Humans Have Never Seen 99.999% of the Seafloor, Study Finds, as Trump Greenlights Deep-Sea Mining
We've got better visuals of Mars than we do of our own ocean floor—and by a much larger margin than you'd think.
A new study in Science Advances crunched the numbers from 43,681 deep-sea dives conducted since 1958 and comes to a mind-blowing conclusion: we've visually observed just 0.001% of the deep seafloor. That's an area just slightly larger than Rhode Island—or about a tenth the size of Belgium—across about 70% of the planet.
The average depth of the ocean is 12,080 feet (3,682 meters), making it impossible to visually observe unless you're Aquaman or have a deep-sea submersible. As of June 2024, 26.1% of the global seafloor has been mapped, according to NOAA, though visual observation is a tougher nut to crack.
'This small and biased sample is problematic when attempting to characterize, understand, and manage a global ocean,' said Susan Poulton, a researcher at the Ocean Discovery League and co-author of the paper, in an email to Gizmodo.
Scientists estimate that two-thirds of the 700,000 to 1,000,000 species in the ocean (excluding microorganisms) have yet to be discovered or officially described, according to NOAA, making the vast amount of unexplored seafloor a remarkable venue for new research.
Making matters worse, nearly two-thirds of all visual seafloor observations have taken place within 200 nautical miles of just three nations: the U.S., Japan, and New Zealand. Almost every single deep-sea dive has been carried out by institutions from just five countries: those just mentioned, plus France and Germany.
'Imagine trying to tell the story of critical environments like the African savanna or the Amazon rainforest using only satellite imagery and DNA samples without ever seeing what lived there,' Poulton said. 'It wouldn't paint a very complete picture.'
Furthermore, the study found a heavy bias in sampling toward shallow waters (less than 6,562 feet deep, or 2,000 meters), even though nearly three-quarters of the seafloor lies deeper. Features like canyons and escarpments—and specific ones, at that—get all the love, while vast regions of undersea ridges and plains remain essentially overlooked.
We owe it to ourselves to better understand these vast sweeps of the deep sea, the research team posits. They're not wrong. The deep ocean plays a crucial role in everything from climate regulation to the production of oxygen and medicine, yet our visual assessment of it is a very slim slice of the pie. We're missing a huge amount of information about not just the creatures that inhabit these zones, but the way these zones contribute to Earth's global processes.
Some thorough deep-sea research was born out of commercial interests, including research into the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a region of deep sea mining interest. That's led to the discovery of hundreds of new species and even hints at new mechanisms of oxygen production, which we might've missed entirely if companies hadn't been eyeing the area for minerals.
The team's findings come on the heels of the Trump Administration fast-tracking deep-sea mining, which could imperil species that inhabit the seafloor and midwater ecosystems. In the past six months, two research teams found evidence of creatures thriving underneath the seafloor, pushing the boundaries of where we know life to exist. Deep-sea mining will probe these disproportionately understudied reaches of the planet, potentially endangering species before science even has the opportunity to identify them.
If we want a representative picture of Earth's largest and least-understood biome, we'll need more nations, more institutions, and more tools to take the plunge, the study argues. At our current rate, by the team's calculations it would take more than 100,000 years to visually explore the deep seafloor, leading the team to call for a 'fundamental change in how we explore and study the global deep ocean,' as noted in an AAAS press release.
For now, we're making global ocean policy, climate decisions, and biodiversity assessments with a shockingly small sample size. It would be in the interest of science—and the thrill of discovery itself—to innovate and scale how we explore the most inaccessible reaches of our world.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
3 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Divorcing SpaceX Just Isn't Possible Right Now
The public spat between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the world's richest person, was unsettling given the power these two men wield and how their verbal tussle quickly escalated to issues that directly affect national security. Trump floated the cancellation of all NASA and Department of Defense contracts with SpaceX, the space-launch and satellite-internet company Musk founded in 2002. Musk countered that he would withdraw the services of the Dragon space capsule, which is the only option now, except for resorting to the Russians, for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
CBS News
3 hours ago
- CBS News
Kilauea Volcano on Hawaii erupts for 25th time since December, spewing lava 330 feet high: "Here we go again!"
One of the world's most active volcanoes, Kilauea on Hawaii's Big Island, began spewing lava from the north vent Wednesday, the latest event in an ongoing eruption that began almost six months ago. Lava fountains reached heights of more than 330 feet and feeding multiple lava streams. Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the fountains were likely to go higher. "Here we go again!" the observatory wrote on its Facebook page. This image from webcam footage provided by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) shows lava fountains shooting up high in the latest episode of an ongoing eruption of Kilauea volcano inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. United States Geological Survey via AP The latest event was preceded by gas-pistoning, in which gas accumulates at a lava column's top within a vent, on Tuesday. The observatory said this process causes the lava surface to rise or piston. "Eventually, gas escapes as splatter/lava is erupted, and lave drains back into the vent," the observatory wrote. These were occurring up to 10 times an hour, but increased in intensity until a small, sustained dome fountain began to feed flows to the crater floor a day later. The USGS has set up three Kīlauea summit livestream videos, which can be seen here. It is the 25th eruptive episode since the volcano on the southeastern part of the island began erupting Dec. 23. It has been pausing and resuming since. Most of the eruptive episodes have spewed lava for about a day or less, with pauses between them generally lasting a few days. The USGS warned that high levels of volcanic gas can have far-reaching effects downwind. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) reacts in the atmosphere to create the visible haze known as vog (volcanic smog), which may cause respiratory and other problems, the agency said. Additional hazards include Pele's hair (strands of volcanic glass often produced by lava fountaining activity) and other volcanic fragments that can fall on the ground within a few hundred yards of the eruptive vents, the USGS said.
