Abyssal Claims: A FAIR-aligned integration platform for deep-sea and terrestrial mining transparency

Abyssal Claims is an independently developed, non-commercial web platform (https://something-rare.com) that integrates more than forty publicly funded and open-licensed geospatial datasets onto a single interactive three-dimensional globe. It is designed to make the environmental and governance context of deep-sea mineral extraction and terrestrial industrial mining legible to researchers, journalists, policy analysts and the general public. Version 1.4 (9 June 2026) adds three further sea-domain layers and refines the platform's methodological documentation. - Hydrophone Stations (hydrophone-stations) surfaces passive acoustic monitoring station metadata from 23 official observatory and research networks: Ocean Observatories Initiative, Integrated Marine Observing System, MBARI MARS, AWI PALAOA, AWI HAUSGARTEN/FRAM, SAMBAH, CTBTO IMS, OBSEA, KM3NeT, plus the 14-program NOAA Passive Acoustic Archive (NRS, SanctSound, NEFSC, PIFSC, SEFSC, ONMS, ADEON, BOEM, AEON, Navy MBARC+USWTR, NPS Glacier Bay, JASCO, Coastal Studies Institute, IOOS ESONS). 617 stations total. Phase 1 surfaces station metadata only; numeric SPL soundscape products are deferred to a future Phase 3 work. - Seafloor Bathymetry (bathymetry) surfaces the GEBCO 2025 Grid at 15 arc-second resolution as a WMS raster overlay served from wms.gebco.net under CC0 (public domain). Hover and click depth lookup is supported and cached through a three-tier read path: in-memory on the backend, browser localStorage on the frontend, and a persistent Postgres bathymetry_cache table. Off by default — provides physical context for every other sea layer. - Ocean Currents (ocean-currents) surfaces daily-mean global ocean currents from the Copernicus Marine Service (product GLOBAL_ANALYSISFORECAST_PHY_001_024, dataset cmems_mod_glo_phy-cur_anfc_0.083deg_P1D-m, variables uo and vo) as an animated particle flow. Surface and 1,000-metre depth selector (the 1,000-metre field is the water mass that carries deep-sea mining sediment plumes). A date slider with playback replays approximately 180 days of daily history. Implementation: bake-to-RGBA-texture pattern (R = eastward velocity, G = northward velocity, A = land mask) with a custom CPU-advected particle canvas. Reduced-motion users see a static arrow field instead. - Submarine Cables expanded from three to six sub-sources: EMODnet refactored to a 7-layer multi-source ingest (1,255 features carrying operator, cable type and voltage attributes); NOAA Marine Cadastre adds 2,816 USA cable protection corridors; NZ LINZ adds 30 chart-derived polylines; AU ACMA adds 16 cable protection zones. Total cable features across 6 sub-sources: 4,296. - Baseline Monitoring Density grid switched from rectangular 2°×2° to equal-area hex tiling on EPSG:6933 (33,391 hex cells), ensuring comparable cell surface area at all latitudes. - New methods paper section 4.0b documents the IUCN Red List enrichment pipeline applied to OBIS records: per-species GBIF taxon match → GBIF IUCN status lookup; categories CR, EN, VU, NT, LC, DD; default NE; failed lookups marked DD as a permanent sentinel; is_endangered = iucn_category IN ('CR','EN','VU'). Current distribution (as of v1.4): 7 CR, 28 EN, 13 VU, 4 NT, 151 LC, 529 DD, 74,510 NE. - New methods paper section 4.0c documents the platform's editorial-neutrality stance. Earlier versions (v1.0/v1.1) attached platform-derived risk verdicts to mining concessions (a RISK badge on threatened-species overlap, a hydrothermal-vent proximity warning, a risk-scored impact report). These were removed in v1.2 (vessel layers), v1.3 (Reports V2 became default), and v1.4 (remaining RISK badge and hydrothermal vent proximity warning). As of v1.4 only one map layer — Baseline Monitoring Density — surfaces a platform-derived analytical product; every other layer presents what the upstream provider published, leaving interpretation to the user. - New methods paper sections 4.4c, 4.4d, 4.4e document the Hydrophone Stations, Bathymetry, and Ocean Currents ingest pipelines respectively. - Frontend internationalisation completed (EN/PL/FR/DE via react-i18next). - Reports V2 (neutral concession reports) replaces v1 risk-scored reports as the default /report/:id route. The biodiversity_hotspots table now holds 40,258,523 records under the v1.2 filter (curated deep-sea species list of approximately 14,000 taxa + 50 m depth floor, unchanged in v1.4). The 50 m floor is intentional and preserves continental-shelf records (50–500 m) so that offshore-activity EEZ areas remain populated with species context. Version 1.3 (7 May 2026) added the Contractor Sampling Stations (deepdata-stations) Tier 2 layer and three Baseline Monitoring Density inputs (ISA DeepData Tier 1, MBARI VARS, NOAA DSCRTP). Version 1.2 (5 May 2026) introduced the OBIS Open Data parquet ingest path (DuckDB batch-download from s3://obis-open-data/occurrence/, ~6,880 GeoParquet files, snapshot 25 March 2025, DOI 10.25607/obis.occurrence.b89117cd, with a curated deep-sea species list and 50 m depth floor), retired the standalone GBIF Species (Deep) layer, disabled the Dark Vessels (SAR×AIS) and Live Vessels (AIS) layers, added the Scripps Benthic Invertebrate Collection (SIO-BIC) to the Baseline Monitoring Density input set, and introduced section 4.0 Data transformations. Version 1.1 (28 April 2026) added the Offshore Activities layer (6,694 polygons across 23 government registries) and six ocean-observation source ingests (WOD, PANGAEA, BCO-DMO, NOAA datasets, OBIS-SEAMAP, CCHDO) feeding the Baseline Monitoring Density product. This deposit documents the platform at a level sufficient to verify its outputs and reimplement equivalent functionality. It contains: - Methods paper (PDF, 36 pages): data sources, system architecture, sections 4.0 / 4.0a / 4.0b / 4.0c on data transformations, OBIS DuckDB batch-download ingest, IUCN Red List enrichment, and editorial neutrality; section 4.4b on the ISA DeepData Tier 1 / Tier 2 separation rule; sections 4.4c / 4.4d / 4.4e on the Hydrophone Stations, Seafloor Bathymetry, and Ocean Currents ingest pipelines; ingestion strategies, MVT tile generation, overlap view refresh, baseline monitoring density hex grid (15 sources on EPSG:6933), the historical record of the now-disabled SAR×AIS dark-vessel detection, search-engine discoverability, limitations, FAIR alignment, section 9 on production status and roadmap, full references.- Data sources inventory (Excel, 6 sheets): 24 active sea layers (plus deprecated/disabled rows preserved with status flags), 13 land layers, 25 derived products and ocean observation registries, refresh schedule, licence summary.- Architecture diagram (SVG and PNG).- README (PDF): deposit overview and v1.4 changelog.- CITATION.cff: machine-readable citation metadata. The source code of the platform is not part of this deposit by design. The pipeline is documented at an algorithmic level consistent with established scientific publication practice for research software. Author: Michal Mazurowski (Independent Researcher, ORCID 0009-0007-3786-0310).