A New Mining Ship Sucks Metals Off The Seafloor. Is That A Good Idea? | Big Business
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- Опубликовано: 19 янв 2023
- A Canadian mining startup says metal-rich rocks on the seafloor can help power the switch away from fossil fuels. Critics say mining them could cause ecological destruction, but no one knows exactly what the impact will be yet.
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A New Mining Ship Sucks Metals Off The Seafloor. Is That A Good Idea? | Big Business 
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This honestly sounds like it would just obliterate the ecosystems on the seabed. And I guarantee one of the reasons corporations would want to pursue this is because of how little we'll be able to see the damage because it's so far away and so deep.
This is exactly it. Sea mining exploration is why you dont see any real discoveries made today, the mining companies dont release their finding accurately and keep other explorers away from their claims.
Exactly. And he has already invested tons of money. He is not going to stop for sure
Big black pile of death. How terrible we are in our selfish pursuit of the next thing to benefit humans at the expense of all other species.
Your comment is borne out of ignorance, no offense but the sea bed at these depths are frankly, just dead. There is very little anything down there, oh sure there's the odd species here and there but the abyssal plains are worse than deserts. No light, no oxygen , the only carbon source is the steady rain of debris from the life way above in the light zone , and that's only about 100 meters at most...it's not like sucking up those nodules would be destroying some critical part of our ecosystem, we are totally and completely removed from that ecosystem, such that it is...
@@ashleyobrien4937 Speak for yourself, the irony of you calling others ignorant.
When has a company ever been honest when publishing results of research that will damage their own company?
"Trust the science and get Covid-19 vaccinated and boosted"... Keep the same energy.
well then, we depend on fossil fuels, who deny leaks and spills, yet this is a normal occurrence in that industry... investigating options that may or may not be less damaging is still a worthwhile endeavour.
@@curlyhairdudeify still proving you got a broke brain, eh??
@@curlyhairdudeify I'm not trusting companies to not lie and misrepresent the results. The scientific community as a whole has far less reason to do that. When a scientist/researcher lies about results and knowingly pushes incorrect information, they get slammed by everyone else in the field. They lose all credibility, and everything else they have published will be heavily scrutinized. Corporations will not self regulate like that.
It will always be a problem. Usually nobody is willing to pay the research except for the company themselves.
Dredging the ocean for car batteries is pure "green revolution".
Dredging the sea floor of its delicate sea life yah what could go wrong.
If I learned anything from dr Seuss, it’s that machines that look like they’re meant to cut down truffula trees probably aren’t good
we need a deep sea Lorax
thats the leviathan
Just because it seems physically far from us doesn’t mean it doesn’t have effects on us. The ocean as a whole ecosystem needs to be intact to work correctly. If you mine all the nutrients from the bottom you damage everything else
Edit: it’s amazing to see all the debate in the comments
They of course have to go for large quantities not small
just another place for corporations to pillage and deplete sources from. We want to traverse space but we can't even take care of our planet. We don't yet understand the depths of the ocean.... the hubris of man
You willing to give up your Cell Phone, Tablets and Laptops?
@@oldmanfromscenetwentyfour8164 yes
@@oldmanfromscenetwentyfour8164 electronics isn't mined in the ocean. Cobalt is used for most electronics, which is in land
Sea scraping with trawler nets has been banned in many places because they realised taking everything from the sea floor when catching fish destroys the habitat. This seems like a techno version of the nets
Agree, if real green movement, Every companies that get resources from earth except for food ofc and existing mine and petrol, should be disabled too. Unless passed and approved by the bill.
There is no habitat in the sea floor, not like in the shallow
@@JokoMoto yes there is they showed it in the video you didn't watch
do you think we care in china?
if something is moving, eat it !
They need to put artificial habitats for the fish
I work at an aquarium that has a deep sea exhibit and those animals are collected in places we didn’t think had life.. they are for sure obliterating a lot of valuable and beautiful life. Rip isopods and deep sea octopuses. It’s just as bad as any mining anywhere.
They going to accidentally run into a block of vibranium and get attacked by people of Atlantis. Plot so bizarre you could make a movie out of it.
