Saving Seafood

Mining’s new frontier: Pacific nations caught in the rush for deep-sea riches

June 24, 2021 — Travel thousands of metres below the surface of the ocean, and you reach the seabed. Pitch black and quiet, it is largely unexplored, untouched, unknown.

What is known is extraordinary. The landscape at the bottom of the sea is as varied as the earth surface: 4,000m (13,000ft) down, abyssal plains stretch for miles like deserts; there are trenches large enough to swallow the Earth’s largest mountains; venting chimneys rise in towers like underwater cities; seamounts climb thousands of metres. Hot thermal vents – believed by some to be the places where all life on Earth started – gush highly acidic water at temperatures of up to 400C, drawing in an array of creatures.

So little is known about what happens this far under the sea that in the 25 years following the discovery of the hydrothermal vents, an average of two new vent species are discovered every month. They include the yeti crab, a ghostly white crustacean with silky-blonde bristles on its claws that give it a resemblance to the Abominable snowman. Others discovered in the last 20 years include the beaked whale and the Greenland shark, which dives to around 1,200m and has a lifespan of close to 400 years, making it one of the world’s longest-living organisms.

“Every time you go down into the deep, you see something incredible and often new,” says Diva Amon, a deep sea biologist and fellow at the Natural History Museum in London who has undertaken 15 deep sea expeditions.

“There’s a bone-eating worm called Osedax, which lives on the bones of dead whales in the deep … Another special one was … an anemone whose tentacles were 8ft long.”

Read the full story at The Guardian

The deep sea could hold the key to a renewable future. Is it worth the costs?

June 18, 2020 — For humanity to kick its fossil fuel habit, we’re going to need a lot more wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries. Building all of that green energy infrastructure will likely require billions of tons of metals and minerals, raising the question of where we’re going to get them. One surprising possible answer? The bottom of the sea, where key green energy metals, including nickel, cobalt, and rare earth minerals, can be found in abundance.

But as companies inch closer to actually mining the ocean’s depths, a growing chorus of scientists and environmental advocates are pushing back, warning that such activity could cause irreversible harm to ecosystems we’ve barely begun to understand. Last month, the NGO MiningWatch Canada, along with the Ocean Foundation’s Deep Sea Mining Campaign, published a report calling for a moratorium on regulations that would permit companies to begin mining the Pacific seafloor until the risks are better understood and until all alternatives have been “fully explored and applied.” The International Seabed Authority — a U.N. body with a mandate to oversee resource extraction on the ocean floor — is scheduled to issue draft regulations later this year.

Mining regulations on land “are tailored to our understanding of how the ecosystem works,” said MiningWatch Canada’s Catherine Coumans, who served on the editorial team for the report, which summarizes the findings of more than 250 peer-reviewed studies. In the deep ocean, Coumans said, “we’re creating regulations for an ecosystem that we don’t understand.”

Read the full story at Grist

U.N. Makes a Bold Move to Protect Marine Life on the High Seas

September 10, 2018 — The bluefin tuna is one of the biggest, fastest fishes in the ocean. Its streamlined body can sprint at up to 45 miles per hour in pursuit of its prey. Reaching some 500 pounds, this giant once dominated the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. But humans have hunted the bluefin for thousands of years. In the last century stocks have been decimated. The Pacific population is now just 2.6 percent of its original size.

Many other species that live in the high seas—the two thirds of Earth’s oceans that lie beyond national waters—are suffering a similar fate. There is no universal law protecting biodiversity. “This is a massive gap, a literal hole in the middle of the ocean,” says Lance Morgan, president of the Marine Conservation Institute, a U.S. nonprofit focused on ocean protection.

That is about to change. The United Nations is pushing to protect marine life on the high seas with a legally binding treaty by 2020. Delegates from 193 nations are working on it at U.N. headquarters in New York City, through September 17. Yet tension is already in the air. Russia, for example, is vocalizing its opposition to global governance of international waters, a position that could delay or even scuttle the process. And certain nations, from Africa and South America in particular, have made it clear any benefits reaped from international waters should be shared with countries worldwide.

The high seas are home to some of the planet’s most charismatic creatures, such as dolphins, sharks, whales and turtles. They contain valuable fisheries and support ecosystems found nowhere else. Yet until last year there was not a single, large marine protected area in international waters. Today, just 1 percent percent of the high seas is off-limits to industry.

Mounting pressure for protection is stemming in part from a new wave of exploitation about to hit the high seas. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has granted licenses to 29 contractors representing 19 countries—from Japan and the U.K. to Kiribati—to explore for minerals at ecologically important sites. These include the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone—a region of seamounts in the central Pacific—and the Lost City, a hydrothermal field in the Atlantic scientists say could hold clues to the evolution of life on Earth. Meanwhile chemical manufacturers are scouring the deep sea for organisms whose genomes could lead to new cosmetics, foods or pharmaceuticals.

Read the full story at Scientific American