\n<\/p>\n
This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center and co-published with the Post and Courier. <\/p>\n
On July 22, 2024, a team of researchers released a shocking discovery: deep-sea rock concentrations appeared to be producing oxygen in the blackness of the ocean\u2019s abyss.<\/p>\n
The two of us were in the middle of filming a documentary about these potato-sized undersea oddities\u2014known as polymetallic nodules\u2014and suddenly they were making global headlines. The researchers dubbed their finding \u201cdark oxygen.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n
But what grabbed us as journalists was how\u2014within days of publication\u2014the research ignited debate among dozens of diplomats then convening in Kingston, Jamaica, to decide the fate of those rocks.<\/p>\n
Many researchers hope their work reaches policymakers, but it\u2019s rare to see such an immediate effect.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Nature Geoscience published the \u201cdark oxygen\u201d study, delegates from Costa Rica and Panama began citing it as a reason not to rush negotiations. According to a United Nations treaty that has been ratified or acceded to by 170 countries and regions (but not the U.S.), companies preparing to mine can\u2019t extract nodules from international waters without agreement among those signatories on how that should be done. \u201cDark oxygen\u201d became a rally call for prudence before opening up the high seas to deep-sea mining.<\/p>\n
\u201cDark oxygen\u201d steered a film we were already making into an entirely new direction. We had been following a separate group of researchers who had found the world\u2019s oldest deep-sea test site, more than 50 years after mining. As one of us (Fieseler) first reported for the Post and Courier last year, they made a remarkable observation among the field of nodules there.<\/p>\n
That discovery, however, had a much different fate.<\/p>\n
What unfolded for us was a tale about the power of research in extreme environments. What grabs the public\u2019s attention? What drives policy? Is it all just timing and luck?<\/p>\n
The \u201cdark oxygen\u201d study has come under fire over the past year. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and at two companies\u2014The Metals Company and Adepth\u2014have separately posted scientific rebuttals in preprint papers. Nature Geoscience, the journal that published the research, has so far defended it, as have its authors.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Nature Geoscience told one of us (Fieseler) via email that \u201cconcerns have been raised with us about this paper and we have been looking into them carefully following an established process, which is not yet complete.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the decision to mine international waters is still being decided. This month delegates returned to the negotiating table in Jamaica. We traveled there this week to watch. But unlike last year, when many signs pointed toward a speedy decision and \u201cinevitable\u201d deep-sea mining operations, the pace has slowed. Acceleration has given way to rising precaution.<\/p>\n
TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
Clare Fieseler (reading from her 2024 Post and Courier article \u201cPulled from the Deep\u201d): \u201cAbout 10 million years ago … the ocean swarmed with beasts…. As [these creatures] passed, debris rained down to the bottom, including errant shark teeth, which joined [with] pieces of volcanic rock scattered below. Scientists believe that these scraps started to grow in size as they slowly attracted trace metals found within the ocean\u2019s chemical soup, forming thin coatings dense in critical minerals like manganese, nickel and cobalt. For millions of years and in complete darkness, those rocks steadily grew in oceans around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fieseler: My name\u2019s Clare Fieseler. I\u2019m a reporter and a scientist, and I\u2019m here talking to a microbiologist who, along with his collaborators, has found something remarkable at the bottom of the sea.<\/p>\n
Jeff Marlow: Each nodule can often fit in your hand.<\/p>\n
Another.<\/p>\n