They acxidentaly open a rift to a dimension where godzilla like creatures live and then build giant robots to.. oh wait nvm
Most (to all) of these "well managed mines" are only "well managed" until the ore runs out. Then they move their assets and go bankrupt, leaving the mess their hard rock mining created to be the responsibility of the communities left in the region. The locale is also left with a sudden unemployment problem that has its own set of spinoff problems. It's infuriating to see complex problems reduced to such "good vs. evil" sides.
Such is the story of Nauru.
@@Trgn YES! I had to look it up to remember it. Micro scale example of resource exploitation and destruction (micro = complete destruction.) I think deep ocean mining could be good in some ways but there will be consequences. I won't pave over the history of resource extraction though. Thanks for the reminder of Nauru.
"oh no! the rocks and mud we sucked up and then dropped back in the ocean are POLLUTING THE OCEAN!!!! " They're literally taking the stuff there and putting the mud back in... Leave it to idiots to want to find the evil in any process...
This happens all the time in florida with the aluminum mines
I'm fairly certain this video is part of a pump and dump scam
For every one company or government that's being "transparent" to the public about having been doing this, there are probably at least 5 who are secretly doing the same.
Yeah, maybe china already secretly copy this
Government and "transparent".... Oh man, I wonder if you are Covid-19 vaccinated and boosted.
@@sn5301679 China emits more CO2 then the USA and EU combined, we are the entertainment for China.
In this Business, no one i realy transparent
@@sn5301679 It's not a secret. COMRA is a Chinese firm with a mining claim and European and East Asian countries make up the rest of the allocated space. No need to be a conspiracy theorist about it when it's readily available to lookup.
Y'all gonna regret waking up Godzilla
I would love it if you could do a follow up video about this.
Let's be real, once these companies figure out the balance on the cost, because that's what it really comes down to, it will be done in commercial scale, any environmental damage would be collateral damage and no one will be able to stop them, I am thankful that they at least seems to be environmentally friendly as possible but whether they can commit to that in a long run, that's where the real fight is, nations need to form international laws to heavily regular deep sea mining.
That’s real deep. That’s an absolute fact. We all can assume that’s what’s in the near future. Even if it’s govern we all know that money will talk.
The second it's financially viable, environmental concern is out the fuckin window.
oh, it cost WAY more to collect off the botom of the sea, but there's no SJW protestors out in the ocean, they do what they want out there!!! cant do a picket or road block to stop them like a pipeline!!
They are just using it as political leverage. They will do nothing to ease the pollution we put into our environment. It will only get worse, as usual.
This is such a depressing and accurate comment.
Crazy part is it took millions of years to make and it’s only gonna take decades for us to use it all and be gone 🌚
Typical humans. No concern for the long term until it’s too late.
They literally using fossil as fuel
Humans are so wonderful 🥰
@Nobottee said someone who joined YT 2 months ago
Chill dude acting smart ass in internet wouldn't get you medal
@Robert Marshall we can enjoy all of those things while still taking care of the environment dummy
Bro imaging just living your best live on the sea floor and all of a sudden being sucked by a giant vacuum cleaner
Why do we not filter out the sedement further and use that? instead of dumping back? And will there be a "must examine" a nodule that is bigger than usual? in case there is a preserved enitre fossil?
I love how the CEO called the sea floor a "void zone" wich it is not. The ocean floor isn't all the same depth. Consult a 5th grade text book it will explain the depth zones in the ocean and what to expect to live there. There is even a full color picture diagram for those who are to slow.
Compared to every other part of the world it is a void zone. The deep sea floor has some of the lowest biodiversity in the world and the biodiversity there does not interact with the rest of the world. Compared to overland mining, deep sea mining is a good thing. Of course though the biodiversity of creatures that no one will every see or interact with in their lives is much less important than powering modern society and keeping people warm.
@@Tristan-ne1vzit’s sad that you’re so confident about being so wrong
Call it a renaming of the "abyssal zone", which it is.
@@yanivproselkov4555 it was named that before we knew anything about it. Theres a lot of life down there. Crabs, eels, fish, giant tube worms, octopuses, and more. Plus, as stated in this video, there are still new life forms we've seen but haven't categorized yet and clearly other things to be discovered. void, abyss...thers too much life down there for such words
It's called the abyssal zone because of the lack of light, not to do with amount of life.
Just like the other layers of the ocean, It was never about how much life was there.
Sunlight
Twilight
Midnight
Abyssal
This video reminds me of the famous quote - "When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money."
"This video reminds me of the famous quote - "When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.""
