Adventurers for Conservation: Nekton Mission

Oliver Steeds, founder and director of Oxford-based ocean research foundation Nekton reminds us how little we still we know about our planet and how exploration’s capacity to improve our understanding of the world can itself help drive change.

Nekton operates a fleet of deep-sea submersibles and is about to embark on an ambitious programme to explore the Bathyal Zone, the 1,000-3,000m-deep tranche of ocean that is thought to harbour the greatest concentration of marine biodiversity yet is also its least explored.

“We now have technology available to us to discover more of our planet in next 10 years than we have in last 1,000,” Steeds said. “We have better maps of the Moon and Mars than we do of our own seabed. We are at this profound moment where we can drive a whole new era of exploration. That’s why I’m optimistic, because if we look back through history of exploration and what it’s achieved for us, it has driven our progression: journeys we’ve taken into the unknown have pushed back our frontiers of knowledge and enabled us to progress. We have this opportunity to explore this unknown frontier and transform our relationship to ourselves and our planet.”