Earth's Final Frontier: Mysteries of

the Deep Sea

Some are laughably large, some shoot shimmering sprays of light from their
bodies, still others are outfitted with menacing frippery befitting a sinister Dr.
Seuss book.

Andrea Mustain, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer - Sep 29, 2011

Despite the fact that this alien world is relatively accessible compared with
01:12 PM ET

the planets even in our own solar system, the deepest depths of the
ocean remain virtually unexplored the final, mysterious frontier of our
home planet.
Although the deep sea roughly defined as everything below 650 feet (200
meters) comprises a stunning 240 million cubic miles (1 billion cubic
kilometers) and more than 90 percent of the living space on the planet,
scientists are still trying to answer the most basic questions about it.
"Basically, we know so little about the deep sea that we don't know what we
don't know. A lot of things are still being discovered purely by chance," said
Michael Vecchione, a biologist with the Smithsonian Institution, and one of
the few people who have actually been there.
But the deep sea is getting more attention these days, thanks to interest from

A fangtooth, photographed at about 2,600

feet (800 m.) below the surface of
California's Monterey Bay. This fish's
fierce appearance belies its size it's
only about 5 inches (12 centimeters) long.
But thanks to its huge mouth and teeth, a
fangtooth can grab and eat fish and squid
almost its own size.
CREDIT: 2004 MBARI.

Dive beneath the ocean's waves, past the sunlit, teeming waters near the
surface, through the oxygen-deficient zones nearly devoid of life, down, down
and down some more, to a place where the pressure would crush a human,
and you will find the mysterious, alien world of the deep sea.
It is 300 times the size of the space inhabited by Earth's land-dwelling
species. It is unimaginably cold and cloaked in near-total darkness. Yet the
blackness is alive, swarming with untold armies of fantastical creatures.

several well-funded parties in sending humans to the deepest spots on Earth

aboard a crop of newfangled submersibles. British tycoonRichard Branson's
Virgin Oceanic effort may be the best-known of the privately funded
endeavors, while countries such as China are also showing interest in the
oceans' most inaccessible places, albeit for different reasons.

"There must be many animals, possibly large animals, down there that we
don't know about," said Edith Widder, CEO and senior scientist at the Ocean
Research and Conservation Association.
Over the last several decades, scientists have found some bizarre and
massive creatures dwelling in the deep, such as the megamouth shark, a
filter feeder that grows up to 18 feet (5 meters) long. Only dozens have ever
been seen since they were discovered in the 1970s .
"When they were first discovered, it was a complete surprise nobody knew
they even existed," Vecchione told OurAmazingPlanet. Within the last 10
years, two large squid species have been found, he said, "and there are
other large things in the deep sea we've gotten glimpses of but have never
caught, so we don't know what we're going to discover."
A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) caught sight of this bizarre squid

Both Vecchione and Widder study the biology of the open waters of the deep

swimming placidly along 11,100 feet (3,380 m) down, off the coast of Oahu.

ocean, known to researchers as the water column a region even less

Known as the bigfin squid, the creatures were only discovered about a

explored than the ocean floor, and whose inhabitants are more difficult to

decade ago, and much about them remains mysterious. This animal was

find.

estimated to be 13 to 16 feet (4 to 5 m.) in length.

CREDIT: 2001 MBARI.

Unknown unknowns
In 2003 Vecchione descended aboard a Russian submersible to the CharlieGibbs Fracture Zone, a gash in the mid-Atlantic seafloor that is 14,760 feet
(4,500 meters) at its deepest.
To put that in context, the ocean's average depth is 13,120 feet (4,000 m),
the height of many peaks in the Rockies and the Alps. [Infographic: Tallest
Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench ]
Vecchione and other scientists who study the deep sea say one of their
biggest challenges is trying to figure out what exactly lives down there.
Although the Census of Marine Life , a decade-long international study,
uncovered more than 1,200 new species (excluding microbes) in the planet's
oceans, the study also highlighted just how much humans still have to learn
about the deep ocean in particular.

This small ctenophore is sometimes called a 'sea gooseberry.' Unlike

medusa (what most people think of as jellyfish), ctenophores have sticky
tentacles that capture small animals and particles, but do not sting their prey.
CREDIT: 1992 MBARI.

Hard to catch
"Stuff that's on the bottom, some of it moves, but not very fast, and a lot of it
is just stuck in one place," Vecchione said. "But in the water column, things
move around."
And, Widder said, those things can outrun a researcher's trawling net.
Until the relatively recent development of manned submersibles and remotely
operated seafaring robots , nets were one of the few tools available to
scientists trying to sample life from the darkness of the deep.
And those nets missed more than just fast-moving animals like squid. They
missed an entire class of creatures that appear to be one of the dominant life
forms in the deep sea, a finding scientist Bruce Robison called "one of the
biggest discoveries we've made in the last 10 years or so."