Those material are needed for the ecologic transition and human progress.
We need to learn our way of life is simply toxic.
Everyone goes on about how wondrous space is and all the marvels of space. So far it's dead out there. People's pissing untold amounts of money to try and get to Mars, for what?
Let's destroy the rarest thing we know in the universe, to get to a dead, rocky, barron planet.
Where tf is there any sense in all this. How can we possibly begin to imagine encroaching upon new territories and planets when we can't manage what we already have and operate with.
We live on a planet that is nearly half the life of the universe.
This planet is the gem, the wonder, the miracle.
Even just to consider all the species of life and ecosystems that exist on this earth now, let alone what is in the fossil record and all that has come and gone. How can we be so naive?
We are so blind. So blind to look anywhere else but here for the magic that existence offers.
All and any resources should be poured into preserving this planet and finding a sustainable, symbiotic way of life.
It will not get better than the place we already call home !!!
We have one chance, one opportunity to recognise this. If we continue on the path we are on, we will forsake everything that has come and gone.
This reminded me of grandson's song, blood // water.
Yea but the excessive amount that we extract from earth isn’t needed to move forward everything requires balance..
@@pinkchilde3657 "the excessive amount that we extract from earth isn’t needed " how would you know that?
I remember as a child, my father's employer proposed extracting the nodules from the ocean floor. After years of lobbying policy makers, they were told no. So it is surprising seeing that a different company has been successful. I guess they were talking to the wrong country.
just pay more tax to the policy maker
@@jackiehadi6410 Or replace them
The was Glomar Challenger, and the nodule mining was a CIA front to go up to Alaska and grab a Russian nuke off the sea floor.
Today the people who run the world and the capital owners are in bed with each other so it is much easier to get approval for this sort of thing.
Nowhere do they mention the idea of reducing our energy needs 😬
Wdym? ohhh you mean the energy you used to create this comment? go live your primitive life
they mentioned in the video these metals are used to make batteries wind turbines and solar panels.
Companies will say it's not problem, because humans don't live out in the sea to witness the devastation. Public perception is the problem for these companies, not ecological degradation. They would do to the oceans, what they did to the land.
Exactly, literally the same thing they did to big forests out of villages and cities' way as well. "out of sight, out of mind". But then the algae blooms come and the foodchain gets disrupted and suddenly "we don't know why there are no fishes in the sea anymore, its not like we killed the small things that held onto those rocks that were their food source or anything".
@@turkizno In fact it will be end of mankind. Ocean is main sourse of oxygen, if we mess with it horribly - welcome to same mass grave as dynos.
On soft sediment sea bottoms extruding rocks are often the only places for marine life that need hard surfaces to live on.
The animals that live in the sediment can live in the mud ,but if the machine sucks upp the top layers also these may be at risk of death / damage also.
This technique feels like a variant of bottom trolling ,witch also destroy and disturb the stationary sea bed when the bottom part of the net scapes the bottom.
maybe they can make some habitant like they do for fish in shallow waters....cement block with bunch of holes in it xD
You must chain yourself to a nodule, which will prove your expertise.
sounds like a skill issue
It's definitely bottom trolling. It's insane to think you are doing absolutely no harm in literally vacuuming the stillest most untouched part of the earth.
@@jlfilip Understand what you mean, but just FYI, using cement is a bad idea as the resources required to make it are a limited supply that we are in the process of axhuasting as well.
u have to make autonomous harvesters
every once in a while someone picks up the cargo and replaces the battery, dont exchange all that water and sediment keep it on the sea floor
I worry greatly about this. We know of ways to restore land ecosystems. Its been well studied. Abandoned land mines can go through ecological succession within a few human generations with enough support. But deep sea ocean life that have been untouched for millions of years... will likely take millions of years to heal.
They don't care about other life in this planet, only their greed
Well don't. You sound ridiculous and highly ignorant of ecology. There is virtually zero legitimate ecological issue. It is truly revolutionary.
First thing that came to mind when I saw this video come up in my recommendations. Electric Cars are ironically bad for the environment
if it is untouched for millions of years what life benefits from these rocks ? nothing els the would be long gone
You are right, but unfortunately the floor is daily disturbed by trawlers, mining, deep sea fishing etc.
This needs to stop, they shouldn't even be thinking about starting this.
