Horizon Biodiversity: Deep-Sea Conservation
Funds €9M research consortia that map, monitor and identify deep-sea species and habitats to guide EU and global ocean protection targets.
The deep sea is 90% of the ocean's volume and the least explored biome on the planet. It isn't a side note to ocean health — deep-sea ecosystems drive the biogeochemical cycles the rest of the biosphere depends on, humans included. But almost everything below 1,000 metres is a blind spot. Exploring it is expensive and hard to access, so there's nowhere near enough data to protect it, or even manag…
Filling the deep sea's biggest data gap: what actually lives below 1,000 metres, and how it's faring. Funded work maps deep-sea habitats and catalogues species — from microbes to sharks and reef-building corals — across the abyssal seafloor, hydrothermal vents, seamounts and canyons, using new imaging, acoustic, multi-omics, genomics and taxonomic technology built to identify specimens faster and cheaper than current expeditions allow. Projects also build long-term monitoring indicators and turn the results into area-based protection proposals for EU, regional and international decision-makers, including the EU's 30% ocean-protection target and the UN's high-seas biodiversity treaty (BBNJ).
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