How Deep is Your Love

The deep sea: the last unknown territory on Earth. Here, biologists marvel over the enigmatic wildlife that looks like something from another planet: the depths of the world’s oceans resemble outer space. The alien and strange life forms down in the darkness send the imagination soaring. However, the days when the deep sea was the last wilderness on earth may be coming to an end as deep sea mining threatens the fragile ecosystems.

Aftertalk with Teun Joshua Brandt and Karin de Boer

How do we protect what we cannot see, what we do not yet know? With species taking up to 14 years to identify, science moves slowly, while the deep-sea mining industry moves fast. Marine biologist Karin de Boer and philosopher Teun Joshua Brandt explore this race against the clock and why it matters to protect a world that remains largely invisible to us.

Teun Joshua Brandt is a cultural researcher and philosopher at the University of Groningen who asks how we imagine and tell stories about life we cannot directly see, from deep-sea creatures to microbes. He has written about how these hidden worlds appear in fiction and popular science, and is currently developing an audiovisual project on deep-sea mining.  

In collaboration with Forum Groningen.