The Science We Need for the Ocean We Want
Despite decades of ocean exploration, we still lack basic answers to one of the most fundamental ecological questions: where is marine life found, and why? A new study led by Dr. Amelia Bridges and Professor Kerry Howell, published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, shows how incomplete our global picture of marine biodiversity remains.
By systematically processing nearly 19 million records from the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), the study reveals that global marine biodiversity data from below 30 m are heavily biased towards:
- Shallow waters (50% of benthic records come from just the shallowest 1% of the seafloor)
- The Northern Hemisphere (over 75% of records)
- Vertebrates, namely fish
“Our findings show just how uneven our knowledge of ocean life really is, and that has major implications for how we protect it. If we want to manage the ocean sustainably, we first need to understand where life exists, and right now, we’re working with an incomplete map. This study provides not only a clearer picture of the gaps, but also a tool to help fix them.” – Dr. Amelia Bridges (lead author)
What’s missing? Vast areas of the deep sea, particularly in the southern hemisphere and Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ), remain under-sampled. Invertebrates – despite making up the bulk of ocean biodiversity – are also poorly represented.
These findings matter. Biodiversity data underpin everything from habitat protection to climate impact modelling. The current data gaps mean that scientific models and management plans risk being skewed, trained on better-known regions and taxa while overlooking some of the most threatened and least studied parts of the planet.
To elucidate these patterns, the researchers developed a novel pipeline that separates benthic (seafloor) and pelagic (open-water) data – an important but often overlooked distinction. While the technical achievement is notable, the real story here is what the cleaned data reveal: a global call to action. The authors urge future sampling to focus on four key priority areas:
“This research will now help guide the work being done under the UN Ocean Decade Challenger 150 Programme, a global cooperative of deep-sea scientists whose aim is to map life in the deep ocean to support sustainable management. We now know where the gaps are and can focus our efforts on filling them. It’s a first step toward building a more balanced, global understanding of marine biodiversity.” – Professor Kerry Howell (co-author)
This work is a major step forward in turning biodiversity ‘big data’ into meaningful insight, with the datasets and code serving as a resource for researchers, policymakers, and conservationists working to meet the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science and the 30×30 biodiversity target.
Paper Citation:
- Bridges, A.E.H., Howell, K.L. Prioritisation of ocean biodiversity data collection to deliver a sustainable ocean. Commun Earth Environ 6, 473 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02442-7
Image References:
- Benthic Data: Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Exploring Deep-sea Habitats off Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
- Pelagic Data: Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Deep-Sea Symphony: Exploring the Musicians Seamounts.
- Priority Areas: Courtesy of the NERC funded Deep Links Project – Plymouth University, Oxford University, JNCC, BGS