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Alan J. Jamieson 1*, Glenn Singleman2, Thomas D. Linley1, and Susan Casey
A recurring question within deep-sea science and conservation is why don’t people care about the deep sea? How does the deep-sea science
community convince non-scientific audiences to support, engage, and care more for the largest habitat on Earth? Here, we examine various
aspects of an apparent dichotomy of perspectives .... Read more
We know more about the Moon than the deep sea.
This idea has been repeated for decades by scientists and science communicators, including Sir David Attenborough in the 2001 documentary series The Blue Planet. More recently, in Blue Planet II (2017) and other sources, the Moon is replaced with Mars.
As deep-sea scientists, we investigated this supposed “fact” and found it has no scientific basis. It is not true in any quantifiable way.
So where does this curious idea come from?... Read more
Alan J. Jamieson 1,2,*, Thomas D. Linley 2 and Prema Arasu1
Why don’t people care about the deep sea? was a question addressed in a 2020 Food for Thought article in this journal. That article delivered an extensive critique of misleading statements, poorly structured analogies, and common misconceptions to challenge the largely negative or unnecessarily sensationalist narrative when the deep sea is communicated to the public. The overarching sentiment of that article has been countered by a Comment in which it is argued that people do in fact care about the deep sea. However, this counter argument is based on very little to do with the deep sea but rather a corpus of... Read more
Alan J Jamieson , Denise J B Swanborn , Todd Bond , Prema Arasu , Julian C Partridge
The term ‘deep sea’, which is often interchangeable with the term ‘deep ocean’, relies on the definition of the global ocean deeper than 200 m, often with the caveat of being beyond the continental shelf, and/or corresponding to other abiotic factors. The general perception and perceived value of large swaths... Read more