What Lives in the Middle of the Ocean?

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Picture this.

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You're in a control room on a
ship far off the coast of Brazil.

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It's pretty dark outside.

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It's even darker below you.

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A robot the size of a small car is
sinking through the black water,

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a thousand meters down, its lights
carving a tunnel through the dark.

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And then something drifts into frame, big,
pale, arms unfurling like a parachute.

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It's an octopus, a giant open ocean
octopus that almost no one has ever seen

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alive, and she's eating a jellyfish.

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The scientists in that room go
quiet because this is an animal

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they mostly know from the dead
specimens hauled up in the nets.

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And here she is, alive, feeding, and real.

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That moment actually happened recently.

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It's a part of a much bigger story
about the biggest living space on the

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planet, a place where we have barely
looked at and a decision the world

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is about to make about its future.

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Let's get into it.

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Welcome to the How to
Protect the Ocean podcast.

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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.

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This is a show where we turn ocean science
into action that you can actually take.

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If this is your kind of thing, do me a
quick favor and hit that follow button

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right now, wherever you're listening.

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It's free, it tells the algorithm
this stuff matters,  and it means

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you won't miss the next episode.

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So here's the question
I wanna answer today.

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What lives in the middle of the ocean?

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Why does it matter to you, even
if you never go into the deep sea?

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And what can one person
actually do to protect a place

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three kilometers underwater?

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Now stick with me, because at the end
of this episode, you're going to see

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the ocean's biggest neighborhood in a
completely different way, and I've got

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a few simple, honest things that you
can do this week to help protect it.

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One story today, but we're
gonna tell it in three parts.

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So part one is the dive.

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The ship is called Falkor Too.

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It's run by the Schmidt Ocean
Institute, a group that does deep sea

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research and importantly,  streams
a lot of it online for free.

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On this expedition, off the coast of
Brazil,  they sent down a remotely

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operated vehicle, the deep sea robot
named SuBastian, S-U-Bastian,   tethered

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to the ship by a long cable that feeds it
power and sends video back in real time.

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They weren't diving to the sea floor.

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They were exploring the midwater.

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That's the open water between the
sunlit surface and the bottom.

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Think of it as the ocean's
middle, not the shallows, not

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the seabed, the vast in between.

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And what they found there was
a parade of animals, many of

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them brand new to science.

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More than two dozen species that
had never been formally described.

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New jellyfish, comb jellies, which
shimmer and ripple as they beat rows of

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their tiny hairs like a living rainbow.

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Siphonophores, strange colonial
creatures that string out through

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the water like a chain of beads.

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Tadpole-like animals called larvaceans.

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A gossamer worm that glows, and a
tiny crustacean called an amphipod.

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They spotted a young glass squid,
completely see-through, hanging in

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the water about 780 meters down.

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They filmed a dinner plate jellyfish
hunting a comb jelly, swimming with its

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tentacles held out in front like a net.

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And then there was the octopus.

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Her name scientifically
is Haliphron atlanticus.

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She's an open ocean species,
which is unusual for an octopus.

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Most octopuses live on the bottom.

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This one lives on the outer
water column, and she's big.

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The body they filmed, just the main part,
was about the length of your forearm.

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But this species can grow to
around four meters from arm tip

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to arm tip, and weigh as much as a
grown adult, roughly 75 kilograms.

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Here's why the team got so excited.

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Almost everything we know about
this animal comes from specimens

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caught in nets, dead, crushed.

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So watching one alive at around
eight hundred meters calmly eating

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a red jellyfish, that's rare.

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That's a window into the behavior
we almost never get to see.

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Now, one thing I wanna point out, they
just didn't aim a camera and guess.

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They used imaging systems built at the
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute,

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including a laser scanner that can capture
the 3D shape of a soft, transparent

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animal without ever touching it.

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And they ran genetic analysis on some
samples to confirm new species fast.

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So this is a new way of
doing deep-sea biology.

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Look, don't grab.

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Scan, don't destroy.

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For fragile animals that fall
apart the second you put them

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in a net, that's a big deal.

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Now, part two, why this matters,
and this is where it gets bigger

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than a cool octopus video.

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The chief scientist of this expedition,
Karen Osborne, from the Smithsonian,

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called the midwater the largest
habitat on Earth, and she's right.

