I think it's more an issue of bikeshedding than judgement: Editors and their boards are familiar enough (or think they know enough) about distances to issue bl

I think it's more an issue of bikeshedding than judgement: Editors and their boards are familiar enough (or think they know enough) about distances to issue blanket policies that might say "all distances should be reported in US customary units and/or familiar references such as football fields". Pelagic zones are obscure enough that there's no policy that says "Prefer 'light', 'murky', 'dark', 'pitch black', and 'in a hole' to the difficult sciencey terms".