And then as you get closer and closer and closer, you\u2019d start to see different textures. Get even closer, and you\u2019d start to see the life on top of them. They\u2019re not just these barren bricks; they can also kind of be substrates for animals. There are worms that crawl on and in the nodules. There are little corals that can stick up. You know, they\u2019re often centimeters tall, so they seem sort of negligible from our perspective. But these are the huge sequoias of the [laughs] abyssal plain.<\/p>\n
This is what we saw\u2014just, like, millions [laughs] of this size and shape just covering the seafloor.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re all over the place. They could not be more abundant. It\u2019s really just about looking closer, looking at it with a different perspective that reveals something amazing.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: You seem a little hesitant to say, like, a phrase similar to: \u201cWe found that nodules may be producing oxygen.\u201d [Laughs]<\/p>\n
Marlow: Mm, um.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Is there a reason?<\/p>\n
Marlow: Is there a reason [laughs]? [CLIP: Carolyn Beeler speaking on PRX\u2019s The World: \u201cThe discovery is that metals on the ocean floor can create oxygen without photosynthesis. They\u2019re calling the oxygen created this way \u2018dark oxygen.\u2019\u201d]<\/p>\n
Fieseler: There\u2019s a reason why Jeff Marlow is being cautious with me. His collaborators\u2014Andrew Sweetman, Franz Geiger and the rest of their 16-person team\u2014published a study in Nature Geoscience that could rewrite not just what we know about these nodules or about the ocean; it could rewrite what we know about how life began on planet Earth.<\/p>\n
These scientists aren\u2019t the only people interested in polymetallic nodules. There\u2019s an entire industry that wants to suck up the nodules from the bottom of the sea for profit. In fact, the team\u2019s research was funded by the Metals Company, one of the leading firms pushing for deep-sea mining.<\/p>\n
Marlow: Through all this data and all of our troubleshooting we were able to conclude that the nodules\u2014or something inside and around them\u2014was producing oxygen.<\/p>\n
Federica Calabrese: Yeah, exactly like that, so I …<\/p>\n
Fieseler: I see it there.<\/p>\n
Calabrese: Yeah, especially here, you can …<\/p>\n
Marlow: That is kind of the way science works, it is confusing, it\u2019s messy. Through experiments and thoughtful analyses, you get at what the story really is, and I think we\u2019re really just at the start of that.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: To make sense of all this, I called up an old friend, Andrew Thaler, a deep-sea ecologist who used to run the deep-sea mining industry\u2019s only trade publication. He\u2019s been tracking this stuff for years.<\/p>\n
Andrew Thaler: The reason we wanna go mine the deep sea, the reason we need these metals and the reason we need these minerals is because we wanna get off fossil fuels, and in order to get off fossil fuels, we have to rapidly electrify the world\u2019s power grid.<\/p>\n
Energy production through renewable resources means energy storage, and energy storage means batteries, and polymetallic nodules are\u2014you\u2019ll see this all the time when you see any of the mining company CEOs give a talk: they\u2019ll hold up a polymetallic nodule, and they\u2019ll say …<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Gerard Barron, CEO of the Metals Company, appearing on 60 Minutes: \u201cThat is a electric vehicle battery in a rock.\u201d]<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Barron speaking on 121 Mining Investment TV: \u201cThis is like a battery in a rock.\u201d]<\/p>\n
Thaler: \u201cThis is a Tesla battery.\u201d And they\u2019re not wrong. .<\/p>\n
Fieseler: The most profitable nodules are located in the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico, in an area called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, or CCZ. For over 50 years mining companies have been testing equipment and conducting environmental studies to try and figure out how mining could impact the abyss\u2014because nobody knows for certain how many years it might take the seafloor to recover. So I went to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to talk to Jason Chaytor. He\u2019s a federal scientist who studies the seafloor.<\/p>\n
Jason Chaytor: The impetus for working on nodules had nothing to do with nodules at all.<\/p>\n
So here is, actually, the Data Library.<\/p>\n
We were just looking for an area to study how the seabed responds to change over time. Oh, it\u2019s here somewhere [laughs].<\/p>\n
