Today, researchers, enterprise owners,
and policy makers are working together
in haste to understand and manage human influence on the living and mineral resources of the high seas. This effort is a formable challenge. The oceans represent one-and-a-half times the total land area on the planet and their dynamics play critical—yet poorly understood—roles in regulating climate and biogeochemical cycles, supporting biodiversity, and providing rare habitats to rare species. At the same time, development of ocean resources is moving forward at breakneck pace, putting the sustainable health of the high seas at risk.

This Special Collection of open access articles, curated by Science Advances Deputy Editor Dr. Jeremy Jackson & Associate Editor Dr. Jennifer Jacquet, has been compiled in the hope that the research
presented can be used to better understand ecological, geological and other systems underlying the functional health of global
oceans, and inform those concerned with the exploration and use of living and mineral resources found in the high seas.

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In This Collection

Editorial: High Stakes for
the High Seas, eaau8235
Jacquet & Jackson

Corporate control and global governance of marine genetic resources, eaar5237
Blasiak et al.

A strategy for the conservation of biodiversity on mid-ocean ridges from deep-sea mining, eaar4313
Dunn et al.

Far from home: distance patterns of global fishing fleets, eaar3279
Tickler et al.

Wealthy countries dominate industrial fishing, eaau2161
McCauley et al.

The economics of fishing the high seas, eaat2504
Sala et al.

The environmental niche of the global high seas pelagic longline fleet, eaat3681
Crespo et al.

Global hotspots of transshipment of fish catch at sea, eaat7159
Boerder et al.

High seas fisheries play a negligible role in addressing
global food security, eaat8351
Schiller et al.