![]() Image courtesy of Craig Smith and Diva Amon, ABYSSLINE Project. Relicanthus sp.-a new species from a new order of Cnidaria collected at 4,100 meters in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) that lives on sponge stalks attached to nodules. The most common categories of creatures in the CCZ are arthropods, worms, members of the spider family and echinoderms, which include spiny invertebrates such as sea urchins and sponges. ![]() ![]() There are also glass sponges, some of which look like vases. One of the deep-sea animals discovered was nicknamed the “gummy squirrel”, because of its huge tail and jelly-like appearance, he said. “One of the characteristics of the abyssal plane is the lack of food, but life has a way of persisting down there,” he said. The seabed, Glover said, is an “amazing place” where, despite the extreme cold and dark, life thrives. The scientists watch operations by video link direct from the boat, as new species are gathered by remote operating vehicles in the darkness below. It insists all data gathered is open-access in peer-reviewed literature. The expedition, funded through the Natural Environment Research Council and others, is backed by UK Seabed Resources (UKSR), a deep-sea mining company that operates the UK’s exploration area.The NHM has previously worked with UKSR and Deep Green, now the Metals Company, another mining firm, as a contractor in the area to provide baseline biodiversity data. To study and collect specimens from the ocean floor, biologists have joined research cruises in the Pacific that send remote-controlled vehicles to traverse the seabed 4,000 to 6,000 metres below.ĭr Adrian Glover, a deep-sea biologist at the NHM and senior author of the study,who has taken part in several expeditions to the CCZ, most recently on the UK’s Smartex expedition, described it as an “incredible privilege”. “We share this planet with all this amazing biodiversity and we have a responsibility to understand it and protect it,” said Muriel Rabone, the paper’s lead author, a deep-sea ecologist at the Natural History Museum (NHM). Published in the journal Current Biology, it includes 5,578 different species, of which an estimated 88% to 92% had never before been seen. To better understand the impact of mining this fragile ecosystem and its newly discovered inhabitants, an international team of scientists has built the first “CCZ checklist” by compiling all the records from expeditions to the region. In July the International Seabed Authority, a quasi-UN body based in Jamaica that regulates deep-sea mining, will begin accepting exploitation applications from these companies. The companies, backed by countries including the UK, US and China, want to exploit minerals including cobalt, manganese and nickel, in part to sell to the alternative energy sector. Its FAQ section focuses mainly on carbon emissions, but does address deep-sea ecosystems: “The clean energy transition will require trade-offs.Most of the animals identified by researchers exploring the zone are new to science, and almost all are unique to the region: only six, including a carnivorous sponge and a sea cucumber, have been seen elsewhere.Ĭontracts for mining exploration in the CCZ have been granted to 17 deep-sea mining contractors in an area covering 745,000 sq miles. A “machine” sucks up the first layer of sediment, separates the nodules from the substrate, then releases the unwanted matter. It looks and sounds a lot like vacuuming. The Metals Company offers a rough outline of its deep-sea mining techniques. Then again, you can also pan for gold, but profits will suffer relative to heavy extraction methods. The UN claims that usually, they occur beneath a few centimeters of silt. They’re apparently not that hard to get at, generally speaking. This single deposit contains more nickel, manganese, and cobalt than all terrestrial resources combined,” the ISA stated in 2017.Ĭompanies from the U.S., U.K., and China populate the list of contractors seeking to extract the nodules from a 1.9-million-sq-km area. “The most studied area of commercial interest is the CCZ. The CCZ holds an unusual concentration of them, and that’s not lost on the ISA. Manganese nodules from the South Pacific. ![]()
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