A red lobate ctenophore. Fanciful gelatinous organisms like this one are far

"It's not until we started going down there that we realized, 'Holy cow! There's

more plentiful in the deep sea than previously suspected.

an astonishing number of gelatinous animals down here,'" Robison, a senior

CREDIT: Kevin Raskoff 1999 MBARI.

scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, said in an

Deep relationships

interview.
Robison said that in addition to figuring out what lives down there, scientists
The deep ocean is a weird universe of jellyfish and their relations, sometimes
forming chains many feet long, often lit by shimmering flickers of
bioluminescence. It turns out they account for a whopping 25 percent of the
biomass in the deep.
"Maybe more," Robison said. "But we didn't know that, because if you drag a
net through deep water, any of these gelatinous animals are shredded
they either turn into so much goo or pass through the net."

are also trying to figure out howthings live down there how nutrients move
from the surface world down into a vast system that is cut off from the reach
of the sun. (Very little sunlight penetrates beyond about 650 feet deep, or
200 meters. Below about 3,300 feet, or 1,000 meters, it is totally dark.)
"We don't know what the food web is like," Robison said."We don't know how
that organic material transfers through the immense food web down to the
deep sea floor we know it goes from the beginning to the end, but as to
how it gets there we're still in the dark, literally and figuratively."
To survive and communicate in the perpetual twilight or permanent night of
the deep whether to find food, find a mate, or stave off an attacker
many of the inhabitants make their own light. Bioluminescence is Edith
Widder's specialty, and she says scientists are only beginning to understand
what she calls "this language of light."
Given the sheer volume of the deep sea, Widder said, a huge proportion of
the animals on our planet are bioluminescent, and yet little is understood
about the myriad ways organisms use self-made light. Widder says she feels

very fortunate to have witnessed the spectacular underwater shows for

Although it may lack the aesthetic thrill of deep sea biology (who can resist a

herself.

fragile creature that can squirt light in the path of a lunging squid?), many

"It's magic," she told OurAmazingPlanet. "It's Harry Potter stuff to have these

scientists are also looking to the deep sea to try to solve some big questions

explosions of light all around you these pinwheels of light. It's absolutely

about the role it plays in Earth's climate.

breathtaking, and of course the more you know about it, the more exciting it

"The oceans are taking up a huge amount of the heat that results from global

is you can recognize animals by their display."

warming. We have a pretty good handle on how much the upper ocean is
warming , but not as good a handle on how much the deep ocean is
warming," said Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer with the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental
Laboratory.
Figuring out how temperature changes move through the deep ocean has
implications for ocean dwellers and land dwellers alike. [Related: Which
Creatures Will Thrive In Warmer Oceans?]
"In order to predict how much and how fast the Earth is going to warm in the
future due to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and other changes,
we need to know how much energy it's taking up now," Johnson said. "That's
a very important constraint for predictions. And the oceans take up the vast
majority of the heat."
Scientists depend on ships and, to some extent, a growing but still
comparatively tiny network of ocean buoys to take measurements of
conditions in the deep ocean everything from temperature to salinity (salt
content ) and water chemistry.
Like biologists, oceanographers and climate scientists lack access to much
of what they're trying to study.
"We are so observationally limited right now," Johnson said. "It is still very

Mollusk mamas: It was only recently discovered that these small squid,
Gonatus onyx, care for their eggs for months before they hatch in the deep
sea. The egg mass is suspended from hooks under the squid's arms.
CREDIT: 2002 MBARI.

Deep climate cycles

much a time for exploration and discovery."

Cindy Lee Van Dover, a marine scientist and professor at Duke University,
said that the way carbon is cycled by the animals that live in deep oceans is
of great importance. It affects the chemistry of the deep, which affects the
oceans in general, which affects the atmosphere and vice versa.
"The deep sea, the ocean, the atmosphere we're still trying to figure out
how all those are connected," Van Dover said.
Grand ambitions of a unifying theory aside, scientists at this point are still just
trying to figure out what is there, she added.

An anglerfish, about 4,800 feet (1,460 m.) down, off the coast of California.
This fish uses a glowing lure that dangles from its head to entice prey within
striking distance of its large mouth.
CREDIT: 2004 MBARI.

Grand discoveries ahead?

A vampire squid. This strange creature lives in deep, oxygen-limited areas

from around 2,000 to 3,000 feet (600 to 900 m.) depth. It has glowing

And because so little is known about the deep ocean and the mechanisms

tentacle tips, and two glowing spots on the sides of its body. When disturbed,

that govern it, the possibilities are rife for grand discoveries. One overarching

vampire squid can emit a glowing slime.

question confronting deep-sea scientists across many disciplines concerns

CREDIT: 2004 MBARI.

the ingredients and mechanics of our planet as a whole: How does what we
do up here affect the deep oceans, and how do the deep oceans affect

Final frontier

things up here?

"It's as fundamental as Lewis and Clark going out and mapping out habitats

"In many very real ways, the deep ocean is like the flywheel on the engine of

west of the Mississippi and they had the advantage of being able to see

the planet. It dominatesorganic carbon flux on Earth . And the magnitude of it

things," Van Dover said. "I don't want to exaggerate, but I think we're in that

is so great that I think we fail to appreciate it," said MBARI's Robison. "But if

phase of exploration. The Yellowstones are still out there to be discovered."

we start tampering with it,and clearly we are, then we could see some very

Vecchione agreed: "We're still exploring in space, and we should still be

big changes in the part of the planet where we live."

exploring in the deep ocean as well."

More humans, 12 in all, have walked on the moon than have traveled to the
deepest parts of our own planet.
Only two have the distinction of visiting the very deepest spot on Earth,
the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench , which lies 36,200 feet (11,030
meters, or nearly seven miles) beneath the surface of the western Pacific
Ocean. In 1960, U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, a Swiss
native, rode a massive metal vessel to the seafloor and spent 20 minutes in
the darkness there.
To this day, humans haven't returned.
Although exploration for the sake of exploration is important, many scientists
say that the stakes for understanding what happens in the deep are high for
everyone not just for billionaires with a penchant for exotic travel or
nations with an eye on the resources in the deep sea.
"We don't know enough about how the ocean works to be able to predict
stuff," Robison said. "That's why I think we need to keep studying the deep
sea and the sea in general, because there isnt any question that we're
changing things and changing them profoundly and rapidly. And if we do
that without being able to predict the consequences, that's not very bright."