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Seabed mining is coming — bringing mineral riches and fears of epic extinctions

Plans are advancing to harvest precious ores from the ocean floor, but scientists say that companies have not tested them enough to avoid devastating damage.
  1. Olive Heffernan

    1. Olive Heffernan is a science journalist in Dublin.

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In 1972, a young ecologist named Hjalmar Thiel ventured to a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion–Clipperton Zone (CCZ). The sea floor there boasts one of the world’s largest untapped collections of rare-earth elements. Some 4,000 metres below the ocean surface, the abyssal ooze of the CCZ holds trillions of polymetallic nodules — potato-sized deposits loaded with copper, nickel, manganese and other precious ores.

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Nature 571, 465-468 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02242-y

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 16 August 2019: An earlier version of this story erred in saying that the ‘gummy squirrel’ sea cucumber Psychropotes longicauda is one of the rare deep-sea species found only in the CCZ.

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