Opinion: Midwater ecosystems must be considered when evaluating environmental risks of deep-sea mining
Name
17455.full.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.05 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8472ad75dd621afe779896fa4b689b11
Author(s)
Drazen, Jeffrey C.
Smith, Craig R.
Gjerde, Kristina M.
Haddock, Steven H. D.
Carter, Glenn S.
Choy, C. Anela
Clark, Malcolm R.
Dutrieux, Pierre
Goetze, Erica
Hauton, Chris
Date Issued
July 2020
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Drazen, Jeffrey C. et al. "Opinion: Midwater ecosystems must be considered when evaluating environmental risks of deep-sea mining." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, 30 (July 2020): 17455-17460 © 2020 National Academy of Sciences
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Despite rapidly growing interest in deep-sea mineral exploitation, environmental research and management have focused on impacts to seafloor environments, paying little attention to pelagic ecosystems. Nonetheless, research indicates that seafloor mining will generate sediment plumes and noise at the seabed and in the water column that may have extensive ecological effects in deep midwaters (1), which can extend from an approximate depth of 200 meters to 5 kilometers. Deep midwater ecosystems represent more than 90% of the biosphere (2), contain fish biomass 100 times greater than the global annual fish catch (3), connect shallow and deep-sea ecosystems, and play key roles in carbon export (4), nutrient regeneration, and provisioning of harvestable fish stocks (5). These ecosystem services, as well as biodiversity, could be negatively affected by mining. Here we argue that deep-sea mining poses significant risks to midwater ecosystems and suggest how these risks could be evaluated more comprehensively to enable environmental resource managers and society at large to decide whether and how deep-sea mining should proceed.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2011914117
