Jonathan Amos | 4 September 2018 Maggie Georgieva is turning a jar of preservative around in her hands. “This is it,” she says. “This is ‘The Hoff’ – the famous yeti crab with a hairy chest,” referring to the object suspended in alcohol. Most of us would be hard pressed to name a recently discovered […]
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Matt McGrath | 4 September 2018 The first significant steps towards legally protecting the high seas are to take place at the UN in New York. These waters, defined as the open ocean far from coastlines, are threatened by deep-sea mining, over-fishing and the patenting of marine genetic resources. Over the next two years, government […]
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Jon Letman | 29 August 2018 Closer than the moon, yet less well-mapped than Mars, the Earth’s seafloor is home to otherworldly creatures befitting a science fiction movie. Their remote habitat has caught the attention of humans, who are lining up to begin mining the bottom of the deep blue sea. As technology and infrastructure […]
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Kalyan Ray | 29 August 2018 The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a Rs 1,600-crore programme to harness ocean resources and keep an eye on coastal pollution. Under the Rs 1,623 crore Ocean Services, Technology, Observations, Resources Modelling and Science (O-SMART) programmme the Ministry of Earth Sciences would undertake 16 projects in the next two […]
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Catherine Groenestein and Christina Persico | 28 August 2018 The South Taranaki Bight seabed mining decision was overturned because its method of environmental management was illegal, the High Court ruled. In August last year, Trans Tasman Resources was granted consent to mine up to 50 million tonnes of ironsand from a 66sqkm area off the South Taranaki Bight for 35 years by […]
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Jana Marais | 24 August 2018 DeepGreen Metals, which plans to extract copper, cobalt, zinc and manganese from the seabed in the Pacific Ocean, says it is making steady progress on its plan to become the world’s first zero-waste miner. It has invested $62m since 2011 on exploration and the development of its processing technology, […]
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Carolyn Gramling | 21 August 2018 Whales may have made their mark on the seafloor in a part of the Pacific Ocean designated for future deep-sea mining. Thousands of grooves found carved into the seabed could be the first evidence that large marine mammals visit this little-explored region, researchers report August 22 in Royal Society Open Science. […]
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Todd Woody | 25 July 2018 It felt like Groundhog Day at the International Seabed Authority last week. When delegates to the United Nations-chartered organization met for their annual meeting here, complex issues that have dogged the writing of regulations to govern the mining of the deep sea for valuable minerals once again cast a shadow on […]
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Cecilia Jamasmie | 11 July 2018 The guidelines, published this month in the journal Science Advances and the result of a three-year international effort, should help identify areas of particular environmental importance where no mining should occur. “Areas near active hydrothermal vents on mid-ocean ridges have been approved for future exploration for ore deposits, but the mining has […]
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Janet Davison at CBC | 5 August 2018 They don’t look like much at first, the black, potato-shaped blobs that lie scattered on the seabed, deep beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. But as is so often the case, looks can be deceiving. These nodules, and the metals that lie within them, are at […]
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