Journalist Laura Trethewey, with support from the Fund, published The Deepest Map, which chronicles the quest to map the last mysterious place on earth – the global seafloor – and tells the story of the private explorers, investors, militaries and mappers who are making that a reality. Trethewey’s reporting uncovered the role that the Nippon Foundation, Japan’s largest philanthropic organization with an ultra-nationalist past, has played in supporting these efforts. She also revealed how corporate influence is behind the push to open international waters to deep-sea mining at the International Seabed Authority, the UN-associated regulator based in Kingston, Jamaica. The New York Times called the book “a gripping and all-too-timely account of what in more ways than one is turning out to be a very costly and questionably necessary race to the bottom.” Science magazine praised the work for its revelation of “the various threads involved in building this intricate tapestry.”
Grantee’s book reveals high stakes and dangerous race to map the last frontier – the seafloor
