We're about to destroy Earth's last great wilderness before we understand it
Beneath the surface of a planet we believe we know well lies an ecosystem vaster than any forest or prairie — one that breathes oxygen into our air, absorbs our carbon, and steadies our climate, yet remains almost entirely unseen. Before science has had the chance to understand what lives in the deep ocean's crushing darkness, international contracts covering an area the size of Alaska have opened the seafloor to industrial mining. In the long arc of human exploration, this moment asks a question that will outlast any single generation: whether we are capable of restraint in the presence of the unknown.
- The deep ocean — covering two-thirds of Earth's surface and generating 80% of our oxygen — is being opened to industrial extraction before scientists have catalogued even a fraction of what lives there.
- Mining interests are targeting the Clarion-Clipperton zone and hydrothermal vent systems, including the singular Lost City formation, whose ecosystems took millions of years to develop and cannot be restored on any human timescale.
- The metals sought — cobalt, nickel, copper — are framed as essential to green energy transitions, creating a troubling paradox in which saving the climate may come at the cost of destroying the ocean that regulates it.
- The International Seabed Authority has already issued 31 exploration contracts, and the pace of permitting is outrunning the pace of scientific discovery, with new species still being found on virtually every deep-sea expedition.
- Conservationists and researchers are racing to document and protect these ecosystems, but the political and commercial momentum behind undersea mining has so far proven difficult to slow.
When search teams spent years scanning the southern Indian Ocean for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, they produced something unexpected: detailed maps of a seafloor almost no one had ever seen. Undersea canyons, volcanic plateaus, and a cliff taller than the Swiss Alps emerged from the darkness. The search for a missing plane had accidentally revealed how little we know of our own planet.
The deep ocean — everything below 200 meters — covers roughly two-thirds of Earth's surface. Most of it has never been surveyed. At the current pace of exploration, a complete visual survey would take five million years. Yet this hidden world is not peripheral to human life. It absorbs nearly a third of our carbon dioxide emissions, produces the majority of our oxygen, and drives the circulation systems that create weather and regulate climate. We depend on it entirely, and understand it barely at all.
Life in the deep defies expectation. In the past year alone, scientists identified more than 1,100 new marine species — among them a creature so strange it could not be placed in any recognized category of animal life. Hydrothermal vents, first discovered in 1977 near the Galápagos, host thriving communities of giant worms, blind shrimp, and yeti crabs in water hot enough to melt lead, powered not by sunlight but by chemical energy drawn from the Earth itself. In 2000, explorers found the Lost City near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge — elegant white spires rising from the seafloor, hosting a vent ecosystem so unlike anything else known that some scientists believe it may resemble the conditions in which life on Earth first arose.
Now, before science can fully document what exists in these depths, industrial mining has arrived. The metals locked inside manganese nodules on the Pacific seafloor — cobalt, nickel, copper — are in demand for the batteries and microchips driving the transition away from fossil fuels. The International Seabed Authority has issued 31 exploration contracts covering an area the size of Alaska, including a stake that encompasses the Lost City itself. The nodules targeted by miners take up to three million years to form. The ecosystems built upon them — ghostly octopuses, delicate corals, thousands of species not yet named — would be gone in a single industrial pass, with no prospect of return.
The deep ocean is one of the last places on Earth that human industry has not yet fundamentally altered. Its rhythms are measured in geological time. The question now pressing against that stillness is whether the same civilization that has stripped the old-growth forests and broken the great prairies possesses the wisdom to pause — just long enough to understand what it is about to lose.
On the morning of March 8, 2018, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 vanished somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean, one of the least charted bodies of water on Earth. The search that followed would reveal something unexpected: we barely know our own planet. Over three years, ships from Australia, China, and Malaysia scanned the seafloor across an area the size of France—roughly 1,500 miles long and 150 miles wide. The maps they produced showed a lost world. Undersea canyons twisted through the darkness. Volcanic plateaus rose from the abyss. A single cliff towered taller than the Swiss Alps. Even the abyssal plains, thought to be among the flattest places on the planet, turned out to be dotted with previously unmapped hills.
If you want to follow in the footsteps of the great explorers, forget Mars and the moon. The ocean floor is where the real frontier lies. The deep ocean—everything deeper than 200 meters—covers about two-thirds of Earth's surface. Most of it has never been surveyed in detail. Even less has been seen up close. At the current rate of observation, a complete visual survey of the ocean floor will take roughly five million years. Yet this hidden realm is not remote from human life. The deep ocean functions as the planet's thermostat, storing immense amounts of heat. It absorbs about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere and generates 80 percent of our oxygen. The oceans are the engine behind the circulation of heat and water vapor that creates our weather. They regulate climate, make our air breathable, process our emissions, and recharge our rivers. We depend on them utterly, and we understand them barely at all.
The deep ocean is the largest ecosystem on Earth and also the most extreme. Crushing pressures, temperatures that swing between boiling and near-freezing, and near-total darkness create conditions that seem hostile to life itself. Yet life thrives there in forms that seem to violate every rule we thought we knew. In the past year alone, scientists discovered more than 1,100 new marine species in the deep. Among them: a ghost shark that isn't really a shark, a sponge that looks like a cluster of ping-pong balls, worms in lurid colors, and a floating creature resembling a tiny jet plane made of pale pink jelly—something so strange that scientists haven't yet been able to fit it into any recognized category of animal life. Virtually every expedition to the true deep returns with species unknown to science.
