A Hidden World of Strange Starfish-Like Creatures in the Abyss

Earlier this year, a Belgian company planned to drop a giant underwater Roomba from the side of a ship, in search of treasure. The 27-ton machine was to be deployed into the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), where the miles-deep seafloor is spotted with dark, fist-size nodules of manganese and other valuable metals. There, the machine would sweep across the sand and, luck willing, suck up nodules, in a test run for mining operations to come.

Perhaps it was just as well that luck was not willing, and a technical failure . A team of scientists led by Magdalini Christodoulou of the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research that the bottom of the CCZ is home to a hidden world of strange and ancient creatures that evolved in the dark of the deep and that have only, this unique ecosystem could be threatened.