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Featured photo provided by the Utah Geological Survey.
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Polymetallic nodules stay out of the mud with a little help from benthic burrowers.
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One of the small but persistent puzzles of the deep abyssal plain is the question of how polymetallic nodules manage to stay above the sediment. Large nodules form over millions of years as minerals precipitate out of seawater, and yet, despite a light dusting of sediment continuously raining down from the surface, they somehow remain above the seafloor. Nodules are rarely found completely buried by sediment. Though the sedimentation rate in the abyssal regions where they form is exceptionally low, even the sparsest depositions will accumulate into thick layers over the multi-million-year lifespan of a polymetallic nodule.
So why do we find nodules exposed at the surface and not tens of centimeters beneath the seafloor?
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From the Editor: Process, Progress, and Podcasts
This is the first issue of the Deep-sea Mining Observer for 2020 and the last before the 26th Session of the International Seabed Authority commences in mid-February. With significant progress made on the draft mining code, the financial model, and the seaborne technology needed to mine the deep in 2019, 2020 promises to be landmark year for deep-sea mining.
In this issue, we took a deep dive into the Open-Ended Informal Working Group that will continue to hammer out the details of a equitable payment system in their third meeting. Maria Bolevich interviews Dr, Malcolm Clark about the current state of progress and the process within the Legal and Technical Commission. We investigate a new study that on the formation and distribution of polymetallic nodules. And we take a look at another high seas movement and the lessons we can draw about how civil society interprets high seas law.
ISA Secretary General Michael Lodge appeared on the Many Voices, One World Podcast, which you can listen to here: The Deep Ocean, Uncovering Earth’s Last Frontier. |
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Finding Balance among Stakeholders: An Interview with Dr. Malcolm Clark
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Featured Image: Dr. Clark in conversation with delegates and observers. Photo courtesy IISD/ENB.
Dr. Malcolm R. Clark is a principal scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in Wellington, New Zealand, he began his career in the 1980s. “My career started with fisheries stock assessment, and evolved through studying the diversity of deep-sea life and how it is impacted by human activities, to trying to translate science into effective management,” says Clark. “As such, it is always a challenging and changing job, but hugely satisfying when it helps result in balancing exploitation with environmental conservation.”
Dr. Clark is one of the authors of the book Biological Sampling in the Deep Sea, which attempts to standardize sampling approaches and methods across scientific programs and countries. “A lot of data were being collected by countries and researchers, but in ways they couldn’t be combined in larger-scale analyses. The old saying that ‘the total is greater than the sum of its parts’ is true when we can pool research over larger spatial and temporal scales, and start to understand, not just describe, how marine systems are structured and function.”
Dr. Clark is a member of the Legal and Technical Commission, an organ of the International Seabed Authority and is the lead author of the study “Environmental impact assessment (EIA) for deep sea mining”. In an interview with the Deep-sea Mining Observer, he answered a number of questions about the EIA process, as well as its challenges and shortcomings.
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Negotiations continue over the Financial Model
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Image from the third meeting of the Open-Ended Informal Working Group briefing note.
Though it seems closer than ever, deep-sea mining has always been driven in part by an abundance of optimism. In his 1974 treatise on The Control of the Sea-Bed, Evan Luard estimated that the pace of exploration and technological development for polymetallic nodule extraction was such that “it will therefore probably only take a few years before these minerals are exploited commercially.” We are now approaching the fifth decade of commercial deep-sea mining being less than ten years away.
When the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas was conceived, seafloor resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction were deemed the Common Heritage of Mankind–they belonged not to a single claimant, but to everyone. This Common Heritage principle has shaped the discussion surrounding deep-sea mining in the Area, and is especially critical to developing a payment regime. Permitted mining contractors can profit from exploitation of seafloor resources, but part of that profit must go towards toward supporting the International Seabed Authority as well as be distributed among member states, regardless of whether those states actively engage in deep-sea mining. The Open-Ended Informal Working Group is focused on the development of this payment regime and has been a central feature over the last several years of ISA negotiations.
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Resources
Financial Model Documents
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Deep-sea Mining News in Brief
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Human claims on ocean resources and space have increased rapidly in the last three decades. Jouffray et al. (2020)
(The Conversation) Humans are leaving a heavy footprint on the Earth, but when did we become the main driver of change in the planet’s ecosystems? Many scientists point to the 1950s, when all kinds of socioeconomic trends began accelerating. Since then, the world population has tripled.
Image courtesy The Verge.
(The Verge) The solar power and electric vehicles we need to stop the climate crisis pose a different threat to people and the environment: a boom in mining. Moving away from fossil fuels depends on tech like batteries and solar panels that can provide alternative forms of energy.
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The unseen benefits of the Twilight Zone
In a new report released last week, researchers at WHOI attempted to quantify the carbon capacity of the mesopelagic--the ocean zone which exists just beneath the point where sunlight no longer reaches. They calculated that 2 to 6 billion tons of carbon are sequestered by creatures in the Twilight Zone, annually. Without that carbon capacity, they estimated that global carbon dioxide levels could be as much as 200 parts per million higher than they are today.
“We knew that the ocean’s twilight zone played an important role in climate, but we are uncertain about how much carbon it is sequestering, or trapping, annually,” says Porter Hoaglang, “This massive migration of tiny creatures is happening all over the world, helping to remove an enormous amount of carbon from the atmosphere.” |
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Seasteading as an illuminating look at interpretation of law on the high seas
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Elwartowski and Summergirl’s seastead. Photo courtesy Ocean Builders.
There is a vast chasm between the reality of maritime law, formed by generations of treaties negotiated at the highest levels of government in the often inscrutably complex language of international diplomacy, and the common belief within civil society that areas beyond national jurisdiction are essentially lawless. Nowhere is this gulf more apparent than within the Seasteading movement – a loose aggregation of individuals and groups intent on developing floating communities on the High Seas.
In early 2018, Seasteading made international headlines when two intrepid adventurers decided to put theory into practice by deploying a floating platform 12 miles off the coast of Thailand. Chad Elwartowski and his partner Nadia Summergirl teamed up with Ocean Builders to develop and test a habitable module that could lay the groundwork for future at-sea communities.
Things did not go quite as planned.
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