Biodiversity loss from deep-sea mining will be unavoidable

Source: EurekAlert!
Media contact: Tim Lucas

Biodiversity losses from deep-sea mining are unavoidable and possibly irrevocable, an international team of 15 marine scientists, resource economists and legal scholars argue in a letter published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The experts say the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is responsible under the UN Law of the Sea for regulating undersea mining in areas outside national jurisdictions, must recognize this risk. They say it must also communicate the risk clearly to its member states and the public to inform discussions about whether deep-seabed mining should proceed, and if so, what standards and safeguards need to be put into place to minimize biodiversity loss.

“There is tremendous uncertainty about ecological responses to deep-sea mining,” said Cindy L. Van Dover, Harvey W. Smith Professor of Biological Oceanography at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “Responsible mining needs to rely on environmental management actions that will protect deep-sea biodiversity and not on actions that are unproven or unreasonable.”

“The extraction of non-renewable resources always includes tradeoffs,” said Linwood Pendleton, International Chair in Marine Ecosystem Services at the European Institute of Marine Studies and an adjunct professor at Duke’s Nicholas School. “A serious trade-off for deep-sea mining will be an unavoidable loss of biodiversity, including many species that have yet to be discovered.”

Faced with this inevitable outcome, it’s more important than ever that we understand deep-sea ecosystems and have a good idea of what we stand to lose before mining alters the seafloor forever, said Pendleton, who also serves as a senior scholar in the Oceans and Coastal Policy Program at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Time is of the essence, the experts stress.