2019 was a landmark year for deep-sea mining. As the 25th anniversary of the International Seabed Authority, the pressure was on to advance the industry from promise to production. The surge in cobalt prices in 2018 led to renewed interest in new sources of this essential but often troubled resource but also yielded a precipitous […]
Read More
Last week saw the conclusion of the 25th Session of the International Seabed Authority. Though much progress was made, significant work still lies ahead to meet to self-imposed 2020 deadline for implementing the draft exploitation regulations. As always, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin has provided a comprehensive summary of the overall meeting as well as day-to-day […]
Read More
In 2001, on an expedition to hydrothermal vent fields in the Indian Ocean, researchers made a bizarre discovery. Clustered in small aggregations around the base of a black smoker was an unusual snail, seemingly clad in a suit of armor. Rather than a single, hard, calcareous structure, the snail’s operculum was covered in a series […]
Read More
In 1989, the largest attempt to model the impacts of a deep-sea mining operation was conducted across 1100 hectares of seafloor in the Peru Basin. The Disturbance and Recolonization Experiment (DISCOL) simulated polymetallic nodule extraction by dragging an 8-meter plough-harrow across a nodule field, creating 78 troughs that mimicked one likely consequence of dragging a […]
Read More
1. Outcomes from the LTC. In the next few weeks, the Legal and Technical Committee will release their draft regulations for mining polymetallic nodules in the Area. There will be an opportunity for comments and input from the deep-sea mining community prior to the LTC, Council, and General Assembly meetings this summer. 2. Patania II […]
Read More
2018 was a banner year for studies highlighting the importance of hydrothermal vents not just to the highly specialized communities that thrive around seafloor massive sulphides, but also to the surrounding benthic community. Vents provide nursery grounds for octopuses and deep-sea skates, but they also provide food for deep-sea and shallow water animals. At shallow-water […]
Read More
Social media offers a snapshot of the human networks surrounding a particular issue. It makes public the conversations and relationships that once were hidden behind closed doors and over private phone lines. And, when the conversation is well-organized, it assumes keywords that make it searchable as well. What you see below is the snapshot of […]
Read More
Rachel Pendergrass | 15 November 2018 Giant gyers of floating plastic have long been at the forefront of the public conversation around ocean pollution, but there has been a dearth of research on the deeper issue of plastic that reaches below the surface. Since the onset of mainstream plastic production begin in the 1940s and […]
Read More
Harriet Harden-Davies | 15 November 2018 “This is a chance to take a course correction while we still can…if we pull together, we can make it”. Rena Lee, president of the intergovernmental conference—fondly referred to as Madame Captain—set an ambitious, positive and suitably nautical tone to open historic negotiations on 4 September 2018 at the […]
Read More
If you were to ask a new stakeholder to name the most frustrating aspect of trying to understand the current state of deep-sea mining, they would likely begin with the arcane acronyms and idioms of The Authority (that’s the International Seabed Authority for those still struggling with the lingo). Not far behind would be the […]
Read More