Editorial comment
The deep sea has been in the spotlight recently, with the failed expedition and subsequent implosion of OceanGate’s Titan sub, which made headline news and captivated audiences across the world.
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The ill-fated tourist trip set sail on 18 June with the intention of diving 12 500 ft below the surface to view the wreckage of the Titanic. However, the voyage was doomed to never reach its destination. It is now thought that the sub imploded shortly after losing contact with the surface, and wreckage has been recovered from the ocean floor, not far from the Titanic itself.1
The ocean floor has also been making headline news recently for other reasons, namely the July deadline for the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a branch of the UN, to try and agree on regulations relating to deep sea mining (DSM). At the time of writing, the assembly is debating regulations surrounding the exploitation of minerals from the high seas, a resource considered by the UN as the “common heritage of mankind.”
DSM is a highly controversial topic, and a growing list of countries have called for a moratorium, or, in the case of France, total ban on the practise – due to the widespread ecological ramifications associated with it. However, countries such as Norway, China, and Russia2 are advocating for its advancement as the potential to extract millions of tonnes of ores and metals – such as nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper – concentrated in grades that are seldom seen on land, is undeniably alluring. In fact, Norway is proposing opening up a 280 000 km2 area in the Greatland sea, where it has discovered an estimated 38 million t of copper.3
The metals in question are all crucial to the net zero transition, specifically for electric vehicles and the production of green energy from solar panels and wind turbines. This raises the question of how to balance rising demand with the risks associated with DSM and whether the required resources could instead be found on land.
The Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a 4.5 million km2 area in the Pacific Ocean, West of Hawaii, is perhaps the most well-known area in which the potential for DSM is being explored. 16 of the 31 exploration permits issued by the ISA are concentrated in this area, which was described in a new report, ‘Why The Rush?’, from the Deep Sea Mining campaign as the “new wild west.”4,5 This is concerning given that 5578 different species have been found there, 88 – 92% of which have never been seen before.6 Thus, the ecological fallout from mining there has the potential to be astronomical.
One of the main points of contention is that DSM is conducted by a robot which is described in the Environmental Law Review journal as akin to a combine harvester – one that trundles along the seabed sucking up 10 cm of sediment alongside the potato sized polymetallic nodules of precious metals.7 In addition to this, there are a host of other issues with DSM that scientists, NGOs, governments, regulatory bodies, and even global corporations (such as BMW and Google) are highlighting.8 These include: the destruction of fragile and undisturbed ecosystems that have taken millions of years to form; sediment displacement; noise pollution which is harmful to whales, among other creatures; the potential release of carbon from marine snow (the sediment that falls and collects on the seabed); and mineral leakage and chemical spills affecting water quality, fisheries, and the wider food chain.
With ESG being such a key focus for the mining industry at large today, means of mineral extraction and the environmental harm they cause must be carefully evaluated.
While on-land mine reclamation is a well-established practice, restoring environments damaged by DSM has been shown to be much harder. This is evidenced by the long running DISCOL experiment, conducted in the South East Pacific Ocean off Peru, concerning the mining of a manganese nodule field. The experiment has observed that, even after 26 years, the ecosystem and marine biodiversity have still not recovered.9 This presents DSM in a starkly different light to on-land mining, as the environmental damage could be irreversible.
Employees at Oceangate tried to warn their CEO, Stockton Rush, of the risks associated with his Titan submersible, but their concerns fell on deaf ears and the fated mission went ahead as planned. To avoid another, altogether more damaging, marine disaster, decision makers around the world need to weigh expert opinion and evidence carefully and patiently before proceeding with DSM as a new avenue of mineral extraction. As conservation biologist Professor Richard Steiner, puts it: “It would be truly unfortunate if we allow the same industrial paradigm that destroyed much of the terrestrial ecosystems of our home planet to do the same in the deep sea. It is time to change this model.”10
References
Available on request.
