The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a stretch of the central east Pacific abyss, holds significant abundances of manganese nodules – the kind of mineral deposits that have made it a prime target for future deep-sea mining. But there’s a catch: nobody fully knows what lives down there. That gap in taxonomic knowledge is exactly what makes it hard to understand what mining might actually destroy.
In response, the International Seabed Authority launched something called the Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative, nicknamed “One Thousand Reasons”. The goal, according to the campaign, is ambitious: describe 1,000 species new to science before the decade is out. As part of that push, researchers gathered at the University of Lodz in Poland in February 2024 for a taxonomic workshop focused on one group in particular, amphipods, the small crustaceans that turn up across deep-sea sediment.
The workshop’s output landed in a special issue of ZooKeys: 24 new amphipod species, all pulled from the central Pacific abyss and described for the first time. It’s a small fraction of the campaign’s thousand-species target, sure. But every one of those 24 is now, officially, on the record before any mining equipment gets anywhere near the nodules they call home.
