Beneath the neon lights of a laser-scanning microscope, newly classified species glow in vivid greens and oranges—a far cry from the pitch-black abyss of their natural ocean floor. Researchers have identified 24 new deep-sea creatures and a whole new evolutionary branch in the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a wide swath of ocean between Hawaii and […]

This week, delegates from around the world gathered at the International Seabed Authority’s headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, to continue ongoing negotiations over a long-debated “mining code”—a set of rules and regulations that would determine how commercial deep-sea mining could proceed in international waters. Established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the […]

The Trump administration is moving to open federal waters surrounding American Samoa to deep-sea mining despite widespread opposition from leaders and environmental advocates from the U.S. territory. Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began mapping more than 30,000 square nautical miles of the territory’s seabed, surveying the ocean floor for deposits of manganese, […]