For national and international policymakers, decisions on how to regulate — and whether to allow — exploitative human ...

“It’s the unknown,” says Erich Hoyt, author of Creatures of the Deep: In Search of the Sea’s Monsters and the World They Live In. “You look out on the ocean and you might see a dolphin ...

The oil-and-gas and deep-sea-mining industries require extensive knowledge, and they pay for it. But, with a few exceptions, the characteristics of the deepest trenches are largely unknown.