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The next chapter in our thinking about the oceans is analyzed in a new paper in PLoS ONE. The deep sea—largest of Earth’s ecosystems and its last great wilderness—has been spared much of what’s befallen the rest of the ocean in the last century, thanks to its remoteness. But not any more.

Technology is rapidly undressing this veiled realm, allowing us to exploit its fisheries, hydrocarbons, and minerals at depths below 2,000 meters/6,562 feet. The authors write:

[T]he challenges facing the deep sea are large and accelerating, providing a new imperative for the science community, industry and national and international organizations to work together to develop successful exploitation management and conservation of the deep-sea ecosystem.

The paper represents the combined thinking of 11 researchers from around the world—Spain, UK, Norway, New Zealand, Mexico, US, and France—including some of the biggest names in deep-sea research. Coauthor Lisa Levin, recently made the Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, was featured in my biodiversity article in MoJo, Gone.

Based on their own extensive experience, combined with published scientific papers, the authors provide a semi-quantitative analysis of the scale of of human activities past, present, and future. They assessed 28 major anthropogenic impacts (above), grouped into 3 main categories—disposal, exploitation, and climate change. They then examined those effects on 12 deep-sea habitats (below). I’ve added links to explanations of the terms: