Abstract

The deep seas have long been imagined as a place of strange temporalities which spark speculative forays that dodge evolutionary time and extinction epochs. Western imaginaries of the abyss are often paradoxical. This chapter will focus on the book-ended figures of sturdy and enduring “living fossils,” on one side, and the fleeting spectral species of presumably extinct, but never identified species, on the other. The essay contemplates how these two tropes function, within the current moment of accelerating anthropogenic extinctions and threats to abyssal ecologies. Do spectral taxa of the abyss, as they hail from extraordinarily remote distances and temporalities, insist we reckon with the sheer scale of accelerating anthropogenic extinctions, as well as our own situated responsibilities for species that are anything but companions? How are the tropes of spectral species, with their temporal immensity, articulated with urgent and specific political struggles? While the strange temporalities and unfathomable ontologies of these figures (dead fossil or living being? extinct or extant?) may seem otherworldly, both figurations can be mobilized against the impending devastation of deep-sea mining.