An Interview with Dr Helen Scales
Dr Helen Scales is a writer, marine biologist and broadcaster. She is currently writing a book on Earth’s ‘final frontier’: the deep ocean. From a young age, Helen has been a passionate nature-lover and she fell hopelessly in love with the ocean after seeing it for the first time from beneath the waves. She has studied and worked as a marine conservationist, living and working in many countries where she’s witnessed the breathtaking wonders of the oceans, as well as the threats they face.
What made you decide to focus on the deep ocean for your latest book?
Marine biologist, author and broadcaster Helen Scales. Image: Ria Mishaal
The books I’ve written so far have mainly focused on particular groups of ocean creatures like seahorses and molluscs and their shells. This time I decided to concentrate on a place, specifically the depths of the ocean below the top two hundred metres – the deep sea.
I was inspired to focus on the deep for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, the deep is where the most exciting, revolutionary discoveries in our living world are being made.
Helped by incredible technological advances, scientists are exploring more of the deep oceans than ever before. There are now deep-diving robots that ping back high-definition, live video of what’s down there. Self-steering submersibles can navigate themselves through the deep for months and years at a time, gathering data as they go. Equipped with these cutting-edge tools, deep-sea scientists are without doubt the greatest modern-day explorers. They look into parts of the planet where nobody has been before, and all the time they’re making amazing new findings and learning more about how these deep ocean ecosystems work.
Our view of the deep oceans is growing more detailed every day, but at the same time humans are increasingly impacting the deep. That’s the other reason I want to write this book. Human activities are reaching deeper than ever – from deep-sea fishing to the rain of pollution and plastics, most of which goes unseen.
So, my book will reveal the tremendous biological wonders of the deep, while at the same time showing what we’re doing to this distant realm.
This is a pivotal time in history for this huge, deep part of our planet. Up until now, humanity has focused on the surface seas – for thousands of years, people have travelled across the oceans and fished the shallower seas. I think the ocean of the future is the deep sea. This is where people will be looking more and more, to feed ourselves and find solutions to many of the problems we face out here on land, and also to make those mind-blowing discoveries that are telling us so much about life on earth.
There’s a cliché about us knowing more about the surface of the moon than the deep ocean. What kind of challenges do you face when writing about an area about which so little is known, and which is so hard to visit?
Yes, it is difficult, and I don’t think I quite appreciated how difficult it would be! I’m often asked whether I’m going to go into the deep, but the truth is, very few people do. Even among deep-sea biologists, only a very small minority actually get to visit the depths of the ocean. Alvin and a few other human occupied submersibles still do amazing work, b