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deep sea mining
Saving the Deep Blue Sea Is Up to All of Us
As we have begun to unravel the mysteries of the deep sea over the past two decades, the wisdom behind the international community’s commitments to protect it is clearer than ever. Now is time to act.
Sep 24, 2024
This week’s United Nations General Assembly marks nearly 20 years since the body first resolved to restrict bottom trawling on the world’s seamounts, submarine mountains that rise thousands of feet above the sea floor and comprise some of the most biologically rich marine ecosystems on the planet.
Led by Palau and other small island nations with generations-long ties to the ocean, the ensuing decades witnessed a raft of subsequent agreements that expanded protections for more of the deep sea—the dark, cold waters below 200 meters—culminating last year with the adoption of a treaty to protect marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
These are important achievements that should be celebrated. But, we have been involved in diplomacy long enough to know that such agreements are often just the beginning of a long and winding journey to full implementation.
Today, for instance, not only does bottom trawling continue on seamounts, it occurs in ever deeper waters, despite scientific evidence of the severe damage it causes to corals and other habitats. In fact, the UN’s most recent World Ocean Assessment found that “fishing, especially bottom trawling, constitutes the greatest current threat to seamount ecosystems”.
A similar story is unfolding elsewhere in the deep sea. Not long ago, the crushing pressure and near total darkness of the mesopelagic layer of the ocean, sometimes referred to as the “twilight zone” (200-1000 meters deep), was thought to be inhospitable to life.
However, technological advances like submersibles and remotely operated vehicles, now offer a window on a world that is alive with deep water fish, squid, and shrimp. It is estimated that this marine realm holds up to 95 percent of all ocean fish by weight and as many as 10 million different species—a level of biodiversity akin to tropical rainforests.
We also now know that the deep sea environment is critical to the health of the ocean’s wider food web, including fish stocks that countless people around the world depend on for food and employment.
Moreover, new research has revealed that the mesopelagic’s staggering biomass plays an indispensable role in the climate system by keeping enormous amounts of heat-trapping gasses out of the atmosphere in a process known as the carbon pump.
However, as overfishing, pollution, and rapidly warming waters continue to take a toll on global fish stocks, nations have increasingly been looking at authorizing their fleets to exploit the deep sea in order to meet the insatiable demand for fish products used in fertilizer, aquaculture, and dietary supplements.
The danger of over-exploitation doesn’t end 1000 meters down. Mining companies have long looked to extend their reach from the land into the deep sea. Today, for example, the UN-affiliated International Seabed Authority, which regulates deep-sea mining, is working on finalizing rules to manage commercial operations on the ocean floor.
It has already permitted exploratory mining voyages in the Pacific’s vast Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where the ships dredge the sea floor 4000-5000 meters below the surface for nodules of nickel, manganese, copper, and cobalt that without government subsidies would never turn a profit.
As elsewhere, the activities could cause irreversible damage to the ecosystem and potentially release carbon that has been stored safely for millennia. If approved, full-scale mining could commence in a few years.
Remarkably (and not without irony), research funded in part by a corporate mining interest recently discovered the presence of “dark oxygen” in the same area of the seabed. It has long been understood that oxygen was created by living organisms in the presence of light through the process of photosynthesis.
However, a study published over the summer suggests that the electrochemical properties of the aforementioned nodules can generate oxygen in total darkness. The findings could have far-reaching implications that help us understand the origins of life and demonstrate the high stakes involved with mining.
As we have begun to unravel the mysteries of the deep sea over the past two decades, the wisdom behind the international community’s commitments to protect it is clearer than ever. Our imperative task today is to fully implement them before it is too late.
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Norwegian Deep-Sea Mining Threatens Arctic Biodiversity With 'Irreversible Harm'
"Norway's plans not only directly threaten species and habitats on the seabed, but also the wider marine ecosystem, from the tiniest plankton to the great whales," one Greenpeace scientist said.
Sep 20, 2024
Norway's plans to move forward with deep-sea mining could do irreparable damage to unique Arctic ecosystems and even drive unobserved species to extinction.
That's the warning issued Friday in a Greenpeace report titled Deep Sea Mining in the Arctic: Living Treasures at Risk. The environmental group argues that Norway's mining plans contradict its previous ecological commitments, such as its 2020 pledge to manage 100% of its ocean area sustainably by 2025.
