Deep-Sea Conservation

The deep-sea is our Earth’s largest ecosystem, and our planet’s final frontier for research and discovery. Recent studies also suggest our deep oceans contain the greatest fish biomass on our planet—estimated to be 1,000 million tons—and this biome can pull up to 30% of atmospheric carbon into the seafloor. However, deep-sea environments still remain largely unexplored, poorly understood, and have few conservation measures in place.

As commercial fisheries have overfished surface waters, industry is now expanding its footprint farther and deeper into the ocean, posing risks to some of the slowest growing fish and invertebrate species on our planet, and also those we have yet to properly describe. In addition, there is the looming threat of deep seabed mining, whereby the impacts on deep-sea ecosystem processes and ocean health remain unknown. Failing to categorize deep-sea biodiversity could result in countless areas and species continuing to fall through the cracks of fragmented ocean governance.