This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Middle and co-published with the Publish and Courier.
On July 22, 2024, a crew of researchers launched a surprising discovery: deep-sea rock concentrations seemed to be producing oxygen within the blackness of the ocean’s abyss.
The 2 of us have been in the midst of filming a documentary about these potato-sized undersea oddities—generally known as polymetallic nodules—and all of the sudden they have been making world headlines. The researchers dubbed their discovering “darkish oxygen.”
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However what grabbed us as journalists was how—inside days of publication—the analysis ignited debate amongst dozens of diplomats then convening in Kingston, Jamaica, to determine the destiny of these rocks.
Many researchers hope their work reaches policymakers, nevertheless it’s uncommon to see such an instantaneous impact.
Shortly after Nature Geoscience revealed the “darkish oxygen” examine, delegates from Costa Rica and Panama started citing it as a motive to not rush negotiations. Based on a United Nations treaty that has been ratified or acceded to by 170 nations and areas (however not the U.S.), firms getting ready to mine can’t extract nodules from worldwide waters with out settlement amongst these signatories on how that must be executed. “Darkish oxygen” grew to become a rally name for prudence earlier than opening up the excessive seas to deep-sea mining.
“Darkish oxygen” steered a movie we have been already making into a completely new path. We had been following a separate group of researchers who had discovered the world’s oldest deep-sea check web site, greater than 50 years after mining. As certainly one of us (Fieseler) first reported for the Publish and Courier final 12 months, they made a outstanding statement among the many discipline of nodules there.
That discovery, nonetheless, had a a lot completely different destiny.
What unfolded for us was a story in regards to the energy of analysis in excessive environments. What grabs the general public’s consideration? What drives coverage? Is all of it simply timing and luck?
The “darkish oxygen” examine has come beneath hearth over the previous 12 months. Researchers on the College of Aberdeen in Scotland and at two firms—The Metals Firm and Adepth—have individually posted scientific rebuttals in preprint papers. Nature Geoscience, the journal that revealed the analysis, has to this point defended it, as have its authors.
A spokesperson for Nature Geoscience advised certainly one of us (Fieseler) through electronic mail that “considerations have been raised with us about this paper and now we have been wanting into them rigorously following a longtime course of, which isn’t but full.”
In the meantime the choice to mine worldwide waters remains to be being determined. This month delegates returned to the negotiating desk in Jamaica. We traveled there this week to observe. However in contrast to final 12 months, when many indicators pointed towards a speedy choice and “inevitable” deep-sea mining operations, the tempo has slowed. Acceleration has given method to rising precaution.
TRANSCRIPT
Clare Fieseler (studying from her 2024 Publish and Courier article “Pulled from the Deep”): “About 10 million years in the past … the ocean swarmed with beasts…. As [these creatures] handed, particles rained all the way down to the underside, together with errant shark tooth, which joined [with] items of volcanic rock scattered under. Scientists imagine that these scraps began to develop in measurement as they slowly attracted hint metals discovered inside the ocean’s chemical soup, forming skinny coatings dense in essential minerals like manganese, nickel and cobalt. For thousands and thousands of years and in full darkness, these rocks steadily grew in oceans around the globe.”
Fieseler: My title’s Clare Fieseler. I’m a reporter and a scientist, and I’m right here speaking to a microbiologist who, alongside along with his collaborators, has discovered one thing outstanding on the backside of the ocean.
Jeff Marlow: Every nodule can usually slot in your hand.
One other.
After which as you get nearer and nearer and nearer, you’d begin to see completely different textures. Get even nearer, and also you’d begin to see the life on prime of them. They’re not simply these barren bricks; they’ll additionally type of be substrates for animals. There are worms that crawl on and within the nodules. There are little corals that may stick up. You recognize, they’re usually centimeters tall, so they appear type of negligible from our perspective. However these are the large sequoias of the [laughs] abyssal plain.
That is what we noticed—simply, like, thousands and thousands [laughs] of this measurement and form simply overlaying the seafloor.
They’re in every single place. They might not be extra ample. It’s actually nearly wanting nearer, taking a look at it with a special perspective that reveals one thing superb.
Fieseler: You appear a little bit hesitant to say, like, a phrase just like: “We discovered that nodules could also be producing oxygen.” [Laughs]
Marlow: Mm, um.
Fieseler: Is there a motive?
Marlow: Is there a motive [laughs]? [CLIP: Carolyn Beeler speaking on PRX’s The World: “The discovery is that metals on the ocean floor can create oxygen without photosynthesis. They’re calling the oxygen created this way ‘dark oxygen.’”]
Fieseler: There’s a motive why Jeff Marlow is being cautious with me. His collaborators—Andrew Sweetman, Franz Geiger and the remainder of their 16-person crew—revealed a examine in Nature Geoscience that would rewrite not simply what we learn about these nodules or in regards to the ocean; it may rewrite what we learn about how life started on planet Earth.
