People do care about the deep sea. A comment on Jamieson et al. (2020)

Abstract

In a paper in this journal entitled “Fear and loathing of the deep sea: why don’t people care about the deep sea?”, Jamieson et al. (2020) pose this question and answer it with many interesting perspectives from psychology, ocean literacy and philosophy. However, there is an inherent assumption in the question they ask that people do not care about the deep sea. In order to assess this assumption, we contend that the first question to ask is: do people care about the deep sea? Based on the cultural significance of the theme of the deep ocean in art and literature, the results of ocean attitudinal surveys and the work done on deep sea economic valuation in recent years, we suggest that the answer is that people do care about many different aspects of the deep sea, not only the ones that hold market value, but also non-market values. It is nonetheless argued that the welfare benefits that societies gain from the deep sea are not at the fore in political discussions or marine policy making.