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I AM IN SHOCK. Reading this paper about deep-sea mining, I felt like I was reading warnings about environmental decline at the start of the industrial revolution. We are on the precipice of environmental impacts on a scale that should frighten you [THREAD] https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/07/2011914117#:~:text=To%20minimize%20environmental%20harm%2C%20mining,midwater%20ecosystems%20from%20seabed%20mining
Deep-sea mining operations are real and already starting. Two of the most pristine habitats on earth: Hydrothermal vents and the abyssal seafloor (manganese nodule fields) are major targets. Mining involves massive bulldozers crushing and sucking up these rocks...
The water around these habitats is some of the clearest water on Earth. It is so still the animals living there are unfathomably fragile. ONE mining operation will relase 22,000-50,000 CUBIC METERS OF SEDIMENT, BROKEN MINERALS, AND SEAWATER INTO THIS DEEP-SEA HABITAT...EVERY DAY
And one operation could run for THIRTY YEARS. Three-zero THIRTY. That's 500,000,000 cubic meters mining waste, sediment, dust, into the open ocean. And guess what: IT'S NOT GOING TO JUST STAY THERE....
This mining waste could remain suspended in the water FOR YEARS, and travel HUNDREDS OF KILOMETERS. And we have NO IDEA how animals living in the open ocean will be impacted. NONE. Worse still...
To directly quote the paper "There is currently no regulation or guidance on the depth or manner in which tailings can be discharged into the environment." THERE IS NO ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION...
I do not want to live to see the day human society learns the hard way that our lives are inextricably linked to the open ocean. We do not know how this waste could impact fisheries, reefs, or nations with high dependence on the ocean. And because we know almost nothing about...
...many of these ecosystems, we do not know how organisms will be impacted. These mines could do irrevocable harm to these regions. Manganese nodules—one target of mining— literally take MILLIONS OF YEARS to form. And there may be less-obvious impacts...
These scientists suggest the mining waste could impact animals in ways ranging from loss of smell to starvation. We NEED, now more than ever, a unified global front to conserve, monitor, and protect biodiversity on the high seas...
We NEED measures to protect and monitor the open ocean. Because what we don't know now we may never know if human impact is too rapid, and the consequences too severe. There is no rewinding time to find out what life was like before we changed it...
The UN has been negotiating a treaty to protect biodiversity on the high seas. Y'ALL: NOW MORE THAN EVER WE NEED ONE.
https://www.un.org/bbnj/
https://www.un.org/bbnj/
We NEED people watching out for these regions. Otherwise: what happens in the dark stays in the dark. 90% of the livable space on this planet is open ocean. This is our home. This is Earth. We have so much to left to learn. To discover. And we must protect it.
I'm so grateful to the authors (like @beroe) who put this paper out there. "Mining companies want access to the seabed beneath international waters, which contain more valuable minerals than all the continents combined"... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/20000-feet-under-the-sea/603040/
In this push for resources-harvested from the deep-sea, to ignore life in the open ocean, and our many links to it, is to ignore potentially major future peril. We must do more. And we must do it now. [end of thread] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02242-y
