A stretch of sea floor beginning 500 miles southeast of Hawaii is ground zero for an emerging deep sea mining industry — and the debate over how such extractions should be managed. ADVERTISING A stretch of sea floor beginning 500
A stretch of sea floor beginning 500 miles southeast of Hawaii is ground zero for an emerging deep sea mining industry — and the debate over how such extractions should be managed.
The Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, an area rich in mineral nodules extending nearly to the coast of Mexico, is being identified both as a region where extraction could be done right — and wrong.
The Center for Biological Diversity is suing the federal government on the claim that two exploratory permits — held by a subsidiary of the defense giant Lockheed Martin — in the Clipperton were renewed without proper environmental process. At the same time, researchers in a paper set to be published today in the journal Science are pointing to a network of provisional marine reserves in the area as a model that should be followed to balance mining and the environment as the push for undersea mineral exploitation moves head.
Nine protected areas between Hawaii and Mexico, created in 2012 as a stop-gap plan, are being evaluated for possible readoption by the International Seabed Authority as that body moves ahead this month creating the rules that will govern sea bed exploration and extraction, said Larry Crowder, a co-author of the paper and science director at the Center for Ocean Solutions.
“We want the ISA to consider networks similar to the Clarion-Clipperton before any new exploratory permits are given out and before any extraction takes place,” said researcher Lisa Wedding, lead author of the paper “Managing mining of the deep seabed,” in an interview.
Crowder said the approach protects both the environment and mining interests.
The deep sea robotic mining technology to remove the baseball-sized nodules is under development but is not yet ready. Crowder estimates mining southeast of Hawaii is a decade away, but mining of vents near New Guinea could begin in three years.
“This looks like something that is on the near horizon,” he said.
But Miyoko Sakashita, the oceans director and senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, said science is a long way from understanding the potential impacts of sea mining on the food web, threatened and endangered species and the ocean environment in general. In addition to nickel, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements, the fracture zone is host to sperm whales, spinner dolphins, sea turtles and a diversity of fish, coral and other species, she said.
There are 15 active permits for exploration by numerous countries in the Clarion-Clipperton. The ISA, which oversees mining in international waters, has extended 26 mining contracts across 600,000 square miles of ocean bed since 2001, according to the Center for Ocean Solutions.
As supplies of precious minerals decline on land and burgeoning technology and infrastructure demand new sources, the rush to exploit the seabed is premature, Sakashita said.
“It’s definitely too soon to start strip-mining the ocean floor, and proper research may show that it will never be a good idea,” Sakashita said. “Beyond the deep-ocean floor, this mining will create sediment plumes that will impact huge areas of the ocean.”
Craig Smith, a co-author of the paper and professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was part of a team of scientists who helped the ISA forge the deep sea’s first regional environmental management plan for the reserve areas in the Clarion-Clipperton in 2012.
Exploration claims in some parts of the sea are already so extensive they would interfere with setting up similar protected areas, he said.
“Deep-sea areas targeted by mining claims frequently harbor high biodiversity and fragile habitats,” Smith said. “They may have very slow rates of recovery from physical disturbance.”
