Currently the fantastic creatures that live in the deep-many of them incandescent in a world without light-and its formations capture and trap vast quantities of carbon that would otherwise poison our atmosphere and novel bacteria as yet undiscovered hold the promise of potent new medicines. Teeming with unsuspected life, an extraordinary interconnected ecosystem deep below the waves has a huge effect on our daily lives, influencing climate and weather systems, with the potential for much more-good or bad depending on how it is exploited. In the process, the abyss is being revealed as perhaps the most amazing part of our planet, with a topography even more varied and extreme than its Earthbound counterpart. Revolutionary studies in the deep are rewriting the very notion of life on Earth and the rules of what is possible. “However, one way or another, the future ocean is the deep ocean.”Ī golden era of deep-sea discovery is underway.

“The oceans have always shaped human lives,” writes marine biologist Helen Scales in her vibrant new book The Brilliant Abyss, but the surface and the very edges have so far mattered the most.

Spirals in time by helen scales