These scientists aren’t the one individuals all for polymetallic nodules. There’s a whole business that wishes to suck up the nodules from the underside of the ocean for revenue. The truth is, the crew’s analysis was funded by the Metals Firm, one of many main corporations pushing for deep-sea mining.
Marlow: By means of all this knowledge and all of our troubleshooting we have been capable of conclude that the nodules—or one thing inside and round them—was producing oxygen.
Federica Calabrese: Yeah, precisely like that, so I …
Fieseler: I see it there.
Calabrese: Yeah, particularly right here, you’ll be able to …
Marlow: That’s type of the way in which science works, it’s complicated, it’s messy. By means of experiments and considerate analyses, you get at what the story actually is, and I believe we’re actually simply at the beginning of that.
Fieseler: To make sense of all this, I referred to as up an outdated pal, Andrew Thaler, a deep-sea ecologist who used to run the deep-sea mining business’s solely commerce publication. He’s been monitoring these items for years.
Andrew Thaler: The rationale we wanna go mine the deep sea, the explanation we’d like these metals and the explanation we’d like these minerals is as a result of we wanna get off fossil fuels, and with a purpose to get off fossil fuels, now we have to quickly electrify the world’s energy grid.
Vitality manufacturing by renewable assets means power storage, and power storage means batteries, and polymetallic nodules are—you’ll see this on a regular basis if you see any of the mining firm CEOs give a chat: they’ll maintain up a polymetallic nodule, and so they’ll say …
[CLIP: Gerard Barron, CEO of the Metals Company, appearing on 60 Minutes: “That is a electric vehicle battery in a rock.”]
[CLIP: Barron speaking on 121 Mining Investment TV: “This is like a battery in a rock.”]
Thaler: “This can be a Tesla battery.” And so they’re not incorrect. .
Fieseler: Essentially the most worthwhile nodules are situated within the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico, in an space referred to as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, or CCZ. For over 50 years mining firms have been testing gear and conducting environmental research to attempt to work out how mining may impression the abyss—as a result of no person is aware of for sure what number of years it’d take the seafloor to recuperate. So I went to Woods Gap, Massachusetts, to speak to Jason Chaytor. He’s a federal scientist who research the seafloor.
Jason Chaytor: The impetus for engaged on nodules had nothing to do with nodules in any respect.
So right here is, truly, the Knowledge Library.
We have been simply searching for an space to check how the seabed responds to vary over time. Oh, it’s right here someplace [laughs].
Truly, for this challenge, I, I seemed for some maps and navigation knowledge and simply couldn’t discover it after which realized that the unique navigation information have been on typed-out, you understand, sheets of paper.
I got here throughout a museum discovering help from the Mariners’ Museum in Newport Information, Virginia, that made reference to the ships that Deepsea Ventures had used within the Nineteen Seventies—late ’60s, Nineteen Seventies—in reference to the Blake Plateau.
Fieseler: The coordinates had been misplaced to historical past as a result of Deepsea Ventures went out of enterprise simply 20 years in. Different firms tried; none pulled it off. Mining the ocean flooring by no means made financial sense.
After 5 years of trying to find the coordinates, planning an expedition, Chaytor and his crew returned to the Blake Plateau off the coast of South Carolina in 2022 to rediscover a misplaced deep-sea mining check web site—the oldest on this planet, actually—and see how the seafloor had modified.
[CLIP: Scientist audio: “So as we said before this was a previous—a testing site for deep-sea mining, and this occurred about in the late ’60s, early ’70s.”]
Chaytor: You recognize, my first impression of, of that discipline—it’s outstanding.
They, they’re simply crops—you understand, like a crop discipline of, of nodules scattered in every single place.
Among the first views of, of the disturbance that we discovered undoubtedly appear to be simply lengthy prepare tracks by these nodule fields—you understand, areas of piled-up nodules separated by open sediment with, with no nodules—and so they simply type of saved going off into the gap.
So we ended up with greater than 550,000 pictures. What we’re doing is merging ’em collectively to attempt to make a seamless image of the seafloor.
You recognize, at this level it’s now 54 years. A few of these tracks appear to be nothing has occurred to them, like they’d appear to be they simply just lately have been made.
They’re coated with ferromanganese crust. In, typically what’s inside them …
Fieseler: You recognize what that’s?
Thaler: That appears like a dredge observe in an abyssal plain.
Fieseler: You’re the first particular person to be seeing these.
Thaler: In order that’s no restoration.
Fieseler: Yeah.
Thaler: I imply, it’s not, it’s not likely new knowledge. Like, we all know that restoration doesn’t occur over decadal time scales. Like, I’m certain that is what everybody would anticipate to see.
