Source: Maritime Executive
A new study shows that the impacts of seabed mining on deep-sea ecosystems can persist for decades.
Scientists at the U.K.’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) revisited a site exposed to deep-sea mining activity nearly 30 years previously to assess seabed and ecosystem recovery. They used a robot submarine to map and photograph much of the seafloor in the disturbed area in unprecedented detail. The images were combined into a seafloor photo-mosaic completely covering 11 hectares of seabed, the largest ever photo-mosaic obtained in the abyssal ocean. Tracks on the seafloor caused by the simulated mining were still clearly visible, and the impacts on marine life initially observed in 1989 persist.
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