Pearls and Perils in the Pacific
What's growing in the deep
Like tourist destinations on land, the deep sea has popular areas that attract visitors from far away. There are, for example, the thousands of octopuses who hang out in one spot off the coast of California. They were first discovered there in 2018, but just recently, scientists figured out why this place is such an octopus attraction: it has thermal springs.
The area, casually called the Octopus Garden, has been confirmed as a nesting and mating site. (With another octopus nursery found near Costa Rica earlier in 2023, there are now four octopus nurseries known to us – all discovered in the last 10 years.) Warm water, it seems, is the appeal. At the Octopus Garden, thermal springs under the seafloor provide heat that helps octopus eggs hatch faster, which may give them a better chance at life, reducing the risk of predation or injury during development. These thermal springs are different from hydrothermal vents, but support life in a similar way: by providing a unique habitat, an alternative to the frigid seabed.
This Central California hotspot is also the biggest grouping of octopuses ever seen. Scientists estimate the area may have upwards of 20,000 octopuses at a given moment. The thermal springs are some two miles beneath the ocean’s surface, which would explain why we didn’t notice all the life there before.
Luckily, the Octopus Garden, perched on the edge of an extinct volcano, isn’t in an area targeted for deep sea mining. Still, places like this give another reason for caution in harvesting resources from the deep sea. There are almost certainly similar octopus nurseries we haven’t yet found. Deep sea mining could destroy the thermal springs they depend on, before we’ve even noticed they’re there. Impacts like sediment plumes could also reach octopus nurseries outside of mining zones.
I’m not as into octopuses as I feel I should be: they’ve been made to feel so familiar by popular culture that they almost seem mundane. I hold a greater fondness for the weirder and rarer deep sea denizens, like the tripod fish. Yet there is something really exquisite about octopuses in large groups.
There, they seem to take on the magic and mystique that I look for in the deep sea. The Octopus Garden is home to the pearl octopus, so named for its pale, lavender-gray, almost luminescent look. Gathered together, I can see the wonder in their spiraling tentacles and pearl-round bodies. Especially when curled up for nesting, they look like so many gems lying in some strange velvet-lined jewelry box.
They’re joined by other deep sea wonders, too. Like other octopus species, pearl octopuses die after reproducing. Their bodies, and the supply of unsuccessful eggs, provide sustenance for creatures like shrimp and snails and anemones, creating a strangely vibrant underwater community.
This community is in a protected area, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. I’ll be visiting Monterey in September for my birthday, mainly to view the deep sea exhibit at the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium. While I won’t see the Octopus Garden, far off-shore and deep undersea, I’m excited to see the coastal parts of the National Marine Sanctuary: scenic beaches and thriving tide pools. Even though marine protected areas do relatively little to keep wild areas safe from the widespread threats of humanity, they are really fun to visit.
On the other side of the same ocean, however, is more concerning news, something that could impact sea life far away. Radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant is now officially being released into the Pacific.
The argument for this is that the water’s been treated for safety, and there’s nowhere else to put it. Plenty of safety measures are being taken: the water’s filtered as much as possible, diluted with seawater, and shunted through a tunnel for further dilution. This still-a-bit-radioactive water will be gradually released into the Pacific over a matter of years, rather than dumped all at once.
Still, it’s hard to believe that introducing radioactive material to the environment won’t do any harm. At best, it feels like the lesser of multiple evils, or “the least bad of a bunch of bad options,” as one nuclear power safety director puts it.
The Fukushima nuclear plant was used to generate electricity until it was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Like deep sea mining, nuclear plants are a risky source for the electric power seen as critical to modern life.
Safety concerns have unsurprisingly cropped up as the Fukushima water disposal process begins. Will this radioactivity harm the world’s seafood supplies? Will it reach an octopus nursery? We may never know. But these are questions to consider, as we ask what we’re willing to sacrifice in the quest for electricity.