A map can be found somewhere in a NOAA server environment. It is the result of years of submersible surveys, acoustic seafloor mapping, deep-water camera deployments, and the kind of meticulous data integration that requires research careers rather than individual study initiatives. The cold-water coral gardens perched at 1,000 meters, the ancient sponge fields covering the flanks of seamounts, the slow-growing communities that take centuries to reach maturity and minutes of trawl contact to destroy, and the locations of the deep ocean’s most delicate and biologically significant habitats are all depicted with a resolution that would have been unattainable ten years ago. What to do with it is a topic of discussion inside NOAA.
The strain is genuine and difficult to overcome instinctively. Openness is a strong default in scientific culture; if data is not shared, it cannot be repeated, expanded upon, or utilized by the larger research community to further conservation objectives. In that sense, the case for publishing the map is simple: resource managers need the best information available to make informed decisions about fishing boundaries, protected area designations, and permit applications for seabed activities. You cannot protect what you cannot see. Science gains credibility with the public and regulators with transparency. The folks who most need the map might not be able to access it if it is kept internal.
The counterargument is not presented in ill faith by those who raise it, yet it does not fit well with that concept. From a different perspective, precise, high-resolution coordinates of vulnerable deep-sea habitats are also a very helpful operational guide for commercial fishing fleets that target the seafloor and for mineral prospecting firms that are currently increasingly interested in hydrothermal vent systems and polymetallic nodule fields. One of the most physically damaging fishing methods currently in use is bottom trawling, which involves dragging heavy gear across the seafloor to capture commercially valuable species. It can flatten coral structures that were growing prior to European contact with the Americas in a single pass. A chart that pinpoints the precise locations of those corals’ highest concentrations also pinpoints the areas where a trawl of that kind would be most damaging.
It’s instructive to consider the parallel in terrestrial conservation. For years, botanists and ornithologists who study rare species have struggled with similar issues, such as whether to disclose the precise GPS coordinates of rare orchid populations or the nesting locations of endangered raptors. The evidence from those discussions isn’t totally comforting. In documented instances, poachers who discovered the information thru open scientific publications have targeted the collecting of published location data for several high-value rare species. The ocean equivalent includes species with no recovery timeline that fits into a human generation, more remote topography, and actors that are more difficult to police.
Perhaps the most practically challenging aspect of this is the enforcement gap. The high seas, or the ocean outside of national borders that makes up about half of the planet’s surface, are governed by frameworks that are getting better but are still insufficient in comparison to the industrial operations that are now permitted to take place there. It may be less beneficial for conservation to publish a map that identifies sensitive habitat locations in areas where the regulatory authority to protect those locations is disputed or lacking than it is for the operators, who now know where to look and have a reasonable belief that no one is in a position to stop them.
This discussion is especially awkward because of NOAA’s bureaucratic position. It is both a regulatory body responsible for managing marine resources and a scientific organization whose goal is to create and disseminate information. When the knowledge being produced potentially jeopardize the resources being controlled, those roles tug in separate directions.
A viable middle ground would be a tiered access strategy that restricts public downloads of the entire coordinate dataset while granting access to the map to vetted researchers, regulatory bodies, and conservation organizations. That is the path taken by a number of organizations that handle sensitive biodiversity data. It’s less clear whether it would genuinely prevent exploitation in practice as opposed to merely adding a procedural step that determined actors would circumvent.
The fact that the deep-sea ecosystems on that chart took geological time to evolve is undeniable. People who won’t be around to witness the full ramifications of any decision NOAA makes regarding publication will make that decision.
