seabed mining

Manganese nodules: Desired mineral resource and important habitat

5 April, 2019

Source: EurekAlert

The area to be investigated by the research project “Mining Impact” is located in the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the northeast Pacific at approximately 4,500 metres water depth shrouded in complete darkness. Here, in an area of five million square kilometres, manganese nodules are abundantly found on the seabed. Their metal content offers a potential for commercial deep-sea mining. In recent years mineral raw materials from the deep sea have become the focus of some countries and companies in order to secure their supply with high-tech metals.

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Deep-sea mining: regulating the unknown

15 March, 2019

Source: The Ecologist
Author: Amber Cobley

If you ask someone to describe the deep sea, the response is often a depressing description of a barren landscape devoid of life; one of such crushing pressure and eternal darkness that the chance of life surviving here seems only possible in stories of science fiction.

So, it would probably surprise you to hear that there are rich, deep-sea ecosystems under threat from an emerging ocean industry… and virtually no-one knows about it.

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Scientists track damage from controversial deep-sea mining method

15 March, 2019

Source: Nature
Author: Olive Heffernan

For decades, mining companies have been eager to extract rare and valuable metals and minerals from the deep sea — a practice that scientists have long warned could damage marine ecosystems. Now, the first large-scale test of a major industrial-mining technique promises to provide robust data on the impacts of the controversial practice.

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Call for Nautilus seabed mining licences to be cancelled in Papua New Guinea

11 March, 2019

Source: Papua New Guinea Mine Watch

On 21 February 2019, Nautilus Minerals Inc. filed for protection from creditors under the Canadian Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.  Whilst claiming this as a victory in their decade-long campaign to stop the Nautilus Solwara 1 Project in the Bismarck Sea, local communities and civil society in Papua New Guinea are taking heed that the fight is not over until all Nautilus licences are cancelled.

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Species threatened by deep-sea mining

28 February, 2019

Source: ChinaDialogue Ocean
Author: Ned Pennant-Rea

The UN has described the deep sea as “the largest source of species and ecosystem diversity on Earth.” Life thrives particularly on the vast expanses of sea floor known as abyssal plains, amid the submarine mountains that rise from them and around superheated springs. Extremes of temperature and pressure have proved no obstacle to the creatures here. But plans to commercially mine the seabed pose a grave threat to their survival.

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