BIG new paper just out, led by @bokamero:



TL;DR: a 6 million km2 area of the Pacific, currently the focus of interest for #DeepSeaMining, is not a single biogeographic province (like a continent) for deep-sea life.

Why does it matter? Here's a 🧵👇nature.com/articles/s4155… This paper shows a change in the types of animals inhabiting the seafloor at a depth of 4400-4800 metres in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), and this boundary matches a change in seawater chemistry. 🧵1/n

Spires of sulfur... a dead zone of deceased shrimp & squid... hardy limpets, scurrying sea-spiders, lush anemones...

Deep-sea hydrothermal vents unlike most others revealed in our new paper:
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

So here's some info about their discovery (/thread...) These vents are at 1.4 km deep on the slopes of a small undersea volcano...

...in an undersea crater (the "Kemp Caldera")

...next to an undersea mountain ("Kemp Seamount")

...at the southern end of the South Sandwich Islands

...in the Antarctic (2/n)

🎞️ @AGCGraham

Today’s media coverage of fruit juice/cancer offers a chance to see how well outlets follow guidelines for responsible reporting of risk…

(e.g. drawn up by scientists & journalists: royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_…)

…so wearing my #scicom hat, here’s a /thread: What matters is reporting of relative AND absolute risk, ideally with equal clarity & prominence.

Relative risk: X doubles the risk of Y (scary?)

But is that increase from 1 in ten to 2 in ten (ok, scary) or 1 in a million to 2 in a million (not so scary)? (=absolute risk)

My book "Ask An Ocean Explorer"(*) is out in 30 days (on 21 Feb).

So for the next 30 days, I'll be sharing some of the wonders & history of exploring the deep here, in #30daysofdeep

(*<cough>available for pre-order, e.g. amazon.co.uk/Ask-Ocean-Expl…; also for Kindle, & audio book) On this day, 59 years ago, two people reached the ocean's deepest point for the first time.

Here's a wonderful account by one of them, Don Walsh, in his own words: scientificamerican.com/article/diving…

And here's some archive newsreel footage:

#30daysofdeep 1/30

Today being the solstice & anniversary of HMS Challenger setting out on her voyage of ocean exploration in 1872, it's a good day to reflect on some of the deep-sea discoveries of 2018.

Here are three that show how there are still surprises out there for us... (thread/) 2018 deep-sea surprise 1: deep-sea skates may use the warm waters of hydrothermal vents to incubate their egg cases, revealed in a research paper published in February, from exploration at >1.6 km deep in the Galapagos Marine Reserve

nature.com/articles/s4159… (2/6)

Deepest dives & years:
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435m Beebe & Barton 1930
671m " 1932
923m " 1934
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1372m Barton 1949
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3167m Piccard & Piccard 1953
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4050m Houot & Willm 1954
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10916m Piccard & Walsh 1960 11 June 1930: 435 metres

William Beebe & Otis Barton start to set new depth records, diving off Bermuda in the "bathysphere" that Barton designed ()