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By volume, the open midwater is the
biggest living space on the planet.

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It's the most room that life
on Earth actually has, and

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we've barely even seen it.

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Here's a number that stopped me cold.

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A study published in 2025 in the
journal Science Advances tried to

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work out how much of the deep seafloor
humans have actually looked at with

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cameras,  not mapped from above,
actually seen with our own eyes.

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The answer?

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Less than one-thousandth of a percent,
zero point zero zero one percent.

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The researchers said that's a
patch of deep seafloor smaller than

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the state of Rhode Island for the
entire global ocean across nearly

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seventy years of exploration.

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And the little we have seen is lopsided.

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That same study looked at about around
44,000 deep sea dives and found that about

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two-thirds of all the visual observations
were clustered near just three countries,

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the United States, Japan, and New Zealand.

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So we're not just missing
most of the deep ocean.

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We're trying to understand a global
system from a tiny biased sample.

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That's the sea floor.

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The mid-water above it is even harder
to reach and even less explored.

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So when the team goes to Brazil and
finds two dozen new species in a

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matter of weeks, that's not a fluke.

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That's the normal result of
finally looking somewhere new.

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Okay, but maybe you're thinking,
"That's fascinating, but these are

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tiny jellies three kilometers down.

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Why should I care?" Here's why.

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These animals are running a system
that keeps our planet livable.

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You've probably heard the ocean
called the planet's lungs.

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Here's the part that people miss.

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A reason the ocean pulls carbon
out of the atmosphere is because

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of the animals in that midwater.

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Tiny plankton at the surface
soak up carbon dioxide.

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They get eaten and packaged into waste
and dead material,  and it all sinks.

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Little animals in the midwater grab it,
eat it, repackage it, and drive it deeper.

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Some of them even swim up to feed at night
and sink back down by the day,  carrying

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carbon with them like a conveyor belt.

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Scientists call this the biological
carbon pump,  and the scale is enormous.

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Estimates vary from study to study,
but the ocean's biological pump moves

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somewhere between five and 12 million
tons of carbon from the surface

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toward the deep every single year.

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A lot of the carbon can stay
locked away for a century or more.

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Without those midwater animals
doing that work, there would be

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far more carbon dioxide sitting
in our atmosphere right now.

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So those weird, fragile, glowing
animals off the coast of Brazil,

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they're not just a sideshow.

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They're part of a machinery that
regulates the climate you live in.

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And they're a food base for the fish,
the squid,  and the whales that a lot

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of people depend on Now, quick pause.

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If this is landing for you, if you're
looking at the deep ocean a little

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differently right now,  share this
episode with one person, just one.

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Text it to somebody who loves
the ocean or someone who has

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never thought about it once.

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Honestly, that's one of the
most useful things you can

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do,  and it takes only seconds.

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Okay, part three, and this is the
part that turns a lot of this from

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nature documentary into a decision.

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Because at the same time we're
discovering how alive and how important

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the  midwater is, there's a serious
push to start mining below it.

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It's called deep-sea mining.

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The target is the sea floor thousands of
meters down, where valuable metals sit

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in potato-sized lumps called nodules.

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Cobalt, nickel, copper,  manganese,
metals used in batteries and electronics.

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Companies want to send machines
down to scrape and vacuum

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those nodules off the bottom.

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Now, there's a connection to
everything, as I just told you.

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Mining the sea floor doesn't
stay on the sea floor.

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The machine kicks up huge clouds of
sediment, and to run the equipment,

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operators pump material  up to the
ship, then discharge the leftover

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slurry back into the water.

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That creates plumes,  clouds of fine
sediment drifting through the midwater.

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The exact zone that's all full of these
fragile animals that are so important to

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the ocean and so important to the planet.

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And here's the problem, and
this is backed by research.

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Midwater animals evolve in
some of the clearest, calmest,

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most stable water on Earth.

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There's normally almost no sediment out
there, and so they are not built for mud.

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Scientists warn that fine particles
can clog the feeding structures of

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filter feeders and the breathing
structures of small fish.

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The ones that filter carbon out
of the water, their delicate mucus

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filters can get completely clogged.

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For jellies and siphonophores,  sediment
sticking to their bodies can throw

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off their buoyancy, their basic
ability to stay where they need to be.

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There's a lab study on deep sea jellyfish,
the helmet jellyfish published in

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the journal Nature Communications.

