PARIS: A vast area at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean earmarked for controversial deep sea mineral mining is home to thousands of species unknown to science and more complex than previously understood, according to several new studies.
Miners are eyeing an abyssal plain stretching between Hawaii and Mexico, known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), for the rock-like “nodules” scattered across the seafloor that contain minerals used in clean energy technologies like electric car batteries.
The lightless ocean deep was once considered a virtual underwater desert, but as mining interest has grown scientists have scoured the region exploring its biodiversity, with much of the data over the last decade coming from commercially-funded expeditions.
And the more they look the more they have found, from a giant sea cucumber dubbed the “gummy squirrel” and a shrimp with a set of elongated bristly legs, to the many different tiny worms, crustaceans and mollusks living in the mud.
That has intensified concerns about controversial proposals to mine the deep sea, with the International Seabed Authority on Friday agreeing a two-year roadmap for the adoption of deep sea mining regulations, despite conservationists’ calls for a moratorium.
Abyssal plains over three kilometres underwater cover more than half of the planet, but we still know surprisingly little about them.
They are the “last frontier”, said marine biologist Erik Simon-Lledo, who led research published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution that mapped the distribution of animals in the CCZ and found a more complex set of communities than previously thought.
“Every time we do a new dive we see something new,” said Simon-Lledo, of Britain’s National Oceanography Centre.
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