<
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2025/07/20/earth-science/sea-floor-mining-warning/>
'Kingston, Jamaica – Scientists present at the latest effort to hash out
international rules for deep-sea mining say it's unclear if it's possible to
restore damaged sea floor ecosystems — or how long it would take.
One of the last wild zones on the planet, the sea floor is a coveted frontier
for companies and countries eager to access minerals that are in high demand
for emerging technologies such as electric cars.
Particularly coveted are potato-sized nodules containing cobalt, nickel, copper
and manganese, that are found in abundance on the seabed in the central Pacific
Ocean.
Companies eager to vacuum up these polymetallic nodules say they can do it with
minimal risk to the deep-sea environment.
But ocean defenders have battled against what they see as the advent of an
industry that will threaten isolated ecosystems that are not yet well
understood.
That threat was underscored by European scientists who presented findings last
week on the sidelines of a meeting in Kingston, Jamaica of the International
Seabed Authority, which is trying to finalize future rules for seabed mining.
"If we remove nodules from the seabed, we do not know what we lose, only that
it's lost forever," was one of the conclusions of DEEP REST, a sea floor
conservation research project.
The DEEP REST study cautioned against using seabed restoration "as a management
action for impacted habitats."
"So far, all the restoration operations we have attempted within our DEEP REST
project have been short-term. And what we observed, is that in the given time,
that is to say a few years, the ecosystems do not recover," said Jozee
Sarrazin, a researcher at the French Institute for Ocean Science, or Ifremer.
"If restoration is possible, it will take a very long time, and at the moment
we don't have the data to be able to say if that will be 100 years or 1000
years," the DEEP REST coordinator said.'
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
