Sea Secrets 2024 with Laura Trethewey - Inside the Race to Map and Mine the Deep Sea

Environmental and ocean journalist and author


Five oceans—the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, and the
Southern—cover approximately 70 percent of the Earth. Yet we know little
about what lies beneath them. Approximately 25 percent of the ocean’s  oor
has been charted, most close to shorelines, and over three quarters of the
ocean lies in what is called the Deep Sea. Now, the race is on to completely
map the ocean’s floor by 2030—an epic project involving scientists, investors,
militaries, and private explorers who are cooperating and competing to get an
accurate reading of this vast terrain and understand its contours and
environment.
In her new book The Deepest Map, Laura Trethewey chronicles global
mapping efforts around the world and the increasingly fraught question of
whether and how to mine the Deep Sea. In this talk, Trethewey covers the
history and future of deep-sea mining, as well as the science, industry, and
political developments taking place today.

Laura Trethewey is an award-winning ocean and environmental journalist and
author of two books: The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart
the World’s Oceans (2023) and The Imperiled Ocean: Human Stories of
a Changing Sea (2020). Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street
Journal, Smithsonian Magazine, Courrier international, The Guardian,
The Walrus, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Hakai Magazine, and Canadian
Geographic. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the
University of British Columbia and won Canada’s Writers’ Trust Rising Star
Award in 2020.