In 2014, the EV Nautilus operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust explored the deep ocean around Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago. It was so special to be able to explore the waters off my home country, collaboratively between local and foreign scientists, especially as we as a country don’t have the financial, technical or technological capabilities to do so. And what we found was spectacular: methane seeps with giant mussel beds and tubeworms as far as the eye could see, coral and sponge gardens, and many new species. It was a moment I had dreamt about since taking my first deep-sea course at university. Trinidad and Tobago, given our proximity to South America, is so biodiverse, and yet here was 70% of our national area that still has not been explored and understood. I realised that there was a need for a NGO focused on marine research, education and science-based advocacy in Trinidad and Tobago, so I co-founded SpeSeas with four colleagues. More than 90% of Trinidad and Tobago is ocean, so we all want our biodiversity and the habitats they live in preserved, while dispelling lots of the misinformation floating around. We’re just winding up our ‘My Deep Sea, My Backyard’ project, which has been taking place in the Republic of Kiribati and Trinidad and Tobago over the past year. There are a huge number of nations that have deep-sea environments within their Exclusive Economic Zones, but only 16% of them have the financial capability and resources to explore them. This results in unaware populations and unsuitable marine management decisions. We’ve been utilising deep sea cameras and ROVs to explore the mesophotic zone and deep ocean areas of these two small island states for the first time. Both technologies collect fascinating imagery but require minimal resources and expertise.

I research human impacts on the deep sea because I want my work to help improve the way we view and treat our oceans. I also try to support this by taking that work, and the work of colleagues and other scientists into the spaces where global ocean regulations are being crafted, such as the United Nations and the International Seabed Authority (ISA). The ISA is currently drafting the regulations for the exploitation of mineral resources on the seafloor in international waters. It is crucial that these regulations are environmentally conscious and take precaution, given how limited our knowledge is of the deep-sea environments where mining may take place. I attend on behalf of the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI), an expert group that seeks to integrate science, technology, policy, law and economics to advise on ecosystem-based management of resource use in the deep ocean and strategies to maintain the integrity of deep-ocean ecosystems within and beyond national jurisdiction. I co-lead the Minerals WG, which is responsible for engaging with all stakeholders on matters related to deep-sea mining.

Our deep ocean and its life provide ecosystem services that keep our planet healthy and are integral to our survival. But while we may think that the deep ocean is remote and out of our grasp, it is already changing due to our actions. This is dangerous given that we have little idea what lives in the majority of our deep ocean. We need a baseline in order to measure change and that’s mostly missing. So, we’re now in a race against time and our increasing use of the deep sea, to categorise what’s there, so that we can effectively manage it and don’t lose species and communities before we’ve discovered or understood them and their functions. You can’t protect what you don’t know, and you can’t manage what you don’t understand.

From 2013 to 2016, I worked on the ABYSSLINE Project, which conducted baseline surveys in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an abyssal area of the East Pacific Ocean where deep-sea mining may occur in the near future and which had never been explored. The results from my speciality, the megafauna – animals over 1cm in size, were not at all what we were expecting. There were more megafauna species observed than in any other abyssal habitat. Over half of those megafauna that were collected were species that had been never seen before highlighting how poorly known this area is. But most importantly, more than 50% of the megafauna relied on the polymetallic nodules, the resource that will be removed during mining, for attachment surfaces. If mining moves forward, humankind needs to think very carefully about how to do it responsibly.