More than 5,000 undescribed animal species have been discovered in the depths of a massive "pristine wilderness" in the Pacific Ocean, a new study shows. But researchers warn they could soon be wiped out by deep-sea mining.
The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) is a fracture zone — a large scar of deformed seafloor created by tectonic plate movements — that stretches from Mexico to Hawaii and covers around 2.3 million square miles (6 million square kilometers), which is around 3.5 times the area of Alaska.
