Effective management of deep-sea ecosystems and the high seas is hindered by the absence of a globally consistent framework for characterizing benthic habitats. Here we present the first global ecological classification of the seafloor, comprising 250 unique ecological benthic units (EBUs), distributed on the seafloor as nearly 700,000 EBU polygon occurrences, generated by intersecting a high-resolution geomorphic map with mul...

Species distribution modelling has proven effective in locating cold-water coral hotspots in the deep sea. Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) and gradient boosting (GBM) are equally good at modelling rare species, but previous efforts to predict the distribution of deep-sea Antipatharia have mostly employed MaxEnt. This study investigates how algorithm choice (MaxEnt or GBM) and the application of backward stepwise variable pre-selectio...

Degradation of the natural world and associated ecosystem services is attributed to a historical failure to include its ‘value’ in decision-making. Uncertainty in the quantification of the relationship between natural capital ‘assets’ that give rise to critical societal benefits and people is one reason for the omission of these values from natural resource management. As this uncertainty increases in marine systems and furthe...

Despite its remoteness, human activity has impacted the deep sea and changes to the structure and function of deep-sea ecosystems are already noticeable. In terrestrial and shallow water marine environments, demonstrating how ecosystems support human well-being has been instrumental in setting policy and management objectives for sustainable resource use. Foundational to this approach is a framework of ecosystem service (ES) c...

The South Mid Atlantic Ridge comprises three main oceanic islands in the equatorial and tropical portions of the Atlantic Ocean. These islands are isolated from each other and equidistant from both the continental margins of South America and Africa, sharing common patterns but with different types of human use and pressures. Moreover, the areas beyond national jurisdiction between those islands are visited and exploited by di...

Aim Latitudinal and bathymetric species diversity gradients in the deep sea have been identified, but studies have rarely considered these gradients across hard substratum habitats, such as seamount and oceanic island margins. This study aimed to identify whether the current understanding of latitudinal and bathymetric gradients in α‐diversity (species richness) apply to seamount ecosystems, as well as ascertaining whether ide...

Seamounts and oceanic islands rise from the seafloor and provide suitable habitat for a diverse range of biological assemblages including Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs). Whilst they have been the focus of some work globally, there has been little description of the biological and physical environments of seamounts in the South Atlantic Ocean. In this study, we characterized benthic assemblage composition from 13 seamounts...

Extractive activities in the ocean are expanding into the vast, poorly studied deep sea, with the consequence that environmental management decisions must be made for data-poor seafloor regions. Habitat classification can support marine spatial planning and inform decision-making processes in such areas. We present a regional, top–down, broad-scale, seafloor-habitat classification for the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ)...

The ocean plays a crucial role in the functioning of the Earth System and in the provision of vital goods and services. The United Nations (UN) declared 2021–2030 as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The Roadmap for the Ocean Decade aims to achieve six critical societal outcomes (SOs) by 2030, through the pursuit of four objectives (Os). It specifically recognizes the scarcity of biological data for d...

Seamounts have been described as island habitats harbouring a unique fauna, and as biodiversity hotspots with high rates of endemism. However, recent research suggests that these generalisations are inappropriate and poorly supported, though appropriate on and off seamount comparative data are lacking. This study uses quantitative data derived from video analysis to compare epibenthic megafaunal community composition, diversit...