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The researchers exposed it to sediment
like you'd get from a mining plume,  and

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the stress response from the sediment was
more severe than the stress response from

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a four-degree jump in water temperature.

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Sit with that for a second.

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For this animal, the mud was
worse than extreme warming.

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And these plumes don't stay small.

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Because the midwater is one connected,
moving system, scientists warn

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plumes could spread for tens or even
thousands of kilometers,  and some of

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the metals released could linger in
the water for a very, very long time.

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So put it all together.

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We have barely explored the
largest habitat on Earth.

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We're discovering that it's full
of unknown life, doing critical

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work for the climate,  and we're
on the edge of industrializing

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it before we understand it.

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Here's the hopeful part, and it's real.

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This is not decided yet.

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The body that governs mining in
international waters is called the

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International Seabed Authority, the ISA.

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And so far, they have not finished
the rule book that would allow

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full commercial mining to start.

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Meanwhile, the pressure
is building the other way.

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As of twenty twenty-six, around
forty countries have formally called

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for a pause,  a moratorium  or an
outright ban on deep sea mining

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until the science catches up.

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And here's a detail that I love.

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Two of those countries are
Canada, my country,  and Brazil.

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Brazil right off one of the coasts this
expedition just found all this new life.

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So this is one of those rare moments
where the door is still open,  the

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decision is still being made,  and
public pressure genuinely matters here.

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So here's a takeaway I
wanna leave you with.

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The deep ocean is not empty.

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It is not a wasteland.

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It's the largest living space on Earth.

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It's full of animals we're only
just meeting, and it's quietly

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helping hold our climate together.

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And we're lucky.

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We're getting to see its face right at
the moment we decide what to do with it.

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Right now, that choice
is still ours to make.

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Now, like always, let's make this doable.

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i'm not gonna pretend that you can
stop a mining ship from your couch.

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But here are a few honest, real
things that you can do this week.

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One, go watch the footage.

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The Schmidt Ocean Institute puts
its dives on YouTube for free,

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and many of them stream live.

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Search Stream Ocean Institute
and just watch a dive.

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See the octopus for yourself.

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When people can picture what's down
there,  they start to care about it.

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That's not nothing.

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That's how movement starts.

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Two, find out where your country
stands on deep sea mining.

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If you're in Canada and Brazil, your
government has already backed a pause.

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So a quick thank you note to your
representative helps reinforce it.

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If you're somewhere that hasn't, that's
a short, polite email worth sending.

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Keep it simple.

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Just ask them to support a precautionary
pause until the science is in.

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Three, follow the science and share it.

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Groups like the Schmidt Ocean Institute,
the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research

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Institute,  and the Ocean Discovery League
are doing this work out in the open.

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Follow them.

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Share a clip.

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Every share puts these animals in
front of someone who's never seen them.

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And four, a slower one.

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A lot of the demand for deep sea metals
is tied to batteries, so anything that

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supports using less or reusing more,
recycling your old electronics properly,

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supporting better battery recycling,
backing the companies working on it,

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chips away at the argument that we have
no choice but to mine the deep sea.

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We do have choices.

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None of these fix it overnight,
but this is a fight about

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attention as much as anything else.

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For most of history,  the
deep sea's biggest problem was

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simply that nobody was looking.

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You're looking.

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You looking and caring and
passing it on  changes that.

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That's the episode for today.

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If you got something out of this, follow
the show,  share it with one person,

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00:12:25,950 --> 00:12:27,440
and we'll see you in the next one.

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I wanna thank you so much for joining
me, and if you wanna support the

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00:12:29,880 --> 00:12:34,907
podcast stuff I do on the podcast,
on YouTube,  as well as on TikTok,

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00:12:34,907 --> 00:12:39,847
Instagram, and Facebook, please feel
free to go to speakupforblue.com/patreon

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00:12:39,847 --> 00:12:41,907
and support the effort I do on Patreon.

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00:12:41,907 --> 00:12:44,487
That's speakupforblue.com/patreon.

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00:12:44,567 --> 00:12:47,047
I wanna thank you so much for
joining me on today's episode of the

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00:12:47,047 --> 00:12:48,277
How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

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I am your host, Andrew Lewin.

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Have a great day.

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We'll talk to you next
time,  and happy conservation.