Deep-Sea Life and Habitats

These nodules are thought to contain higher concentrations of transition metals and REEs. However, current technology remains in its early stages and is years away from mainstream deployment. The growth of deep-sea mining may also be slowed by many researchers’ opposition to deep-sea mining due to the long-lasting damage mining has had on previously untouched ocean floor ecosystems.
The other end grows into a feathered fan that lets them extract oxygen from the water. Larvae that arrive later or land on another worm, become males, but never really grow beyond the larval form. Instead they live within the females’ bodies as parasites—sometimes over a hundred live in one female host. Scientists have found about 25 species of bone eating worms since they were first discovered in 2002, and many more are thought to exist. Some are specialized burrowers that dig within the bone for the fat, while others pick apart the surface layers.

Supports Marine Biodiversity

As a result, scientists working in the deep sea constantly encounter new species and other surprises. For example, in February 2021 an AWI team discovered the world’s largest fish breeding colony in the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea. Images taken with a camera system towed by the research icebreaker Polarstern captured Deep Sea countless nests of the ice fish species Neopagetopsis ionah on the seafloor, at depths from 420 to 535 metres.

The Deep Sea

It calls for improved baseline monitoring using methods like baited and pelagic cameras, tagging studies and egg case surveys. And it suggests developing spatial management tools to protect vulnerable habitats. For example, he said, the blue shark (Prionace glauca), whose range the study found overlapped with all three types of mining areas, is one of the main species sold internationally for shark meat. “What does that mean for metal accumulation in a very real and large global trade?

Exclusive economic zone

Under the light of the moon they feast on the phytoplankton that grew during the day. Then, when the sun comes out and there is enough light for predators to see them again, the zooplankton return to the deep darkness. Diel vertical migrations are likely the largest daily migration on the planet. A cold seep is a place on the ocean floor where fluids and gases trapped deep in the earth percolate up to the seafloor. A cold seep gets its name not because the liquid and gas that emerge are colder than the surrounding seawater, but because they are cooler than the scalding temperature of the similar hydrothermal vent.
At the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, we believe that protecting the deep sea starts with understanding it. The Knowledge Hub is your gateway to discovering the wonders of the deep, and learning how this hidden world is connected to all of us. Some deepsea fishes, like the fish in ‘Finding Nemo’ are indeed like that, but others are very different. Vulnerable deep-sea habitats will be mapped with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) in a study made possible by a £2m investment. The dives revealed that although the abundance of organisms could be lower in the hadal zone compared to shallower waters near the shore, many major groups of animals were still present, displaying “an amazing range of adaptations”, according to Dr Swanborn. One of the dives also led to the discovery of the world’s deepest fish, a snailfish living over 8km below the sea level, a finding researchers announced in 2023.

• Over half of the global electric vehicle battery market is controlled by China, and China manufactures over 80 percent of the world’s solar panels.
• Any light still filtering down has diminished to appear completely black, leaving only animals and bacteria to produce the light found here.
• Despite the remoteness of the hadalpelagic, humanity still finds a way to interfere—plastic debris has been found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
• This pathway could be possible because the U.S. has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), under which the ISA sits.
• The deep sea is not only a source of scientific curiosity but also a potential source of valuable resources.

Deep-sea crown jelly

Attuning ourselves to these forgotten heroes, buried in the seabed and disturbed by the drilling of robotic machines, invites a critical rethinking of the ongoing territorialisation of the ocean. These visions ‘re-turn colonial geo-logics, slowly tearing at colonial pasts, presents, and futures in an iterative, ongoing process of imaginative decolonisation’ (Stuer 2025, 33-4). The ghosts of a violent past call us to awareness, mourning, and action, urging us to envision oceanic futures that resist repetition and reclaim submerged histories (Patrizi 2024).

• 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.
• Whale falls occur when a whale dies in surface waters and sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
• Bioluminescence first arose roughly 540 million years ago in a group of corals known as the octocorals.
• The area of the ocean between 650 and 3,300 feet (200-1,000 m) is called the mesopelagic.
• But with the aid of specific adaptations, denizens of the deep can overcome all these problems.
• “For example, historically seismically active areas in the Japan Trench were dominated by low-diversity organisms that had adapted to their environment, while the more stable under-riding slope supported more diverse communities,” she explained.

Right next to the coast is the continental shelf, the submerged part of the continent. This area is characterized by shallow water and mostly exists within the sunlit epipelagic zone. Traveling away from the coast the seafloor will begin to slope down through the mesopelagic and bathypelagic zones into deeper depths.

For example, the AWI’s Ocean Floor Observation and Bathymetry System (OFOBS) consists of a downward-pointing camera and flash, together with a sonar system that scans the seafloor topography to its left and right; all of which is housed in a protective metal frame. Biological collections from the Curasub off Curaçao have resulted in the discovery of numerous new and rare species of fishes, marine mollusks, echinoderms and crustaceans. This project utilizes the taxonomic expertise of more than a dozen Smithsonian scientists and employs modern molecular tools and digital photography and videography to fully document species and genetic diversity on deep reefs.
This is the continental slope, the transition between Earth’s continental surface and Earth’s oceanic seafloor. As the slope levels out at the continental rise (roughly 19,700 feet or 6,000 m) it gives way to the abyssal plain, the long stretch that accounts for roughly 70 percent of the world sea floor. The hadalpelagic is the very deepest part of the ocean that includes the ocean trenches.
Hydrogen sulfide is normally poisonous, but the Riftia worm has a special adaptation that isolates it from the rest of the body. Their blood contains hemoglobin that binds tightly to both oxygen and hydrogen sulfide. Further investigation into these unique habitats showed that many of the other creatures that live by the vents also rely on symbiotic bacteria. The yeti crab waves its arms in the water to help cultivate bacteria on tiny arm hairs which it then consumes.
The IUCN, the global conservation authority, classifies 10 of these species as endangered or critically endangered, eight as vulnerable to extinction, and three as near threatened. The ISA mining areas are in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific Ocean, the Western Pacific Ocean, and the Central Indian Ocean Basin. New research has found that deep-sea mining in international waters could threaten at least 30 species of sharks, rays and chimaeras — many of which are already at risk of extinction. Although deep-sea mining is still emerging, the recent changes in its landscape suggest a future where the industry becomes yet another frontline for competition between the US and China. 2025 was the year many countries set their deadlines to begin commercial deep-sea mining, making the coming months critical as parties wait for the ISA and global regulations to emerge.
Many ecologically and commercially important species aggregate around them, including tuna, marine mammals, sharks and seabirds. This was demonstrated in the experiment DISCOL (Disturbance and Recolonization), which the AWI and a host of other European research centres contributed to. In 1989, eleven square kilometres of the Pacific seafloor were churned up in an area roughly 650 kilometres southeast of the Galápagos Islands to simulate the mining of manganese nodules. In the years since, several expeditions have returned to the site to track its development. Decades later, the scars are still clearly recognisable, and there have been lasting changes to the biotic community. Many deep-sea organisms are capable of producing light, either on their own or with the help of bacteria.