How do they make sure not to suck up small sea creatures as well when mining the rocks? It seems like it would be hard to avoid as there are a lot of small slow moving sea creatures that might not be able to get out of the way.
they covered this point already at 9:00 to 9:10
@@angelshot9264 that’s not talking about sucking up the animals.
@@rachelcookie321 “and likely kill any who hold onto them”- here’s your quote implying that they have no current solution for animals that stick around and get sucked in.
@@rachelcookie321 that was his point.
@@angelshot9264 they’re saying they would die because there would be no rocks left, not because they got sucked in.
I remembered this prototype being on MIT mechanical engineering department website front page, talking about how this ecological and sustainable.
And I was gonna apply research engineer position for this thing.
Well atleast i don't have blood on my hands of all the deep sea creatures!
Let's Mine! What a nice iniciative by Metals Company!
Yeah let’s vacuum up the bottom of the ocean. Nothing can go wrong with that.
So instead of recycling laptops, we're sucking up the ocean. Makes sense.
As though both were mutually exclusive. A huge amount of the worlds "e-waste" is, in fact, recycled.
cool and you really care about fish 2.5 miles in the pacific sea that will never change your life in any way if they somehow die
but yeah do both, recycle and suck up the ocean, there's nothing bad about it
@@sigataros I'm sorry did you watch the video at all? This will gradually start as small damage in the environment and slowly turn into collateral irreversible damage. also I don't think you have any Idea of how any ecosystem works.... especially ocean ecosystems, This will indeed leave a mark on many fish populations, (meaning fish will be on higher demand, the price of fish will also rise) another point would be that we still haven't explored these vast interesting new species. i know you don't really care about that. but maybe you should start thinking about the future for your grandchildren.
@@eyespliced a huge amount meaning less than 15%, look it up.
What the op meant (which I sense you know already, but just being pedantic) is that recycling costs alot more to obtain the materials again but literally in front of you, than spending billions on machines and wrecking the oceans for new material.
We need to reduce waste rather than destroying more habitat
I feel like it's too early to call how damaging it is, but I also feel like it would be too late when we find out how damaging it is.
That one boat at 2:04 lol
Your still going to have to chemically split the metals from the rocks, which requires a crushing and washing process on land. Which will result in waste water and waste product, which will result in tailings dams for the different sediment to settle. We don’t have tailings ….. yes but the ports will where the rocks are sent to be processed.
Exactly! And he LIED about it!
Agree
Exactly. The dude straight up lied in the video, he has no ethics. This is just another program to speed up our doom.
Yeah, no tailings because they aren't smelting. Yet.
pretty sure they are pure metal and not rocks with metal in them. They just need to be melted down then.
10:54 - I think the best point was made near the end - there’s no guarantee (and probably will be the case) that they will still do as much mining in the Amazon as they always did
There is so little od that mineral and most of the habitats will disappear like focus one getting mining in space like wtf it is so possible now and it will pay off tremendously cause so much minerals can be used then to make bigger mining ships. People are cowatds
Exactly. This isn’t an answer to anything.
The ocean covers 71% of the planet, the other 29% is land. The US is only 1.9% of that land. So the entire US is only .5% of the surface of the planet. The ocean floor is 150x the size of the US. They are driving around mining, so realistically what percentage are they going to affect? A TINY amount.
But when someone says 'plunder' when talking about commercial mining, you know that it is an ideological issue, and no mining solution would be okay to them. Even though they use the products made from mining.
Is That A Good Idea? how do you stop this lol...good show 1st time i seen this and enjoyed the program
Let’s be honest. The only reason they have released this is because Insider has 7 million subscribers and it’s good for business. Some wealthy person who doesn’t care about the environmental impact is going to see Dollar signs and invest in this project. It’s just free marketing for them.
Agreed. That's media influence for you.
I disagree. I think they released it for the coverage. I mean they talked about the positive AND negative impacts this could do to the world. I'd rather everyone see this (including myself and the rich) vs them NOT show the video and the rich just continue to do this anyway without any of us knowing what's going on.
Anyone who has the money and interest to invest in this was privately contacted through a network.
That being said, yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
Plastic bottles kills more fishes
I’m pretty sure billionaires don’t t agree with each other’s investments or morals l.
This can't be good. The sea floor is home to countless animals. We are all connected, this is the butterfly effect. Greed will continue to destroy the world
At 4KM depth there is not a lot of life....
