Gambling in the deep sea

Abstract

For decades, the depths of the oceans have fascinated researchers. The discovery of strange creatures perfectly adapted to eternal darkness, high pressure, and other unusual conditions has raised enormous interest in how life emerged on Earth and how it flourishes in such extreme environments (Fig 1). This abundance of life has also lured researchers and biotech companies to the oceans in the hope of finding unknown genes, proteins, and other compounds that could be exploited commercially. Despite the enormous costs that still pose a considerable barrier to deep‐sea research and exploitation, some now worry about the negative side effects of deep‐sea bioprospecting. Scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians and legal experts have begun to debate problematic issues, such as the preservation of deep‐sea biodiversity, habitat protection and sharing of benefits. Their aim is to draft international regulations to prevent environmental and scientific tragedies without hampering discovery. Figure 1. Tubeworms ( Riftia pachyptila Jones ) found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean at the East Pacific Rise off the coast of Mexico. These red‐blooded animals live of chemosynthetic bacteria near thermal vents on the ocean floor and can grow up to 3 m long. © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, MA, USA. Scientists have made—and continue to make—exciting discoveries in the depths of the oceans. In the early 1980s, Karl Stetter, a microbiologist from the University of Regensburg, Germany, discovered a hyperthermophilic archaebacterium that flourishes near submarine vents (Fig 2) at temperatures of about 100 °C (Stetter, 1982). Stetter and his colleagues described another archaebacterium in 2002, termed Nanoarchaeum equitans . This organism is parasitic with an unusually small ribosomal RNA and now represents a new phylum in the bacterial world (Waters et al , 2003; Huber et al , 2002). Figure 2. A ‘black smoker’ on the ocean floor at the East Pacific Rise off the coast …