"The measure of a nation's success is not how many promises it makes, but how it honors them and how much of its ecosystem is safeguarded for present and future generations," Greenpeace Nordic campaigner Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle said in a statement. "While Norway claims to be a respectable nation with responsible policies on ocean management, it's rolling out the red carpet for deep-sea mining companies to deploy machines that will cause irreversible harm to the Arctic's unique and vulnerable biodiversity. Somehow Norway's words and ocean commitments get forgotten when profit opportunities arise. We cannot let that happen."
"Mining will cause permanent damage to those ecosystems and it will remain impossible to assess the full extent of those impacts, let alone control them."
Norway's parliament sparked global outrage when it voted to explore its Arctic seabed for minerals in January 2024. Its Ministry of Energy then released a plan for the first round of licenses in June. The country aims to extend its first licenses next year and see mining begin by 2030.
Now, the Greenpeace report details what would be at stake if it does so.
"The Arctic is a unique and vital marine environment, home to one of the world's most fragile and diverse ecosystems, crucial for global climate regulation and supporting a wide array of species found nowhere else on Earth," Greenpeace International executive director Mads Christensen wrote in the report foreword. "The recent decision by Norway to open up 281,200 square kilometers of its claim to an extended continental shelf to deep-sea mining is putting ocean life and the livelihoods of those who depend on it at grave risk."
The mining would threaten life at all levels of the ocean and all nodes in the marine food web. Norway is hoping to mine for metals in the manganese crusts around hydrothermal vents, but these vents have also enabled a diverse array of life.
"They are home to creatures such as stalked jellyfish, tube worm forests, fish that produce antifreeze, and hairy shrimps hosting colonies of bacteria that can convert toxic hydrogen sulphides and methane into energy," Christensen wrote. "These are unique habitats with endemic species that can be found nowhere else on Earth, including ones that have yet to be scientifically described."
Deep-sea species like sponges, stony corals, sea pens, sea fans, lace corals, and black corals are also particularly vulnerable because they grow slowly, mature late, reproduce infrequently, and live for a long time. The habitats they form are therefore classified as Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems. Mining would disturb these ecosystems directly as "underwater robots" would both damage and remove them in the hunt for metals.
However, the impacts of deep-sea mining extend beyond the seabed and included sediment plumes, the release of toxins, the alternation of the substrate and its geochemistry, noise and light pollution, and moving some organisms from one part of the sea to another. These could harm both marine and human communities, as unique conditions in the Arctic Ocean create a spring phytoplankton bloom that feeds important fisheries like herring, mackerel, and blue whiting. The area also draws migrating seabirds and several species of marine mammals.
In particular, 12 species of marine mammals are commonly found in the area slated for mining: minke whale, humpback whale, fin whale, blue whale, bowhead whale, northern bottlenose whale, sperm whale, orca, narwhal, white-beaked dolphin, harp seal, and hooded seal.
"Although it has long been documented that whales and dolphins live in this area, we still know remarkably little about their abundance, distribution, and behaviors, including how much they rely on healthy ecosystems around seamounts," Kirsten Young, a science lead at Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, said in a statement. "Mining will cause permanent damage to those ecosystems and it will remain impossible to assess the full extent of those impacts, let alone control them."
"What is clear is that Norway's plans not only directly threaten species and habitats on the seabed, but also the wider marine ecosystem, from the tiniest plankton to the great whales," Young concluded.
Norway's plans also come as the region is already undergoing changes due to the burning of fossil fuels and the heating of the atmosphere and oceans.
A 2023 assessment of the ecosystems of the Norwegian Sea found that both water temperatures and ocean acidification had increased.
Acidification in particular is of "grave concern" in the sea because it is moving more quickly than the global average.
"As the waters of the Nordic Seas become more acidified, there will be impacts to species, ecosystems, and ecosystem functioning as a result of changes to organisms' structure, distribution, and ability to function," Greenpeace wrote.
Greenpeace is calling on Norway to abandon its plans for deep-sea mining and add its name to a list of countries backing a moratorium on the practice.
In addition, the group urges Norway to instead facilitate more scientific research in its Arctic waters and to protect a network of 30% of them by 2030 in keeping with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and work with other nations to preserve all marine environments under the global ocean treaty.
