The Ocean’s Forgotten Wilderness | In Conversation with Dr Ben Harris

In this episode of the Oceanographic Podcast, Eva Cahill sits down with marine scientist Dr Ben Harris of the Convex Seascape Survey to explore the misunderstood world of the soft-sediment seafloor, and why the vast mudscapes beneath our waves hold the key to the ocean's future. In this episode: • The 27-Million-Square-Kilometre Blind Spot: Why continental shelf soft sediments, spanning an area larger than North America, are living animal forests rather than barren oceanic deserts. • Wiped Clean Before We Understood It: How historic bottom trawling flattened Britain’s seafloor before science could systematically map it, forcing fisheries to adapt to downgraded catches as finfish vanished. • The Carbon Vault Beneath Our Feet: Inside the complex sediment biomes storing global carbon, why heavy trawling scrambles those signals, and what recovery looks like inside protected zones like the Arran MPA. • The Carbon 'Trojan Horse': Why marine conservation cannot afford carbon tunnel vision, and why restoring ecosystem resilience and native oyster reefs must take priority over carbon accounting. • The Reality of 'Paper Parks': Why destructive fishing is still permitted inside protected waters, and where marine scientists must draw the line when policy fails ocean conservation.