Samm Newton

Today, the Gulf of Mexico is an “ultra-deep-sea” laboratory where the mining industry has negotiated the contours of ocean knowledge since the 1930s. In that time, drilling moved from ocean depths of just four meters in 1938 to over 2,400 meters by 2010. This project tracks how industry expertise enclosed the open ocean—the figurative drawing of territorial lines in the literal sand, further and more distant from shore. However, another critical delineation made in the mid-twentieth century drew extraction deep into the lithosphere—the vertical division of the seafloor from the rest of the ocean. Scientific distinctions between biological, geological, and physical ocean features shaped political and environmental distinctions between which layers of the deep ocean had vitality and potential, versus those that were devalued. Yet these distinctions, applied to marine systems across the planet, are understudied in histories of science, technology, and the environment.