The Arctic seafloor is cold, unforgiving, and barren. Or is it?
Few would argue against the ‘cold’ and ‘unforgiving’ parts, but according to a new study, the harsh and icy seafloor of the Arctic Ocean hosts a stunning world of diversity and life. This is all the more important since many are eyeing the Arctic Ocean for its oil and mineral reserves.
Cold but Not Lifeless
For centuries, the Arctic deep sea was considered a lifeless void. Between its extreme remoteness and challenging environment, it’s not hard to see why that is the prevailing belief. But recent advancements in technology have revolutionized deep-sea exploration. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), towed cameras, and environmental DNA (eDNA) have revealed a vibrant, if sparse, community of life thriving in darkness.
Take, for example, the Arctic’s sedimentary slopes. Extending from 500 meters to around 3,000 meters deep, these areas can be biodiversity hotspots. Dropstones – rocks left by melting glaciers – become miniature islands of life, colonized by sponges, anemones, and crinoids (sea lilies). Some of these slopes feature rich coral gardens and sponge fields that provide structure and shelter for a range of animals.
Canyons, on the other hand, are dynamic systems. They’re not as rich in wildlife but they act like highways for nutrients flowing from the shelves to the deep ocean. These energy-rich zones support filter feeders like soft corals and brittle stars, alongside higher predators like deep-sea fish.
Then, you have the abyssal plains which dominate the seafloor, stretching for thousands of kilometers. While seemingly barren, these soft, muddy expanses host specialized species that depend on the limited nutrients sinking from the surface. Even these landscapes are not barren. Among the residents are amphipods, sea cucumbers, and stalked crinoids, some of which form dense fields that ripple in the deep currents.
Arctic Zoology
To map this distribution, the team analyzed over 75,000 animal records, identifying 2,637 different benthic taxa (groups of organisms). Arthropods, such as crustaceans, were the most common; worms (Annelida) and mollusks followed closely.
“We limited ourselves to the area north of 66 degrees northern latitude and below a depth of 500 meters,” explains Dr. Saskia Brix, one of the study authors and a Professor at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway. “The most frequent individual records, with 21,405 hits, concerned the phylum Arthropoda, which includes isopods and copepods, among others, followed by annelids and sponges. The latter are surpassed by mollusks in species richness,” adds co-author Hanieh Saeedi from the Senckenberg Nature Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.
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Yet the researchers emphasize a critical point: much of the Arctic’s seafloor remains unexplored. This is all the more important because the Arctic Ocean is increasingly being eyed by the oil industry.
Oil in the Arctic
The Arctic Ocean is now emerging as a new area for economic exploitation. Estimates suggest that the deep sea holds as much as 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and 30% of its untapped natural gas. These figures are driving a wave of political, commercial, and industrial focus on the Arctic’s once-inaccessible waters.
But fossil fuels are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the seafloor, the Arctic’s ridges and basins also contain rich deposits of rare earth elements and valuable metals like nickel, copper, and cobalt. These materials are critical for the production of modern technologies — from smartphones and electric vehicles to renewable energy systems. As global demand for these resources skyrockets, the Arctic’s potential wealth is too enticing for industries and governments to ignore.
These are not necessarily new ideas but they’ve been brought back by climate change. Arctic ice retreats more and more and routes that were once too perilous are now opening up to shipping and transportation. Specifically, the Northeast Passage along Russia’s northern coast and the Northwest Passage through Canada’s Arctic Archipelago are becoming viable trade corridors. These shortcuts can reduce the travel time between Asia, Europe, and North America by 30-40%.
In this context, the inhabitants of the Arctic are often little more than an afterthought, but extractive activities could wreak havoc on the environment.
The ecosystems of the Arctic deep sea are fragile. The organisms that thrive here — sponges, worms, brittle stars, and countless others — have adapted to the cold, nutrient-scarce environment over millions of years. They form complex, interdependent communities that are sensitive to disturbances from human activity.
Seabed mining operations, for example, require scraping or drilling the ocean floor, which disrupts benthic habitats and generates plumes of sediment. These plumes can spread over vast distances, smothering delicate filter-feeding organisms like sponges and corals. The noise and vibrations from heavy machinery can also interfere with deep-sea fish and marine mammals that rely on sound for navigation and communication. Oil drilling comes with its own set of challenges, and an oil spill would also be catastrophic.
Life in the Arctic
The new study creates one of the most comprehensive reviews of Arctic data.
“Not only did we comprehensively digitize important deep-sea data and publish it in freely accessible databases, but we also collected, checked, and comprehensively analyzed new deep-sea data. This enabled us to show that, contrary to popular belief, the Arctic Ocean actually has a very rich diversity of organisms,” says Saeedi.
As nations and corporations eye the Arctic’s resources, the natural ecosystems should also be considered.
“It is undisputed that the deep sea in the Arctic Ocean is far from being the lifeless, monotonous habitat it was described as by its early explorers. However, we need intensified international networking and cooperation as well as active monitoring of environmental parameters and the faunal composition. Especially in view of the increasing economic and political interests, the lack of data on benthic biodiversity – particularly in the deep basins of the central Arctic Ocean – poses a significant problem for robust management and conservation measures,” warns Saeedi.
We are at a crossroads. The Arctic’s future hangs in a delicate balance. The promise of untapped wealth can drive a modern-day gold rush, but the risks to the region’s fragile ecosystems are immense. Decisions made today — about extraction, trade, and tourism — will determine whether the Arctic remains a vibrant, living ecosystem or becomes an industrial wasteland.
The article was published in the journal Elementa.
