climate change

25 April, 2022

Source: Eco Business

Author: Jessica Cheam

Oceanographer Dr Sylvia Earle speaks to Eco-Business in this exclusive podcast about the irreversible damage deep sea mining will cause, the link between the oceans and our global climate, and the role that we can all play in ‘being at peace’ with nature.

Continue reading Dr. Sylvia Earle on deep sea mining: An ‘illusion of free goods waiting to be captured’

22 April, 2022

Source: Esri blog

Author: Dawn Wright

It would be nice to focus on the heartening growth of marine protected areas (MPA) on this Earth Day. However, upcoming United Nations talks on global seabed mining provide a more urgent topic.

We’ve barely finished mapping this biodiversity-rich terrain, and already there’s an effort to exploit it. Research shows that seabed disturbances heighten emissions; estimates by conservationist Enric Sala and colleagues suggest ocean trawling releases one gigaton of CO2 every year. That’s more than the global aviation industry.

Continue reading Upping Ocean Protection and Putting a Pause on Seabed Mining

6 January, 2022

Source: Medium

Author: Louisa Casson

Greenpeace Campaigner Louisa Casson explores the parallels between the latest blockbuster from Netflix, Don’t Look Up, an American climate satire, and the emerging, risky deep-sea mining industry.

Continue reading Don’t Look Down

20 October, 2020

Source: Science News
Author: Maria Temming

Things are heating up at the seafloor.

Thermometers moored at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean recorded an average temperature increase of about 0.02 degrees Celsius over the last decade, researchers report in the Sept. 28 Geophysical Research Letters. That warming may be a consequence of human-driven climate change, which has boosted ocean temperatures near the surface (SN: 9/25/19), but it’s unclear since so little is known about the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean.

Continue reading Even the deepest, coldest parts of the ocean are getting warmer

28 September, 2018

Source: Science Daily
Author: Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology

Large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane are stored in the seabed. Fortunately, only a small fraction of the methane reaches the atmosphere, where it acts as a climate-relevant gas, as it is largely degraded within the sediment. This degradation is carried out by a specialized community of microbes, which removes up to 90 percent of the escaping methane. Thus, these microbes are referred to as the “microbial methane filter.” If the greenhouse gas were to rise through the water and into the atmosphere, it could have a significant impact on our climate.

Continue reading Observing the development of a deep-sea greenhouse gas filter