Actually, for this project, I, I looked for some maps and navigation data and just couldn\u2019t find it and then realized that the original navigation records were on typed-out, you know, sheets of paper.<\/p>\n
I came across a museum finding aid from the Mariners\u2019 Museum in Newport News, Virginia, that made reference to the ships that Deepsea Ventures had used in the 1970s\u2014late \u201960s, 1970s\u2014in reference to the Blake Plateau.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: The coordinates had been lost to history because Deepsea Ventures went out of business just 20 years in. Other companies tried; none pulled it off. Mining the ocean floor never made economic sense.<\/p>\n
After five years of searching for the coordinates, planning an expedition, Chaytor and his team returned to the Blake Plateau off the coast of South Carolina in 2022 to rediscover a lost deep-sea mining test site\u2014the oldest in the world, in fact\u2014and see how the seafloor had changed.<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Scientist audio: \u201cSo as we said before this was a previous\u2014a testing site for deep-sea mining, and this occurred about in the late \u201960s, early \u201970s.\u201d]<\/p>\n
Chaytor: You know, my first impression of, of that field\u2014it\u2019s remarkable.<\/p>\n
They, they\u2019re just crops\u2014you know, like a crop field of, of nodules scattered everywhere.<\/p>\n
Some of the first views of, of the disturbance that we found definitely look like just long train tracks through these nodule fields\u2014you know, areas of piled-up nodules separated by open sediment with, with no nodules\u2014and they just kind of kept going off into the distance.<\/p>\n
So we ended up with more than 550,000 photographs. What we\u2019re doing is merging \u2019em together to try and make a seamless picture of the seafloor.<\/p>\n
You know, at this point it\u2019s now 54 years. Some of those tracks look like nothing has happened to them, like they would look like they just recently were made.<\/p>\n
They are coated with ferromanganese crust. In, in most cases what’s inside them …<\/p>\n
Fieseler: You know what that is?<\/p>\n
Thaler: That looks like a dredge track in an abyssal plain.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: You are the first person to be seeing these.<\/p>\n
Thaler: So that\u2019s no recovery.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Thaler: I mean, it\u2019s not, it\u2019s not really new data. Like, we know that recovery doesn\u2019t happen over decadal time scales. Like, I\u2019m sure this is what everyone would expect to see.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Thaler: It is, it is pretty dramatic, though.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Yeah, it\u2019s one of these things where it\u2019s like, \u201cOh, this image could change everything,\u201d or it could change absolutely nothing \u2019cause people don\u2019t understand it.<\/p>\n
Thaler: I mean, like, most people, like, wouldn\u2019t have any context for what this is to begin with.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: We\u2019re here at the largest gathering of ocean scientists in North America right now in New Orleans.<\/p>\n
There are a couple different scientists here that are presenting on their own deep-sea mining research, and so I\u2019m gonna be going in and talking to a couple people. And then we just wait \u2019til 4:00 P.M. to see what happens when Jason Chaytor presents his work at his poster session.<\/p>\n
Thaler: So this is it.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Mm-hmm. These are all the tracks.<\/p>\n
Thaler: Oh, wow, and you know what\u2019s really interesting about the site is that there was a recent publication revealing the largest deepwater coral reef in the world on the Blake Plateau, and it\u2019s about 20 kilometers [roughly 12.4 miles] from the site.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Thaler: It\u2019s, like, right there.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Thaler: So the very first time anyone tried experimental deep-sea mining, they almost hit one of the biggest coral reef systems on the planet.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Chaytor: Whether it has major impact is not what we\u2019re after. We aim for it to be useful.<\/p>\n
