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Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 New Discoveries AwaitEvery time Lisa Levin has explored the deep—whether in a remotely operated vehicle or a submarine, sometimes hundreds of miles from shore and thousands of feet deep—she has seen an assortment of urban items, from shoes to beer cans. She and Tony Koslow say the deep sea, in many ways, is much closer than we think and that human impact there is great and growing. 
"People often think of the deep sea as out of sight, out of mind, so remote from human activities that it must be the most pristine environment on Earth," said Koslow. "That's simply not the case. And it's much less resilient than other environments." But Levin lights up at the prospect of the novel discoveries yet to be made. She believes new kinds of ecosystems will be found. Novel organisms await discovery in environments that fuse geology and chemistry in unheard- of ways. 
"The deep sea is not that far away in terms of our activities and impact," said Levin. "By not knowing what's down there, we run the risk of destroying things before we've discovered them. Every time we make a new discovery we learn more about how life works and how it evolved." |
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