Deep ocean research using submersibles, trawling, and sampling equipment disturbs deep sea communities with welfare impacts that are almost entirely unmonitored.
Deep ocean research occurs almost entirely outside any animal welfare framework. The animals in deep sea habitats — often with poorly understood but possibly significant sentience — are killed by research sampling with no ethical scrutiny comparable to that applied to laboratory animals or even fish used in aquaculture research. Barotrauma is lethal and presumably painful for animals adapted to extreme pressure. Light and noise from research operations disturb communities that have never experienced such stimuli. Extending welfare thinking to deep ocean research is a frontier challenge that deserves attention from marine welfare scientists.