Basically to inform people of, you know, it\u2019s, it\u2019s not a perfect analogue for the stuff that\u2019s going on now, but it\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, it does take a long time for something to recover\u2014if, if it does recover at all, so.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also the nature of science; it\u2019s kind of this accumulation of information and knowledge.<\/p>\n
Just because it comes out and I don\u2019t get a whole bunch of phone calls\u2014you know, it\u2019s not why, you know, we do the work that we do, especially as a government scientist, because there is a reason for doing it. There\u2019s a mission. There\u2019s a purpose. There\u2019s a goal.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: After just two hours the poster session ended.<\/p>\n
Fieseler (reading from her 2024 article): \u201cFour security guards herded the scientists out and turned off the lights…. Chaytor was certain that scientists decades from now would see its value. That\u2019s what mattered to him. [But] for non-scientists, this unique view about human destruction in unreachable places may fade into history\u2019s footnotes once again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Chaytor remarkably discovered this old mining site in U.S. waters, but today the nodules that most miners want to get at are out there, in international waters, which are currently protected by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It\u2019s a treaty ratified by most of the world\u2019s countries.<\/p>\n
The law says the international seabed is special, like the moon, like Antarctica. It is legally designated \u201cthe common heritage of mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a catch: countries of the world can vote to open up the seabed to mining if they can agree on a code\u2014a set of rules that would govern commercial activities out on the high seas. The organization in charge of these negotiations is the International Seabed Authority, or ISA, a United Nations\u2013affiliated group. It is currently meeting in July 2025 in Kingston, Jamaica.<\/p>\n
Thaler: The mining code that they\u2019re negotiating is the mining code for all mineral resources of the seabed in areas beyond national jurisdiction. So that\u2019s not just polymetallic nodules in the CCZ; that\u2019s hydrothermal vents on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge …<\/p>\n
Fieseler: It\u2019s everything.<\/p>\n
Thaler: That\u2019s cobalt-rich seamounts on the Rio Grande Rise\u2014it\u2019s, it\u2019s everything.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: So here\u2019s the thing: we\u2019ve been at this for, like, 50 years, but right now we\u2019re closer to mining the deep sea than we\u2019ve ever been before.<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Barron speaking at Nasdaq: \u201cThe future is metallic.\u201d]<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Barron speaking on MINING.com: \u201cBut I think the better news was the election of President Trump.]<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Barron testifying to Congress: \u201cFour days\u2019 sailing from San Diego lies the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where polymetallic nodules sit 2.5 miles [about four kilometers] deep on the seafloor.\u201d]<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Barron speaking on Disruptive Investing: \u201cThey form like this rock in my hand.\u201d]<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Barron speaking at the Saint Helena Forum: \u201cThey\u2019re in a part of the ocean known as the abyssal plain, and it\u2019s the ecosystem on our planet with the least life.\u201d]<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Representative Ed Case of Hawaii and Barron speak during a congressional hearing.]
Case: \u201cAnd you\u2019ve stated in the press that where you wanted to mine is a, quote, unquote, \u2018marine desert.\u2019 Do you stand by those statements?\u201d
Barron: \u201cThank you for the question. Yes, I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thaler: The abyssal plain is the largest singular ecosystem on the planet. But that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s devoid of life. The abyssal plain may actually be one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. But the animals that are dependent on the abyssal plain are tiny.<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Scientists discuss a creature in the abyssal plain.]
