What We Stand to Lose

Before we have even cataloged what lives in the deep ocean, we risk destroying it. Deep-sea mining would scrape the seafloor clean, wiping out ecosystems that took millions of years to form. Hydrothermal vent communities are found nowhere else on Earth.

Climate change is already altering the deep ocean. Warming surface waters are reducing the oxygen that sinks to depth, creating expanding dead zones. Ocean acidification threatens organisms with calcium carbonate structures.