Read the following passage carefully: 
  
Beneath the surface of the ocean is a vast and mysterious world of deep-sea wonders. Over the course of human history, we’ve learned a lot about these bodies of water and these discoveries have shaped tradition, migration, and science in myriad ways. However, many people do not realize how little we know of the ocean – especially the deepest parts of our globe’s seabed

Over 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by the sea – 312,000,000 cubic miles of water. Numbers like this can be difficult to wrap your mind around. Regardless, less than 5% of Earth’s oceans have been explored. That’s a lot of room for surprising secrets – many of which we clearly have yet to discover. 

Under the water’s surface, the light fades quickly, and at 650 feet, it is completely black. The deeper down you go, the harsher the conditions become for survival, though plenty of creatures (many yet to be discovered!) have figured out how to do just that. It is a mysterious part of our planet, with secrets to be discovered with each dive. 

Creatures of the deep sea might seem like distant anomalies to us humans, but as it turns out, we land-dwellers are the actual weirdos. The majority of life on earth is aquatic – and it’s these salty waters from which we all evolved. Scientists estimate that there are over one million animal species in the ocean – 95% of which are invertebrates, such as shrimp and squid. The deepest sea creatures are part of a vast ecological network of these expansive and mysterious oceanic ecozones. 

Even though we’ve sent a man to the moon and found a coronavirus vaccine in record time, science and discovery work still has plenty of mysteries to unearth and understand. This is especially true of Earth’s oceans since over 80% of the ocean remains unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. This is because most parts of the ocean are difficult to get to, and it can be really expensive to do so. 

Deep-sea creatures are often slow growers. This is an adaptive trait in response to the limited food resources in such extreme conditions. This is also why so many of these swimmers have a very slow metabolism. However, with human impact, these adaptive traits make many species vulnerable. In fact, some scientists compare deep-sea fishing to the harvest of old-growth forests for timber. We may be harvesting and disrupting delicate systems that we don’t yet have the science to understand. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the ecology of coral reefs, you may be surprised to learn that coral is a living, growing organism in its own right. As corals succumb to mass bleaching and die-off events due to human-caused climate change, it is especially concerning to discover that these very same organisms might hold clues to climate change solutions. Like a library or an archive, deep-sea corals contain a record of climate conditions that might provide valuable answers to how we might restore ecosystems to a healthy and sustainable balance of life. 

With unchecked human greed and consumption, we are destroying the secrets of these wondrous places. Unfortunately, we’re doing this before we have a chance to discover them. 

Attempt the following questions based on the passage: