Minderoo Foundation and The University of Western Australia have joined forces to establish a world-leading research centre to increase understanding about the deepest parts of the ocean.

The Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre has been supported with a major five-year grant from Minderoo Foundation’s Flourishing Oceans initiative.

The Centre will lead up to three expeditions a year to explore the hadal zones of the Indian Ocean and beyond.

The team will comprise a unique mix of ecologists, geneticists and geoscientists to apply a holistic approach to studying some of the most extreme marine frontiers.

Despite the deep-sea accounting for most of planet earth, research is surprisingly lagging behind that of shallower coastal regions. The very deepest — the hadal zone (6000m+) — accounts for the deepest 45 per cent of the oceans but is often omitted or underrepresented in marine science. This zone is arguably the last great frontier in marine exploration, and global ocean conservation and stewardship must account for the entire ocean, not just the shallower regions.

The centre is committed to the exploration of the deep Indian Ocean. There they will use state-of-the-art technology to assess biodiversity, habitats, genetic connectivity, evolutionary adaptation and anthropogenic impacts. These will be contextualised through continuing this work in other similar ultra-deep features around the globe.

Increasing the seafloor mapping of the Western Australian Exclusive Economic Zone and the wider east Indian Ocean through proactive data collection during expeditions and ships of opportunity. The aim is to share the bathymetric data with national and international bathymetric mapping programs.

We aim to establish sustained abyssal observatories to act as a precursor to future long-term monitoring initiatives at abyssal depths. These are to examine deep-sea seasonality, long-term trends and community dynamics under ever changing climatic conditions.