Certain regions of the ocean floor host conditions even more extreme. Vents of superheated water, packed with toxic chemicals, would kill any surface creature instantly. Yet in the deep, they are home to some of the planet's most vibrant and alien animal communities. In 1977, scientists aboard the submersible Alvin discovered the first of these hydrothermal vent ecosystems near the Galápagos Islands. They found dense groves of tall worms with scarlet plumes, gigantic pale clams huddled together in total darkness, and streams of warm water loaded with foul-smelling sulfur issuing from cracks in the ocean floor. Two years later, off the coast of Baja California, they found something even stranger: black chimney-like structures spewing superheated water so loaded with dissolved minerals it looked like smoke. At 350 degrees Celsius, the fluid would be hot enough to melt lead on land. Yet these black smokers, as they came to be called, hosted thriving ecosystems. The animals gathered around them seemed to violate all known rules of ecology. Until then, scientists believed all living things ultimately received their energy from the sun. But the creatures around these vents drew energy directly from the chemicals in the superheated water itself. Bacteria had evolved to tap into this chemical energy, powering their growth on exotic foods like metal ions, hydrogen, and hydrogen sulfide. Where bacteria grew, others followed. Giant clams slurped sulfides from the vents. Blind shrimp evolved to love the heat. Yeti crabs, named for their wildly hairy appendages—each hair home to millions of partner bacteria—made their homes in the darkness.
In 2000, explorers discovered an entirely new form of hydrothermal vent community south of the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic. They called it the Lost City for its elegant spires of white and gray calcium carbonate rising from the seafloor near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The animals living around the Lost City were different from those around the black smokers—much smaller, usually transparent, powered by a different chemistry. The vents form through a reaction between seawater and oceanic crust, creating some of the basic building blocks of life. Some scientists speculate that life itself may have arisen in such a place. So far, the Lost City is the only known vent system of its kind. There may be limited time to find more.
For over fifty years, industrialists and entrepreneurs have floated the idea of mining the ocean floor. But in our search for metals needed for batteries and microchips, we may now be on the cusp of destroying the world's largest and strangest ecosystem before we understand it. In 2017, the International Seabed Authority granted Poland an exploration contract for hydrothermal vents along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge—a stake that includes the Lost City itself. Many other countries and companies have since jumped into the ocean-mining fray. Much of their attention has focused on a remote patch of the north Pacific between Mexico and Hawaii called the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone. This area is rich in manganese nodules—metal-rich rocks that dot the seafloor like sprinkles on a cake. These nodules contain manganese, iron, copper, cobalt, and nickel. The metals they contain are critical for the batteries and computer chips that would help wean us off fossil fuels. Proponents of undersea mining claim this makes them vital for the global transition to green energy.
The International Seabed Authority has granted 31 mining exploration contracts that cumulatively cover an area the size of Alaska. Nineteen of these contracts are specifically for nodule mining, while the remaining 12 would allow miners to investigate scalping the tops off seamounts and grinding up hydrothermal vents. The Clarion-Clipperton zone is one of the world's great wildernesses, now threatened by a motley of international mining concerns. The creatures living there are mostly tiny filter feeders—sponges and corals that make their homes on the surfaces of the nodules themselves. The surrounding sediment teems with worms. If the manganese nodules are stripped away, all these creatures will perish. These slow-growing lumps can take as long as three million years to form. They won't return for millennia. The unique, biodiverse ecosystems they support will be lost—ghostly-white octopuses and tiny water bears, lemon-yellow sea cucumbers, delicate corals and sponges, plus thousands of other life forms not yet discovered. On a planet that has lost most of its great biomes, from the old-growth forests of Europe to the prairies of the Americas, the deep ocean stands out as one of the few environments that has not yet been ransacked by humankind. The zone is a place of profound stillness and slowness, whose heartbeat is measured in millions of years. The mind recoils at the thought of it being despoiled.
Citas Notables
The metals in manganese nodules are critical for batteries and computer chips needed to transition away from fossil fuels, making them vital for green energy— Marine microbiologist Jeffrey Marlow
The deep ocean operates in cosmic-historic time, and those who live against its borders feel it first, but first or last, we all will feel it— Marion Coutts, in her memoir about the deep sea
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does it matter that we don't know what's down there? We've managed fine without understanding the deep ocean so far.
We've managed because the deep ocean has been doing its job without our interference. It regulates our climate, absorbs our carbon, makes our air breathable. We depend on it utterly. The problem is we're about to start mining it without understanding what we're destroying.
But the metals in those nodules could help us transition away from fossil fuels. Isn't that worth something?
It's worth something, yes. But we're trading a known benefit—green energy metals—for an unknown cost. We don't know what chemical compounds might be locked in the bodies of creatures we haven't even discovered yet. We don't know if destroying these ecosystems will have cascading effects on the ocean's ability to regulate climate.
You mentioned the Lost City. What makes that place special?
It might be where life began. The chemistry there—the way seawater reacts with the oceanic crust to create the building blocks of life—could be a window into life's origins. And it's the only place like it we've found. If we destroy it before we understand it, we lose that window forever.
How long have these ecosystems been there?
We don't know. The creatures around the hydrothermal vents might be ancient beyond measure. Some of the corals in the deep ocean are over 4,000 years old. There are microbes sleeping under the seafloor that have been dormant for 100 million years. These are timescales we can barely comprehend.
So what happens if we mine the nodule fields?
Everything living on and around those nodules dies. The sponges, the corals, the worms, the creatures we haven't even named yet. And because the nodules take three million years to form, the ecosystem won't recover in any timescale that matters to us. We'll have erased a piece of Earth's history.
Is there any way to do this responsibly?
Not really. The damage is inherent to the process. You can't strip away the nodules without destroying the life that depends on them. The only responsible choice is not to do it.