Life at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is slow, dark and calm. Strange creatures shine and shine. Oxygen is mysteriously filtered with lumpy metal rocks. There is little to disturb these inhabitants of the deep ocean.
“There is a strange life down here,” said Beth Orcutt, geomicrobiologist of the Bigelow Laboratory for Oceanic Sciences.
Research in the deep sea is incredible given the extreme conditions, and rare given the price.
On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order that aims to allow, for the first time, the industrial mining of the seabed for minerals. Scientists have expressed deep reservations that mining could damage these deep water ecosystems before their value and operation are completely understood.
What’s down there, anyway?
SeaFlor mining could be directed to three types of metal -rich deposits: nodules, scabs and mounds. But at this time, it is the nodules. The nodules are or particular value that contain metals used in the manufacture of electronics, sophisticated weapons, electric vehicle batteries and other technologies necessary for human development. The nodules are also the mineral deposit of the seabed easier to collect.
The economically viable nodules take millions of years to form, sitting in the background bottom all the time. A nodule was born when a resistant matter, like a shark tooth, ends at the bottom of the ocean. Iron minerals, manganese and other metals slowly accumulate like a snowball. The largest are the size of a grapefruit.
Life also accumulates in the nodules. Microbial organisms, invertebrates, corals and sponges live in the nodules, and sea stars, crustaceans, worms and other life forms are sneaked around.
About half of the life known in the fixed extensions of Seaflor called the Live Abisal Plain in these nodules, said Lisa Levin, oceanographer of the scripps oceanography institution. But “we do not know that the wide extension species are, or if you extract an area, there would be individuals who could recolonize another place,” he said. “That is a great stranger.”
How mine the sea?
Two main approaches for nodules mining are being developed. One is basically a claw, scraping the bottom of the sea and collecting nodules as it advances. Another is essential an industrial vacuum for the sea.
In both, the nodules would be taken to ships on the surface, miles on the bottom of the ocean. The excess water, the rock and other rubble would be returned to the ocean.
Both the dredging and the vacuum would bother largely, if they would not destroy, the habitat of the seabed itself. Eliminating nodules also means eliminating what scientists think is the main habitat for organisms in the abyssal plain.
Mining activities would also introduce light and acoustic pollution not only for the seabed, but also on the surface of the ocean where the ship would be.
Or the central concern are the sediment columns that would create mining, both in the seabed and in At depths of around 1,000 meters, which have “some of the clearest oceanic waters,” said Jeffrey Drazen, an oceanograph from Hawaii University in Manoa. The sediment columns, which could travel fixed distances, could show life in unpredictable ways.
The sediment could drown fish and suffocate filter feeders as shrimp and sponges. It could block what is transmitted little light in the ocean, the prevention prevention lanterns of finding fisherman fellow and fish to attract prey. And drawings with discarded metals, there is also the possibility that seafood that people eat can contaminate.
“How likely we will contaminate our food supply?” Dr. Drazen said. Before mining begins, “I would really like an answer to that question. And we don’t have one now.”
What do mining companies say?
Mining companies say that they are developing sustainable deep and environmentally respectful mining approaches through research and commitment to the scientific community.
His research has included basic studies of geology, biology and chemistry of the seabed, documenting thousands of species and providing valuable photos and videos of deep water. The interest in seabed mining has supported research that could have been a challenge to finance otherwise, said Dr. Drazen.
Preliminary recovery equipment tests have provided some ideas about the foreseeable effects of their practices such as sediment feathers, all modeling can only go so far in predicting what would happen once mining reached a commercial scale.
Impossible Metals, a marine fund mining company based in California, is developing an underwater robot of the size of a shipping container that uses artificial intelligence to select management nodules without larger organisms, an approach to sediment feathers and biologies. The Metals Company, a Canadian mining company of deep waters, in 2022 excessively recovered 3,000 tons of nodules of the seabed, collecting data on the plume and other effects on the process.
The Metal Company announced in March that it would see a permit for Seaffloor mining through NOAA, avoiding the most marine international authority, the United Nations affiliated organization established to regulate the mining mining of the seabed.
Gerard Barron, executive director of the company, said in an interview on Thursday that the executive order “was not a shortcut” fits environmental revisions and that the company had “completed more than a decade of environmental research.”
Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said that the United States would comply with two US laws that govern deep waters and commercial activities in US waters and beyond. “Both laws require comprehensive environmental impact evaluations and compliance with strong environmental protection standards,” he said.
What are the long -term risks?
Many scientists are still skeptical that enough is known about the environmental effects of seabed mining to advance. They can only raise the hypothesis of the long -term consequences.
The interruption of the food chain fund could have undulation effects through the ocean environment. An extreme example, said Dr. Drazen, would be that the sediment be diluted the plankton food supply. In that case they could starve, unable to eliminate sufficient organic matter from a cloud of marine dust.
Small plankton is a source of fundamental food, directly or indirectly, for almost all creatures in the ocean, to whales.
Part of the challenge in understanding the possible effects is that the rhythm of life is slow in the Seofloor. Deep water fish can live hundreds of years. Corals can live thousands.
“It is a different life scale,” said Dr. Levin. “That supports some of the unknowns about responses to disturbances.” It is difficult for humans to do 500 -year experiments to understand whether or when ecosystems such as these can recover or adapt.
And there is no guaranthesis or restoring destroyed habitats or mitigating damage in the Seberloor. Unlike mining on land, “we don’t have those strategies for the deep sea,” said Dr. Orcutt. “There is currently no scientific evidence that we can restore the ecosystem after having damaged it.”
Some scientists question the need for Seaflor’s mining, saying that land mines could meet the growing demand for metals.
Proponents of deep water mining have affirmed that their environmental or carbon footprint would be narrower than traditional mining for those same minerals.
“To date, there has been no real recovery or minerals,” said Amy Gartman, an ocean researcher who directs the geological funds team of the United States Geological Service, referring to mining at commercial scale. “We are compulsing theoretical mining practices versus reais based on the field. If some real ruptures in one of these projects, we will have a better idea.”
Eric Lipton Contributed reports.