Deep sea mining is the process of scraping the sea bed deeper than 200m. Material is pumped to surface ships and taken to land for processing. Some of the material is separated on the ship and returned to the sea in vast clouds of sediment. This can travel over large areas, blanketing the sea bed and the animals living in the area.

Blanketing The Sea Bed And The Animals

Until now it has proven too costly to mine at these depths. Although trials have been conducted in various locations, no commercial operations were undertaken.

There is continued increase in the demand for minerals and metals that make up electric car batteries, wind turbines, solar panels and the like. Current land based mines are not likely to be able to keep up with this demand. We need to find new sources for our copper, cobalt, nickel and other metals. New mines on land are not welcomed by environmentalists and often take a long time to get approval against stern opposition. Companies and governments are looking at the sea floor.

Wildlife

Much of the deep sea remains unexplored. We currently do not know what harm we will do down there. We are finding hundreds of new species every year at these depths. The noise and destruction that comes with this type of mining has a wide impact on wildlife.

Many individuals and groups are so hell bent on getting away from oil that they can not see that they could be doing even more harm through their ill informed actions. They do not see the consequences of the choices they pursue.

Eco System Destruction

Dredging the sea bed for minerals will wreak irreparable damage to ancient and slow forming environments. Eco systems will be lost to us without us even knowing they even existed. Sucked up in a great syphon, churned up and spat out. All because apparently we just have to get away from oil and gas at all costs.

About The Author
Richard Johnson
Chewells Contributor

Richard is one of our main oil industry contributors. He likes fast cars, motor boats and... »

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Replies

• Qasim (Feb 1, 2024)
  Agree, very bad idea.
• Shayba (Jan 26, 2024)
  Bad idea
• Jinky (Jan 12, 2024)
  Better the devil you know... oil
• Angie (Jan 11, 2024)
  This must not happen.
• Mary (Jan 11, 2024)
  Greenpeace talk about the harm the oil industry does to the little bit of sea bed beneath an oil rig. Dredging will destroy thousands of square meters of sea bed. What do they say about that?
• Urian Udell (Jan 11, 2024)
  Further to my comment above, biomass it turns out is now considered a mistake by many scientists. The process pumps far more carbon in to the atmosphere than previously thought. Companies are chopping down natural forests to burn the trees for this subsidised industry that has been erroneously labelled carbon neutral and supported with subsidies by governments.
• JJ (Jan 10, 2024)
  Unlike other forms of metal extraction for the car batteries, this is unlikely to involve child or slave labour.
• Urian Udell (Jan 10, 2024)
  I think that we are going to make many mistakes like this in our pursuit of anything but oil. Then one day we will realise that some of these green dreams were actually a nightmare. Let's take it slow and easy away from oil. No rush steps. Let's get carbon capture stepped up and then we can take our foot off the green gas and make the right choices going forward. Otherwise we are going to make irreparable mistakes.

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