Medscape
3 hours ago
- Medscape
Speeding Up Vericiguat Target Dose in HFrEF Shown Safe
Ditching the standard two-step pathway to the target 10-mg dose of vericiguat in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and instead employing a one-step protocol can be done safely and overcome the clinical inertia many of these patients encounter, the lead investigator of a prospective clinical trial of the one-step approach said. The 2022 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Joint Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines recommend starting patients with HFrEF on a 2.5-mg dose of vericiguat, a soluble guanylate cyclase activator, then stepping up to a 5-mg dose enroute to reaching a target of 10 mg. VELOCITY Study Results Stephen Greene, MD However, the VELOCITY study found nine of 10 patients safely tolerated starting on the 5-mg dose and skipping the recommended 2.5-mg step, Stephen Greene, MD, an advanced heart failure specialist at Duke Cardiology Clinic in Durham, North Carolina, reported at the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology (HFA-ESC) 2025. The study was simultaneously published in the European Journal of Heart Failure . 'We know from real-world evidence studies that, in US practice, there are many patients who are initiated on 5-mg vericiguat already, but now we have, actually, clinical data to suggest that this 5-mg initiation dose does appear to be safe among our patients that haven't had recent hypotension,' Greene told Medscape Medical News. The VELOCITY results make the case for updating the clinical guidelines for vericiguat, he added. The rationale for the study was to determine if starting patients closer to the target dose would give them a better chance of getting to and staying on the 10-mg target dose, according to Greene. 'Simplifying this process is one of the best ways to improve implementation for all our guideline-directed medical therapies,' Greene said. VELOCITY was a single-arm, two-week-long prospective trial that enrolled 106 patients with heart failure with an ejection fraction < 45% who were well-treated with background guideline-directed medical therapies. The primary endpoint was tolerability of 5-mg vericiguat dose after 2 weeks. Overall, 93.4% of patients tolerated the dose, including 90.6% in the group with worsening heart failure and 96.2% whose condition remained stable. Fourteen patients (13.2%) had an adverse event associated with treatment. One, a case of facial angioedema, was severe but the rest were considered mild. Four patients (3.8%) discontinued treatment because of an adverse event. VELOCITY also compared outcomes of those starting on the 5-mg dose with outcomes in the VICTORIA trial, which started patients on the 2.5-mg dose. In VICTORIA, 97.2% of patients tolerated the 2.5-mg starting dose over 2 weeks. Among patients with worsening heart failure, again 97.2% of VICTORIA patients tolerated the 2.5-mg treatment well, compared with 90.6% taking the 5-mg starting dose in VELOCITY. Greene also noted that patients in VELOCITY had 'the exact same mean reduction' in systolic blood pressure as those in VICTORIA: Both up to 3.2 mm HG on average. In VICTORIA, the placebo group also experienced a reduction in systolic blood pressure, he said, and the difference between the treatment and placebo groups was 1-to-2 mm HG. Had VELOCITY been a placebo study, the 3.2 mm HG reduction observed with the 5 mg dose 'likely would've been even further attenuated,' Greene said. 'This goes with what we already know about vericiguat, in that it seems to have minimal to no effect on systolic blood pressure.' Starting patients with HFrEF on 5 mg of vericiguat can help overcome 'clinical inertia' and increase the likelihood they will get to the 10-mg target dose, Greene said. 'Many of our patients with HFrEF never achieve target doses of guideline-directed medical therapies, and despite clinic visit after clinic visit, medication changes are, unfortunately, relatively rare,' Greene said. 'We see minimal medication titration, even when our patients have robust blood pressure, even when they have normal kidney function, even when we're talking about our inexpensive generic medications, we don't see many medication changes.' Time for Change, or 'Unique Strategy'? Ankeet S. Bhatt, MD, MBA, ScM Calling for a rewrite of clinical guidelines for using vericiguat in patients with HFrEF based on the VELOCITY results might be premature, Ankeet S. Bhatt, MD, MBA, ScM, a cardiologist and intensivist at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center, told Medscape Medical News. 'VELOCITY really tests a unique strategy, reducing one of the steps in the titration of vericiguat, which may, if the clinical efficacy is confirmed in dedicated trials, bolster the confidence around early implementation at a higher dose of this therapy, without the need for an intra-dose titration,' Bhatt said. Validating the VELOCITY findings in a clinical trial 'might improve both acceptance from clinicians and the clinical implications about implementation of the therapy,' he added. Pairing the randomized clinical trial evidence with larger-scale real-world evidence would provide stronger evidence, he said. 'It's possible that there might be late effects or add-on effects that might either promote tolerability or might have safety concerns that we couldn't see in the context of this trial,' Bhatt said. 'So this is an important area that sets the stage, and when it's confirmed in real-world evidence, then I think we can make a compelling case that this might be an important addition to the guidance we already have.' This study was funded by Bayer and Merck Sharp & Dohme. Greene reported financial relationships with Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Corcept, Corteria Pharmaceuticals, CSL Vifor, Cytokinetics, Idorsia, Lexicon, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Otsuka, Pfizer, Roche Diagnostics, Sanofi, scPharmaceuticals, Sumitomo, and Tricog Health. Bhatt reported consulting for Merck.
