Deep Sea Mining
Image credit: The Metals Company
I was thrown overboard 78 years ago by my father, Jacques Cousteau, and with a small SCUBA tank on my back I began a life dedicated to the ocean - exploring, documenting, and working to protect the marine environment.
I am very concerned about the potentially destructive consequences of deep-sea mining of minerals. These minerals are found in three general forms:
Polymetallic nodules that contain manganese, nickel, cobalt, molybdenum and other rare earth elements.
Polymetallic sulphides that are found at hydrothermal vents. They contain in copper, lead, zinc, gold, barium and silver.
Crusts on sea mounts that contain cobalt, manganese, copper, nickel and platinum.
I am aware of the need for many of these minerals as we enter an age of solar and green energy where electronic systems, inducing batteries, are needed. I am also very aware of a very important fact that should direct all human activities. The global impacts of climate change, COVID, and the presence of plastics in every environment on earth demonstrate the FACT that everything is connected. This global connectivity means that whatever we do and wherever we do it can have consequences far beyond the immediate area of activity. In other words, mining would definitely have an impact on regions beyond the immediate area where it takes place.
It is certain that the bottom or substrates where the minerals were to be excavated would experience the destruction of life forms. We used to think the deep sea was dead – with no sunlight to promote photosynthesis and with pressures too great for most life forms. This has been proven to be totally false, with amazing ecosystems depending on food falling from above and from food chains thriving on chemical nutrients from hydrothermal vents. We have even discovered luxuriant coral reefs far below the penetration of sunlight in the deep sea. We now know how little we do know as new species are being discovered all the time. Each species and each ecosystem of the deep sea are connected to others and those connections extend off the bottom and up into the water column. So the biological web of life of the entire ocean has connections from the bottom to the surface where we benefit from so many organisms and processes.
Any dredging or excavation of the deep sea would involve the suspension of sediments or substrates on which the minerals were found. The removal and lifting of the minerals to the surface would then contaminate the water column, of thousands of feet, with those sediments and related materials. In general, the open sea is an environment of clean clear water and of course the life forms that live there are adapted to those conditions. The largest migration on the planet takes place every night in the open ocean where deep sea and mid-water organisms swim up through those clear, clean waters toward the surface where plant plankton have captured sunlight and made food that enriches the entire ocean ecosystem from top to bottom. Sediments and related chemicals would definitely harm and could even destroy this ecosystem.
At the surface, another series of impacts could occur as mineral processing with the addition of other potentially harmful chemicals would take place. The open sea is a formidable place to do anything and the processing of minerals in such a threatening environment has great potential for failure and harm.
Again, I remind all that everything is connected – ocean currents carry materials around the planet, organisms like whales and sea birds traverse the oceans from poles to tropics and back, upwelling currents bring deep waters to the surface, and the ocean and atmosphere are in a constant state of dynamic exchange. We humans benefit from all regions of the oceans thus connecting all ocean activities with us who do not even live in the ocean.
I am pleased that we have the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Seabed Authority, which give us a forum and framework for discussion and eventually appropriate regulation. But they are far from specifically defining and establishing rules, regulations and procedures for deep-sea mining. Before even testing of mining technologies takes place we need to have baseline studies to understand what actually exists at a site, then assessments of the potential consequences of deep-sea mining, and finally we need clear definitions of the requirements for each technology and for each resource to avoid environmental destruction.
This is becoming an urgent issue because the country of Nauru, where we produced a 1 – hr documentary in 1992 - "Nauru: The Island Planet", is proposing to get involved in mining of mineral rich nodules in the deep sea. I feel strongly that there needs to be a moratorium on any action to mine deep sea minerals until the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Seabed Authority have established the necessary legal frameworks and regulations to ensure protection of the deep sea and related ecosystems.
Warm regards,
Jean-Michel Cousteau
President, Ocean Futures Society
"Protect The Ocean And You Protect Yourself” — Jean-Michel Cousteau
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