"Now, when six of the nine planetary boundaries have been exceeded, is not the time to be opening up a new frontier to extraction, but one when we should all be doubling down on doing what is needed to safeguard the wildlife and ecosystems that we share this wonderful blue planet with," Christensen said.
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It Is Time for Biden to Back a Moratorium on Deep-Sea Mining
A U.S. moratorium would send a strong message that it supports neither destructive seabed mining nor creating a new domestic market for minerals sourced from the ocean.
Jul 25, 2024
Five thousand new species were discovered earlier this year on a single research expedition to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone—a 1.7 million square mile area between Hawaii and Mexico. A steady stream of studies like this one reveal that from the darkest depths to the shallows by our shores, there are a multitude of undiscovered species in our oceans.
But the Clarion-Clipperton Zone also possesses a high concentration of minerals, and has therefore captured the eye of a risky new industry: deep-sea mining. If zones like this one are opened up for full-scale industrial mining, numerous newly discovered and undiscovered species will be at risk. Mining threatens to permanently destroy vast sea floors, undersea mountains, and otherworldly hydrothermal vents.
We urge U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration to call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, and stop this destructive industry from wreaking havoc on our seas. Right now, mining the deep seas is largely illegal under international laws, which means we can still prevent the destruction of untouched ocean areas and the multitudes they contain.
In short, deep-sea mining is an unnecessary threat to our global climate, the stability of our oceans, and the economy that depends on them.
But time is running out. At the end of July, nations will come together in Kingston, Jamaica at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which oversees commercial seabed mining in international waters, to advance draft mining rules. While the U.S. is not a member of the ISA, a U.S. moratorium would send a strong message that it supports neither destructive seabed mining nor creating a new domestic market for minerals sourced from the ocean. Twenty-five member states of the ISA—along with an increasing number of environmental, scientific, and Indigenous groups—already support a moratorium.
Yet the ISA is on track to allow deep-sea mining to begin–with increasingly lax regulation. In a recent draft of the ISA’s Mining Code, environmental protections for sensitive ecosystems had been stripped out. And in a breach of transparency norms, the identities of those proposing language to accelerate the approval of commercial mining licenses were omitted.
Some in the U.S. Congress are encouraging the acceleration of industrial deep-sea mining in U.S. federal waters, and federal agencies are preparing for the possibility of mining applications in the country, including an area off the Southeast U.S. called the Blake Plateau. This region, still scarred from test mining in the 1970s, is home to one of the world’s largest deep-sea coral reefs. Fishermen have long sought to protect this area, but deep-sea mining could put that protection—and their livelihoods—at risk. Last year, fishing industry groups joined the chorus of opposition to deep-sea mining.
The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn’t restricted to the sea floor. It will impact the entire water column top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it. Byproducts from mining could expose economically and culturally important species such as tunas to toxic sediment plumes, potentially contaminating fisheries. These plumes risk damaging known and unknown species at every depth, including those that sequester and transfer massive amounts of carbon.
Pro-mining interests argue that deep-sea minerals are needed for green energy technologies, like batteries for electric vehicles and solar panels, to meet future demand and mitigate climate change. We must not give in to this false choice between oceans and climate, and instead recognize that protecting our ocean is an equally important piece of keeping our planet habitable.
The ocean plays a critical role in global climate stability. Ocean creatures are vital strands in a delicate web of life that touches all of us. They are critical to coastal communities and economies, a potential source of game-changing medicines, and each plays a part in natural processes that help to regulate our climate.
Undermining ocean health to pursue potential mineral deposits is simply unnecessary. Demand for seabed minerals like nickel, copper, and cobalt is expected to level off or decline as clean energy technologies evolve and recycling capabilities improve. For example, batteries without seabed minerals now make up 36% of the electric vehicle market, and this is expected to increase to 60% by 2030.
In short, deep-sea mining is an unnecessary threat to our global climate, the stability of our oceans, and the economy that depends on them.
President Biden’s administration must make it clear that U.S. waters are not open for this destructive business. As nations gather to discuss the future of the industry, the Biden administration should join 25 other countries, including Canada and Mexico, in support of a global moratorium on deep-sea mining. For the sake of our ocean—and for all life on Earth that depends on it.
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