New Gold Rush Taking Place in the Deep Sea
An Overview On Seabed Mining and Its Threat to Ocean Life
Remember the fever that arose when gold was found at Sutter’s Mill in California? It led to a surge in westward expansion, and the world coined the term forty-niners. A similar fever took place in the now-49th state with the Klondike strike of the late 1890s. These days, in the 21st century, a new gold rush is taking place in the deep sea.
Seabed mining is quickly becoming a new modern age fever. In part, because it combines the urgency of a technological race as well as the frenzy of a gold rush.
The latest attempt is being undertaken by the United Kingdom with the RSS James Cook expedition, which is funded by the Blue Mining program.
The UK team is exploring the concept of deep-sea mining because they estimate there are “trillions of pounds’ worth of gold” down below. Volcanic hot springs in the ocean’s depths have created stores of gold and other precious metals. Commercial extraction is projected to begin in the next five years.
The Guardian has reported British Prime Minister David Cameron making projections that deep-sea mining would bring in a worth of £40bn to the UK alone.
Other countries are following Britain’s lead. France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, China, and Russia have likewise purchased huge tracts of ocean floor to extract gold and other precious metals in deep-sea mining ventures.
At present, there are three main methods for deep-sea mining extraction. They are: the collection of metal deposits near hydrothermal vents, the piping up of broken seafloor crust, and the suction of precious metal clusters from the ocean floor.
According to NOAA, terrestrial resources for precious metals and minerals are quickly being depleted. The commercial need for deep-sea mining is therefore on the rise.
Commercial use of the oceans falls under various legal regimes, with the overriding one being that established by the United Nations, called the Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC), which NOAA describes on their website here.
Meanwhile, a Central Pacific region identified as the “Prime Fe-Mn Crust Zone (PCZ),” for example, has already been drawing increased economic interest worldwide because of its rich deposits of metals and minerals. Identifying other locations like the PCZ has become a harried race undertaken by nations around the globe. Indeed, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is the organization that oversees deep-sea mining activities in international waters, has already approved various contracts for deep-sea mining exploration.
Interestingly enough, there are large gatherings and events for deep-sea mining, such as the Fifth Annual Deep Sea Mining Summit that took place in the UK this past May 2016. And, in October 2016, the Second Annual Asia-Pacific Deep Sea Mining Summit will similarly take place. These large gatherings and events seek to bring together the high-stakes players in the industry so that they may form new partnerships and business ventures to take advantage of the growing interest in deep-sea mining.
Of course, there are drawbacks to deep-sea mining. Ocean life and habitats will be affected drastically. Sea creatures will no doubt be eliminated in the process. As yet undiscovered species will become endangered, even brought to the brink of extinction. Moreover, the noise would pollute the ocean environment and adversely affect the hearing of deep-sea denizens, like whales.
Greenpeace warns, “Because deep-sea species live in rarely disturbed environments and tend to be slow growing and late maturing…they are highly vulnerable to disturbance or even extinction.”
American oceanographer Sylvia Earle, who has been a National Geographic explorer-in-residence since 1998, echoes Greenpeace’s sentiments. She admonishes: “What are we sacrificing by looking at the deep sea with dollar signs on the few tangible materials that we know are there? We haven’t begun to truly explore the ocean before we have started aiming to exploit it.”
Species that live in the benthic regions and midnight zones (where seabed mining would take place) are highly sensitive to light and sound. Disrupting their environments with man-made light and sound would adversely affect these lifeforms’ feeding and mating habits that have evolved for thousands of years. Consequently, their life cycles would be compromised.
There are as yet undiscovered secrets of the the deep. A most recent example is that of rock-dwelling microbes that live on the seafloor.
Caltech researchers that first discovered these microbial seafloor denizens noted that they were important to the deep ocean ecosystem, for they prevent large volumes of methane gas from being released into the ocean environment and ultimately the atmosphere. As a result, these seafloor microbes help prevent a runaway greenhouse effect that would alter our climate further, particularly since methane is stronger than carbon dioxide in trapping heat on our planet. Without the biological process of these subseafloor rock-dwelling microbes, the escape rate of methane into our atmosphere would be higher. Deep sea mining would likely affect the habitats of these seafloor microbes and, in turn, wreak havoc on the ocean environment as well as our planet’s atmosphere.
And, while these deep-sea mining ventures claim to only mine at “extinct” hydrothermal vents, there is little regulation in this budding industry. Moreover, life still exists at these depths and near these “extinct” regions. Plus, the sounds and movements created by man-made structures will still impact the surrounding ecosystems as well as those flora and fauna that move. Many sponges and deep sea organisms, for instance, dissipate their young into the current, which makes their trajectories susceptible to the interference of man-made deep-sea mining apparatus.
Then, too, the deep ocean is a vital resource to discovering as yet untapped remedies for human maladies, such as cancer. Disrupting the benthic and seafloor ecosystems, where possible remedies could yet be found, would certainly be a great loss to medicine and science.
The National Cancer Institute has documented that about 65 percent of all cancer drugs come from marine life and plants. Amongst the most sought-after are sponges, bryozoans, and other sessile invertebrates, which all live on the ocean floor. Deep-sea mining poses a serious threat to these seafloor ecosystems that could hold the cure for human ailments.
Because these ecosystems are fragile and slow to recover, their destruction by human seabed activities would be a great loss. A spokesperson from the Nature Conservancy’s Global Marine Team had this to say: “An estimated 95 percent of the world’s oceans remain unexplored, so it’s possible that we might lose significant marine organisms without ever knowing they existed in the first place. A devastating loss of biodiversity could mean that fewer species will be around for future medicinal research and biomedical studies.”
So, why the rush to mine in the deep sea? At present, smartphones and today’s technology require metals that are being monopolized by China. And, the price of metals is constantly on the rise. The prospect of finding ores in the ocean’s depths will thereby alter the economic landscape — especially since the ocean’s ore content of gold, copper, nickel, manganese, cobalt, and rare earth metals are at least 10 times greater than what is currently on land. Retrieval of these ocean deposits is thus highly attractive to companies worldwide.
But scientists are alarmed because the oceans are already degraded by overfishing, industrial waste, plastic debris, human pollution, even the ravages of climate change. Mining the ocean depths would drastically affect the ecosystems there and even alter the ocean’s chemistry.
The World Bank has likewise joined the bandwagon cautioning against deep-sea mining. Issuing both reports and statements, the World Bank adamantly urges against deep-sea mining’s high risk of causing irreversible damage to the ecosystem.
Will McCallum of Greenpeace UK emphasizes: “The emerging threat of seabed mining is an urgent wake-up call for the need to protect the oceans. The deep ocean is not yet mapped or explored and so the potential loss of fauna and biospheres from mining is [disquieting]. What we desperately need is a global network of ocean sanctuaries.”
After all, life still exists in the deep sea regions. And they must be protected.
