Scientists calculate there are thousands of unidentified species living on the ocean floor between Hawaii and Mexico where deep-sea mining for critical minerals needed to build batteries is set to begin next year.
Some of the thousands of deep-sea specimens found in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.abc.net.au/news/thousands-new-species-in-pacific-ocean-mining-zone-batteries/102378078An area of sea floor between Hawaii and Mexico is rich in the critical minerals needed to build batteries.
Underwater surveys, the bulk of which have been done over the past decade, have brought back samples of speciesThe large majority of those have been recorded informally in databases or in journals, according to study lead author Muriel Rabone of the Natural History Museum London. "We think [the total number of species] is probably like 10,000-plus, but it's very difficult to say. I mean, some colleagues think it's like 20,000 – 50,000. Taxonomists who work in the region think it's in that kind of order."In what's been called a "sustainability paradox", we need to deal with climate change, but mining the minerals for clean energy comes with its own suite of environmental risks.
"When The Metals Company contacted me and told me what they were doing I was like 'Wow, this looks like a much better way of doing this than what we're doing in Indonesia at the moment'. So personally that was my motivation."nodules uses a machine that Dr Clarke describes as a "Dyson vacuum cleaner".mothership around 4,000m above, via a pipeline.They're then separated from the sediment and, if the project goes ahead, will be shipped onshore for processing.
As for the number of undescribed species, Dr Clarke said he was surprised it was so low, and that there"The global average [of undescribed species] is probably 90 per cent. I'm actually quite surprised that we've ... identified 10 per cent [of species in the CCZ] to be honest. It's developing an ecosystem assessment plan that will "inform the company's environmental management plan and provide vital information for the [International Seabed Authority] to consider", according to a CSIRO article published late last year."We are not a proponent for deep-sea mining activity, that is simply not our role," said Dr Jeffrey Dambacher, a senior researcher with CSIRO's Ecological and Environmental Risk Assessment team.
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