Scientists Discover 24 New Species and New Branch of Life in Area Slated for Deep Sea Mining

The ocean floor is teeming with life.

A patch of seafloor targeted for future mining has given us a blunt reminder that we don’t really know what’s going on down there. Researchers have described 24 new species of amphipods (tiny, shrimp-like crustaceans) hailing from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. We often discuss this vast abyssal stretch of the Pacific in terms of resources, but as it turns out, it’s also a biological frontier.

Among the new finds is a creature so unusual that the team had to put a new branch on the tree of life just to categorize it. But as we’re adding new branches to the tree of life, we’re also preparing to scrape the area for mining.

Living in the Dark

The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) stretches between Hawaii and Mexico at depths of 4,000–5,500 meters. Some parts of it are very rich in manganese nodules, potato-sized rocks rich in metals that are needed for batteries and renewable energy. But these rocks are also the foundation of an ecosystem.

You’d likely think that nothing can survive the crushing pressure, darkness, and cold; you’d be wrong.

For years, researchers have collected samples from the CCZ. But despite thousands of samples, the lack of resources for post-cruise analysis meant that most life in the CCZ wasn’t described. Much of it wasn’t even named.

A Thousand Reasons

Over 5,500 species have been recorded in the region. However, around 90% of them are new to science and lack formal names.

Without a name, a species cannot be legally protected or even included in conservation strategies. That’s why this story doesn’t start in the Pacific, but rather in Poland. In February 2024, the University of Lodz hosted an intense workshop with 16 participants (8 experts and 8 students). The participants worked for ten days non-stop with a single mission: to describe as many new species as possible from samples collected during years of Pacific expeditions.

Usually, describing a single species can take years of painstaking comparison and back-and-forth between journals. Academic progress in this field is notoriously slow. But, in the meanwhile, mining companies move fast.

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A campaign called One Thousand Reasons aims to change that. The campaign was initiated by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and aims to describe 1,000 new deep-sea species by the end of the decade. The Lodz workshop was the proof of concept. By bringing the experts together with the next generation of taxonomists, they managed to produce 14 manuscripts in one year. These detailed not just 24 species, but two new genera, a new family, and even an entirely new superfamily.

The project was led by Dr. Anna Jażdżewska of the University of Lodz (UL) and Tammy Horton of the National Oceanography Centre (NOC). They used every tool at their disposal: regular microscopes, laser-scanning microscopes to create 3D images of the animals, fluorescent dyes to see every hair and joint, and even DNA barcoding to ensure that each new species was actually new and distinct.

They focused on amphipods, crustaceans with no carapace. Before this workshop, we knew of just 13 amphipods from the CCZ. Most of these were scavengers that fed on nutrients falling from the surface ocean. But the Lodz team focused on the non-scavengers, the residents of the mud and nodules.

Life in the Abyss

The diversity of the new species is staggering. The researchers described species from 11 different families, ranging from predatory hunters to tiny critters that likely sift the mud for food.

There is Astyra mclaughlinae, which set a new record as the deepest and most tropical member of its genus ever found. Or Pardalisca magdalenae, a relatively large species that now holds the global record for the deepest member of its genus. Each name added to the list is a stake in the ground.

But the star of the show is Mirabestia maisie.

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This creature is so unique that scientists had to create a new superfamily and family just to put it somewhere on the tree of life. It has conical mouthparts that are unlike anything seen in its group. Intriguingly, it’s not even rare. The researchers found more than 25 specimens, suggesting it is a common resident of the habitat we are preparing to mine.

All these findings show that we’re making decisions about industrializing parts of the deep seafloor without really knowing what lives there. The abyss is often described as empty, but that was always wrong. We’re only now starting to understand just how wrong it was.

Journal Reference: Anna M. Jażdżewska, Tammy Horton. New deep-sea Amphipoda from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone: 24 new species described under the Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative: One Thousand Reasons campaign. ZooKeys, 2026; 1274: 1 DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1274.176711