Jessica Perelman and Jesse Grient for the DSM Observer The ocean’s midwaters comprise the largest habitat on Earth and contribute significant ecosystem services including nutrient supply to surface waters and carbon transport, as well as support pelagic fisheries. But midwaters (generally defined as the pelagic ocean below 200 meters depth) also remain one of the […]
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After nearly two decades of promise and two years of confusion and uncertainty, it looks like the curtain has finally closed on Solwara I and Nautilus Minerals. In the mid-2000’s, Nautilus Minerals made their mark as the first commercial venture to explore seafloor massive sulphides for potential mineral extraction. In the early 2010’s the company […]
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Throughout the animal kingdom, evolution has devised myriad ways for organisms to protect themselves from predators, competitors, and their environment. The advent of hard, biomineralized shells — shells formed from minerals extracted from the environment and reconstituted through biological — is a major development in the evolution of life on earth. Most biomineralization comes in […]
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Pradeep A. Singh Pradeep Singh is a research associate at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (Potsdam, Germany) and doctoral candidate at the University of Bremen (Bremen, Germany). The views expressed here are his own and are partly based on his ongoing doctoral research. The composition of members at the Legal and Technical Commission (LTC) […]
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In the late 1980s, as the first wave of deep-sea mining exploration approached a decade of hibernation, researchers launched an ambitious experiment to understand the long-term environmental impact of harvesting polymetallic nodules from the abyssal plain. The Disturbance and recolonization experiment in a manganese nodule area of the deep South Pacific (DISCOL) remains the most […]
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Maria Bolevich for DSM Observer The coronavirus pandemic is changing the world in dramatic and subtle ways, exacting a toll measured both in lost lives and economic uncertainty. Deep-sea mining has been in development for over 50 years and now, at the moment in which negotiations were poised to transition the industry from exploration to […]
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Matthew R. Francis for DSM Observer Nothing is less “deep sea” than an asteroid, yet parallels exist between these two domains, particularly when it comes to resource extraction. Asteroids are debris left over from the formation of the Solar System roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Due to our shared origin, Earth and asteroids contain the […]
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Last week DeepGreen announced that it had finalized the acquisition of Tonga Offshore Mining Limited, a subsidiary of the former Nautilus Minerals, from Deep Sea Mining Finance, who is overseeing Nautilus’s restructuring. Outside of Solwara I, TOML was one of Nautilus’s most valuable holdings, and though the acquisition price has not been revealed, it will […]
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African nations make up over a quarter of all member states that have ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The African Regional Working group consistently takes a leadership role in International Seabed Authority negotiations and they are among the leading voices pushing for a fair and equitable financial model. Yet for […]
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In the early days of exploration, the deep-sea was thought to be largely devoid of life, a vast empty plain of mud wrapped around the world, too deep for living organisms to survive. But the more humans explore, the more life we discover in increasingly unexpected places, from the boiling water of hydrothermal vents, to […]
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