It is the ultimate metaphor for the unknown: the deep; the depths; the abyss. The ocean is our ultimate ancestral home and a constant and alluring source of opportunity, danger and mystery. Certainly, those scientists who spend their careers peering into the seven seas are quick to dredge up the idea that we know more about celestial bodies than we do about the oceans. Who can blame them when outer space grabs the attention? Witness the interest in the Rosetta comet mission or last week's announcement of more exoplanets - now counted in the hundreds - which received wall-to-wall press coverage. News about the oceans tends to be bad, and feeds the dark imagery-such as Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which is believed to have gone missing over the Indian Ocean with huge loss of life, or the enormous car-carrying ship that ran aground a fortnight ago off the UK coast. Some scientists are now questioning whether this drip feed of negativity about the oceans is reflected in the attitudes of researchers. Carlos Duarte of the University of Western Australia in Crawley and his colleagues claim in a provocative paper that ocean science focuses too much on the narrative of man-made disaster. Their study argues that "doom and gloom media accounts" of the terrible state of the oceans are frequently not based on strong evidence.
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