BIO 105 C THE TERROR OF THE DEEP
For millennia, humans have told stories about deep-sea monsters such as the kraken that terrorized Norwegian sailors or Scylla and Charybdis who attacked ancient Greek voyagers. The deep sea (depths below 1000 meters) is a vast, dark unexplored world of strange and marvelous creatures. A water depth exceeding 1000 m covers sixty three percent of the earth’s surface. At present, we have explored only 1% of this vast “inner space” of planet Earth. This course will consider humankind’s efforts to explore, understand and exploit the environment and ecology of this last remaining wilderness. We will discuss current and future efforts to exploit the living and non-living resources of this unexplored world as well as the current and potential impacts of such resource extraction. We will explore the idea that the deep ocean has more to fear from humankind than the other way around.