The seafloor is easy to overlook as just the ground beneath the ocean, but it is a working part of the Earth system. Oceans cover two-thirds of the planet and have an average depth of almost 4 kilometers, making the seafloor a vast and largely unseen environment.
For most of human history, that depth was a shield. The seafloor's remoteness kept it out of reach of widespread disturbance, allowing its physical and biological processes to continue largely untouched.
That is now changing. The source reports that the seafloor's isolation no longer protects it as it once did, and human activity is beginning to reach these depths. Because the seafloor is tied into the broader Earth system, the consequences of disturbing it are unlikely to stay confined to the deep ocean.