Deep below the ocean surface, at roughly the depth of 130 five-story buildings stacked end to end, a robot has unfurled a protest sign that reads: “LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE!”
A Greenpeace remotely operated vehicle (ROV) holds the banner more than 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) below the surface of the Norwegian Sea, in front of a hydrothermal vent field known as Loki’s Castle.
“This marks the deepest banner protest in history, to speak for ecosystems that have no voice of their own,” Sandra Schöttner, chief scientist for the Deep Arctic Expedition, Greenpeace International, said in a press release.
The protest, carried out on May 27 during Greenpeace’s Deep Arctic Expedition, targeted an area of the Arctic seabed that the Norwegian government opened to deep-sea mining in early 2024 before reversing course under political pressure.
Loki’s Castle was discovered in 2008 in the Arctic Ocean between Greenland and Norway. Here in the depths, hot fluid, between 300 and 320 degrees Celsius (572 and 608 degrees Fahrenheit), pours from mineral chimneys on the seafloor. These vents support a rich and unusual community of life, including microbes that resemble the distant ancestors of complex life on Earth.
A 2024 study in Scientific Reports documented the animals living around the vents, including five new-to-science species. The authors suggested areas like this along the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge should be treated as “vulnerable ecosystems” and protected.
In January 2024, the government of Norway opened roughly 281,000 square kilometers (108,000 square miles) of Arctic waters (an area nearly the size of Italy) to mineral exploration. The decision drew condemnation from the European Parliament, which warned of risks to fisheries, biodiversity and the release of methane stored in Arctic sediments.
In December 2025, Norway’s parliament voted to halt all deep-sea mining until at least the end of 2029 and cut public funding for seabed mineral mapping.
More than 40 countries now support a global pause on deep-sea mining.
The Greenpeace protest comes months after the United Nations Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction accord (also known as the High Seas Treaty) entered into force on Jan 17, 2026. This treaty creates the first legally binding framework to protect marine life in international waters.
The “high seas” make up more than 60% of the ocean and nearly half of the Earth’s surface. They hold deep trenches, underwater mountain ranges and ecosystems that help the ocean cycle nutrients and store carbon. But less than 1.5% of this space is formally protected, even as fishing, shipping and mining reach further into it.
Greenpeace is calling on governments to use the new treaty to create ocean sanctuaries and adopt an immediate moratorium on deep-sea mining.
Banner image of ROV expedition led by Greenpeace International, Greenpeace Germany and Greenpeace Nordic. The ROV deploys an underwater robot and banner reading ‘Listen To The Science’ 2,300 meters below the surface near Loki’s Castle in the Arctic Ocean.
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