Fieseler: Yeah.
Thaler: It’s, it’s fairly dramatic, although.
Fieseler: Yeah, it’s certainly one of these items the place it’s like, “Oh, this picture may change the whole lot,” or it may change completely nothing ’trigger individuals don’t perceive it.
Thaler: I imply, like, most individuals, like, wouldn’t have any context for what that is to start with.
Fieseler: We’re right here on the largest gathering of ocean scientists in North America proper now in New Orleans.
There are a pair completely different scientists right here which might be presenting on their very own deep-sea mining analysis, and so I’m gonna be getting into and speaking to a few individuals. After which we simply wait ’til 4:00 P.M. to see what occurs when Jason Chaytor presents his work at his poster session.
Thaler: So that is it.
Fieseler: Mm-hmm. These are all of the tracks.
Thaler: Oh, wow, and you understand what’s actually fascinating in regards to the web site is that there was a current publication revealing the most important deepwater coral reef on this planet on the Blake Plateau, and it’s about 20 kilometers [roughly 12.4 miles] from the positioning.
Fieseler: Yeah.
Thaler: It’s, like, proper there.
Fieseler: Yeah.
Thaler: So the very first time anybody tried experimental deep-sea mining, they nearly hit one of many largest coral reef techniques on the planet.
Fieseler: Yeah.
Chaytor: Whether or not it has main impression will not be what we’re after. We purpose for it to be helpful.
Mainly to tell individuals of, you understand, it’s, it’s not an ideal analogue for the stuff that’s occurring now, nevertheless it’s like, “Yeah, it does take a very long time for one thing to recuperate—if, if it does recuperate in any respect, so.”
But it surely’s additionally the character of science; it’s type of this accumulation of data and data.
Simply because it comes out and I don’t get an entire bunch of cellphone calls—you understand, it’s not why, you understand, we do the work that we do, particularly as a authorities scientist, as a result of there’s a motive for doing it. There’s a mission. There’s a objective. There’s a purpose.
Fieseler: After simply two hours the poster session ended.
Fieseler (studying from her 2024 article): “4 safety guards herded the scientists out and turned off the lights…. Chaytor was sure that scientists many years from now would see its worth. That’s what mattered to him. [But] for non-scientists, this distinctive view about human destruction in unreachable locations could fade into historical past’s footnotes as soon as once more.”
Fieseler: Chaytor remarkably found this outdated mining web site in U.S. waters, however as we speak the nodules that the majority miners wish to get at are on the market, in worldwide waters, that are presently protected by the United Nations Conference on the Legislation of the Sea. It’s a treaty ratified by many of the world’s nations.
The legislation says the worldwide seabed is particular, just like the moon, like Antarctica. It’s legally designated “the frequent heritage of mankind.”
However there’s a catch: nations of the world can vote to open up the seabed to mining if they’ll agree on a code—a algorithm that may govern business actions out on the excessive seas. The group accountable for these negotiations is the Worldwide Seabed Authority, or ISA, a United Nations–affiliated group. It’s presently assembly in July 2025 in Kingston, Jamaica.
Thaler: The mining code that they’re negotiating is the mining code for all mineral assets of the seabed in areas past nationwide jurisdiction. In order that’s not simply polymetallic nodules within the CCZ; that’s hydrothermal vents on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge …
Fieseler: It’s the whole lot.
Thaler: That’s cobalt-rich seamounts on the Rio Grande Rise—it’s, it’s the whole lot.
Fieseler: So right here’s the factor: we’ve been at this for, like, 50 years, however proper now we’re nearer to mining the deep sea than we’ve ever been earlier than.
[CLIP: Barron speaking at Nasdaq: “The future is metallic.”]
[CLIP: Barron speaking on MINING.com: “But I think the better news was the election of President Trump.]
[CLIP: Barron testifying to Congress: “Four days’ sailing from San Diego lies the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where polymetallic nodules sit 2.5 miles [about four kilometers] deep on the seafloor.”]
[CLIP: Barron speaking on Disruptive Investing: “They form like this rock in my hand.”]
[CLIP: Barron speaking at the Saint Helena Forum: “They’re in a part of the ocean known as the abyssal plain, and it’s the ecosystem on our planet with the least life.”]
[CLIP: Representative Ed Case of Hawaii and Barron speak during a congressional hearing.]
Case: “And also you’ve acknowledged within the press that the place you wished to mine is a, quote, unquote, ‘marine desert.’ Do you stand by these statements?”
Barron: “Thanks for the query. Sure, I do.”
Thaler: The abyssal plain is the most important singular ecosystem on the planet. However that doesn’t imply it’s devoid of life. The abyssal plain may very well be one of the vital biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. However the animals which might be depending on the abyssal plain are tiny.
