metal accumulation in a very real and large global trade?
• The deep sea is defined as the part of the ocean that lies below the photic zone, where sunlight does not penetrate.
• A cold seep is a place on the ocean floor where fluids and gases trapped deep in the earth percolate up to the seafloor.
• UNCLOS prohibits unilateral mining activities, and mining companies may have exploration contracts revoked if found to be in violation of this.

Whale falls occur when a whale dies in surface waters and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. The sudden arrival of food prompts creatures from afar to congregate and feast on the fleshy carcass. Once the flesh has been stripped and consumed by predators, bone eaters arrive so that not even the skeleton will remain.

Oil and gas

Whales and squid are attracted to the glowing underside of the cookie-cutter shark, which grabs a bite out of the animals once they are close. The deep-sea anglerfish lures prey straight to its mouth with a dangling bioluminescent barbel, lit by glowing bacteria. A canyon acts like a funnel in the ocean, congregating decaying matter that originates from land down to the ocean depths.
The deep ocean is a massive carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and helping mitigate the effects of climate change. Additionally, the deep-sea currents transport nutrients to surface waters, supporting life in other parts of the ocean. Without these critical processes, our climate and food webs would be vastly different—and far less hospitable for life as we know it.