To everyone’s surprise, scientists found that the nodules release “dark oxygen” at 4,000 meters, where sunlight cannot reach. This discovery revolutionizes our understanding of deep-sea ...

Potato-size metallic nodules strewn across the Pacific Ocean seafloor produce oxygen in complete darkness and without any help from living organisms, new research reveals. The discovery of this ...

The research that gave rise to the dark oxygen discovery was partly funded by a Canadian deep-sea mining business, The Metals Company, that wanted to assess the ecological impact of such exploration.

This unexpected source of “dark oxygen,” as it’s called ... But we now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light. I think we therefore need to revisit ...

In March 2025, researchers in China posted a preprint of a study (which has not yet been peer-reviewed) in which they report that two strains of deep-sea bacteria can reduce nitrate to ammonia, a ...

Delicate ecosystem – Environmentalists said the presence of dark oxygen showed just how little is known about life at these extreme depths, and supported their case that deep-sea mining posed ...

"Deep-sea discovery calls into question the origins of life," the Scottish Association for Marine Science said in a press release to accompany the publication of the research. Environmentalists said ...

Environmentalists said the presence of dark oxygen showed just how little is known about life at these extreme depths, and supported their case that deep-sea mining posed unacceptable ecological ...