[CLIP: Scientists discuss a creature in the abyssal plain.]
Scientist 1: “So once we get shut there’s a variety of these little, tiny hexactinellids, or glass sponges.”
Scientist 2: “Little spots. It is fairly lovely.”
Thaler: On this second, science actually has the important thing position to play. Now we have by no means, in human historical past, began an extractive business from the place of understanding the atmosphere first. That’s by no means occurred. The standard arc of commercial growth is: we discover oil in Pennsylvania, we, we, we drill as a lot as we are able to, and solely 10 or 20 or 50 years later will we notice how a lot hurt it’s executed. We’ve by no means had a possibility the place we get to go in first.
Marlow: On July 22, 2024, the paper got here out, and the truth that this got here out in the midst of the ISA conferences, into this sort of media and political firestorm, was a shock [laughs].
Fieseler: Darkish oxygen broke by. Delegates on the ISA assembly have been speaking in regards to the analysis from the ground in the midst of negotiations.
However nearly straight away the Metals Firm, which had funded the analysis, started attempting to discredit the scientists.
The Metals Firm says darkish oxygen is, quote, “dangerous science.” A spokesperson advised me that the corporate’s rebuttal remains to be present process scientific peer evaluate. And the corporate declined to remark additional.
Marlow: I believe a variety of the preliminary consideration was like, “We did it! We discovered this intriguing factor—finish of story.” However to me and my colleagues, that is the start of the story.
And that’s the subsequent step that now we have to determine: Like, does it matter in the actual world …?
Fieseler: Proper.
Marlow: Or is it like, “They type of do that bizarre factor, nevertheless it doesn’t actually matter”?
Fieseler: Yeah.
Marlow: Yeah. The implications of being incorrect both manner are large.
Fieseler: I keep in mind when my editor at The Publish and Courier first requested me why an viewers would care about this story. The rocks are boring, the science will not be attractive, however the unknown—and the way a lot we nonetheless don’t know in regards to the sea—that’s what attracts individuals in.
Marlow: The hunt for all times past Earth is de facto one, if you get all the way down to it, of life extracting power from its atmosphere. And that’s the identical factor we’re finding out with the nodules. So to me it’s the identical factor [laughs]. These types of unknown unknowns are so exhausting to return throughout in science as a result of it’s usually on the exploratory restrict of our understanding, so which may occur in outer area.
These type of first forays into new, unknown habitats and environments are the place the massive discoveries may occur, the place you reveal one thing you’d by no means seen earlier than. To do this at part of our planet that’s so large—these nodule-covered components of the seafloor are huge—the truth that that was lurking in our personal seafloor for thus lengthy is de facto stunning to me.
Fieseler: That’s actually what this story’s about—and why darkish oxygen broke by. It’s not in regards to the rocks or how they’re eliminated or what they do. It’s like: What else don’t we learn about our planet—or the universe? And may we think about a future the place we exploit for revenue a spot the place we don’t even know what we don’t know?
[CLIP: Scientists discuss creatures in the abyssal plain]
Scientist 3: “Ah, you’ll be able to see, see his little chelae, arms, so his arms—his little claws”
Scientist 4: “Yep.”
Scientist 3: “There, you see him reaching down, and he’s most likely cleansing his, cleansing his swimmerets …” Scientist 5: “Are these eggs, possibly?“
Scientist 6: “Are they what?”
Scientist 5: “The blue issues, are they possibly eggs?”
Scientist 6: “It does appear to be eggs.”
Scientist 7: “What’s that tube factor—possibly a tube worm?”
Scientist 8: “Tube worm, tube, yeah.”
Scientist 9: “Yeah, these look extra like hydroids than anything.”
Scientist 3: “Right here’s this, this egg stuff, possibly, once more or a bryozoan that’s behind him. All proper, buddy, you’re in the way in which. You’ll want to transfer; I bought invertebrates to have a look at. Come on.”
Scientist 9: “Oh, he doesn’t appear to wish to.”
Scientist 3: “Plenty of tentacles in all instructions.”
Scientist 9: “He doesn’t appear to be we’ve seen, seen ’em.”
Scientist 3: “Yeah, he seems just like the helmet jelly, the place he’s bought that bell with the purple internals …”
Scientist 9: “Yeah.”
Scientist 3: “After which these tentacles that go up and down, however I don’t know which type he’s. He’s very neat.” Scientist 9: “Yeah, the pink seems prefer it was most likely a mirrored image from our lights, nevertheless it seems like the place he may possibly illuminate?”
Scientist 3: “Yeah, doable. It may be meals from—that he’s eaten. He’s fairly neat. I like him.”
This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Middle and co-published with the Publish and Courier.