Scientist 1: \u201cSo when we get close there\u2019s a lot of these little, tiny hexactinellids, or glass sponges.\u201d
Scientist 2: \u201cLittle spots. It’s quite beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thaler: In this moment, science really has the key role to play. We have never, in human history, started an extractive industry from the position of understanding the environment first. That\u2019s never happened. The traditional arc of industrial development is: we find oil in Pennsylvania, we, we, we drill as much as we can, and only 10 or 20 or 50 years later do we realize how much harm it\u2019s done. We\u2019ve never had an opportunity where we get to go in first.<\/p>\n
Marlow: On July 22, 2024, the paper came out, and the fact that this came out in the middle of the ISA meetings, into this kind of media and political firestorm, was a shock [laughs].<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Dark oxygen broke through. Delegates at the ISA meeting were talking about the research from the floor in the middle of negotiations.<\/p>\n
But almost right away the Metals Company, which had funded the research, began trying to discredit the scientists.<\/p>\n
The Metals Company says dark oxygen is, quote, \u201cbad science.\u201d A spokesperson told me that the company\u2019s rebuttal is still undergoing scientific peer review. And the company declined to comment further.<\/p>\n
Marlow: I think a lot of the initial attention was like, \u201cWe did it! We found this intriguing thing\u2014end of story.\u201d But to me and my colleagues, this is the beginning of the story.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the next step that we have to figure out: Like, does it matter in the real world …?<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Right.<\/p>\n
Marlow: Or is it like, \u201cThey kind of do this weird thing, but it doesn\u2019t really matter\u201d?<\/p>\n
Fieseler: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Marlow: Yeah. The consequences of being wrong either way are huge.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: I remember when my editor at The Post and Courier first asked me why an audience would care about this story. The rocks are boring, the science is not sexy, but the unknown\u2014and how much we still don\u2019t know about the sea\u2014that\u2019s what draws people in.<\/p>\n
Marlow: The quest for life beyond Earth is really one, when you get down to it, of life extracting energy from its environment. And that\u2019s the same thing we\u2019re studying with the nodules. So to me it is the same thing [laughs]. Those sorts of unknown unknowns are so hard to come across in science because it\u2019s often at the exploratory limit of our understanding, so that might happen in outer space.<\/p>\n
Those kind of first forays into new, unknown habitats and environments are where the big discoveries could happen, where you reveal something you\u2019d never seen before. To do that at a part of our planet that is so huge\u2014these nodule-covered parts of the seafloor are enormous\u2014the fact that that was lurking in our own seafloor for so long is really surprising to me.<\/p>\n
Fieseler: That\u2019s really what this story\u2019s about\u2014and why dark oxygen broke through. It\u2019s not about the rocks or how they\u2019re removed or what they do. It\u2019s like: What else don\u2019t we know about our planet\u2014or the universe? And can we imagine a future where we exploit for profit a place where we don\u2019t even know what we don\u2019t know?<\/p>\n
[CLIP: Scientists discuss creatures in the abyssal plain]
Scientist 3: \u201cAh, you can see, see his little chelae, hands, so his hands\u2014his little claws\u201d
Scientist 4: \u201cYep.\u201d
Scientist 3: \u201cThere, you see him reaching down, and he\u2019s probably cleaning his, cleaning his swimmerets \u2026\u201d Scientist 5: \u201cAre those eggs, maybe?\u201c
Scientist 6: \u201cAre they what?\u201d
Scientist 5: \u201cThe blue things, are they maybe eggs?\u201d
Scientist 6: \u201cIt does look like eggs.\u201d
Scientist 7: \u201cWhat is that tube thing\u2014maybe a tube worm?\u201d
Scientist 8: \u201cTube worm, tube, yeah.\u201d
Scientist 9: \u201cYeah, those look more like hydroids than anything else.\u201d
Scientist 3: \u201cHere\u2019s this, this egg stuff, maybe, again or a bryozoan that\u2019s behind him. All right, buddy, you\u2019re in the way. You need to move; I got invertebrates to look at. Come on.\u201d
Scientist 9: \u201cOh, he doesn\u2019t seem to want to.\u201d
Scientist 3: \u201cLots of tentacles in all directions.\u201d
Scientist 9: \u201cHe does not look like we\u2019ve seen, seen \u2019em.\u201d
Scientist 3: \u201cYeah, he looks similar to the helmet jelly, where he\u2019s got that bell with the red internals \u2026\u201d
Scientist 9: \u201cYeah.\u201d
Scientist 3: \u201cAnd then these tentacles that go up and down, but I don\u2019t know which kind he is. He\u2019s very neat.\u201d Scientist 9: \u201cYeah, the pink looks like it was probably a reflection from our lights, but it looks like where he could maybe illuminate?\u201d
Scientist 3: \u201cYeah, possible. It could also be food from\u2014that he\u2019s eaten. He\u2019s pretty neat. I like him.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center and co-published with the Post and Courier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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