The Nippon Foundation, Scottish Association for Marine Science Embarking on Landmark Research into Deep-sea “Dark Oxygen” (1)
Published on February 28, 2025
The Nippon Foundation and the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) have launched a new three-year research project into so-called “dark oxygen,” the existence of which would reveal that there is a previously unknown source of oxygen on the deep sea floor.
I announced this at a press briefing in London on January 17 alongside Professor Andrew Sweetman, leader of SAMS’s seafloor ecology and biogeochemistry research group, and SAMS Director Professor Nick Owens.
The launch of the research was widely reported by international media outlets, including the BBC, CNN and Newsweek, as well as Japanese newspapers and television networks.
Under the 2 million-pound ($2.5 million) project funded by the foundation, the team led by Professor Sweetman will send specially designed landers to some of the ocean's deepest zones to further explore the mysteries surrounding dark oxygen.
In July 2024, the SAMS researchers published a groundbreaking study in the journal, Nature Geoscience, suggesting the possibility of oxygen production occurring on the deep ocean floor.
Dark oxygen can be produced in complete darkness on the deep seabed, where light cannot penetrate, challenging the previously held scientific consensus that oxygen is produced solely from light through photosynthesis, said the researchers.
The three-year research initiative will focus on deep-sea areas in the Pacific Ocean, including parts of the Hadal Zone, which extends to depths of 11,000 meters and accounts for 45 percent of the ocean.
The researchers will use autonomous landers equipped with advanced sensors to measure dark oxygen production and study its effects on microbial communities.
The research team will also seek to understand if dark oxygen production takes place in other deep-sea areas and will take various measurements and readings to help identify the source.
The support package from The Nippon Foundation will cover analysis costs for the research and the development of purpose-built autonomous landers, or rigs, to carry specialist instrumentation to the deepest parts of the ocean.
This research project has already been recognized by international organizations, including UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), which has endorsed it as one of its Ocean Decade Actions, under the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
(To be continued)