@@tjeukefeijo You live down there. Or do you just go for summer vacations. Because people like you always know what's not there until you find out what is there..
@@khanoelpschon1203 maybe read some reports and watch some documentaries about the clarion Clipperton zone (CCZ)
@@tjeukefeijo Maybe you realize that only 5% of the ocean has been explored. So that means you or no one else don't really know a thing about it.. FACTS
@@khanoelpschon1203 i'm talking about the CCZ, not all the world's oceans
People forget the actual scale of the areas. It's like saying that the road across the Sahara desert influence the whole desert
Green commies
exactly
Like the logging companies 100-200 years ago that destroyed their own habitats, I'm now witnessing the destruction of Earth's deep sea zones, woah, this is Epic, I'm literally seeing history being made, incredible!
Destruction of mud and rocks. Wow, scary. Oh, and some worms. No fish at that depth so vids of sharks, etc was made up filler clips shit at the surface.
I literally remember reading in a middle school book about how there were manganese nodules in the ocean and if someone could find a way to harvest them they'd be very wealthy from it. Here we are, hopefully this doesn't destroy the ecosystem while doing it.
National Geographic did a story about it years ago. So it turns out that the US government was using that story as cover to go looking for a lost Soviet submarine.
Let's be honest. We all know it's going to destroy the ecosystem. I would trust a word the mining corporation says.
Theyre sucking up a bunch of creatures for sure, as if the ocean needed anymore damage
It absolutely will.
Why ru jeluous bruh where ur electronic products come from
Ur electronic products dont produced magically
"We can stop the Deforestation of our planet" He really thinks we are idiots lol.
"We will stop habitat lost by destroying more habitat"
What's wrong with that sentence?
@@thesauce1682 how do you suggest we mine metals then? That's the whole point is this is the best option so far.
@mang0donald874 it's not stopping Deforestation. He was saying that so people think it's good for the planet when really he is just raping the ocean while mining on land still happens
@kimberlybrouwers7906 on land mining won't stop because you start mining in the sea. He is just destroying a habitat we have no information and don't know the damage we are causing because it's barely been studied.
him saying no one would pay for the research if he didn't do it is so shady
he damn well knows he has MASSIVE benefit from a research paper like this that also happens to positively impact his company!
there won't be any *big* downsides in that research, or well the balance of good and evil will always lean massively towards good so this business gets legalised and he earns billions.
If NASA was properly funded we'd be mining asteroids already.
4 mins ago and i see sea life being vaccumed off the floor, this is gonna be a banger vid
My company grows manganese oxides, which capture heavy metals, from mine drainage water. Please leave the sea floor alone and mine our coal waste. We've got plenty of that lying around and it's a lot more accessible. (Side note: harvesting mn nodules was DODs cover story for raising the Kursk. (edited: the k-129, not the Kursk. Ty).
IDK whats better. Slave labor in the congo or *possibly* hurting the seabed which is barely inhabited.
They say about Kursk that it was an accidental collision of a US submarine with Kursk during an exercise, after which the US submarine fired a torpedo at Kursk and sank it. If you look at the photographs of the Kursk section, you can see a large damage from the side with the edges of the hull indented inward. Also, after this accident, the United States gave a big loan to Russia and there was some political rapprochement between the countries.
There is still a strange situation after the - In 1989-1998, Mir deep-sea manned submersibles carried out seven expeditions to the area of the Komsomolets nuclear submarine sinking in the Norwegian Sea, during which measuring and recording equipment were installed and torpedo tubes containing torpedoes with nuclear warheads were sealed in order to ensure radiation safety. During the last expedition in 1998, it was discovered that there were no recording stations, only neatly undocked anchors remained from them. It is likely that the instruments were removed or cut off by other submersibles or uninhabited remote-controlled robots.
DOD did not raise the kursk, the russians did. You are confusing it with another sub.
@andersandersen6295 the Trieste? And thank you for catching that!! I'll leave it for now since you were kind enough to catch that and respond. Appreciate it :)
@@ecoislands1540 You are welcome, but not quite Trieste either😀As far as i remember Trieste found the titanic and was tasked with finding the US sub Scorpion with Trieste II. Hughes Glomar Explorer found the Soviet sub K-129 and raised only a small part of it due to equipment failure. but yeah the cover story of that mission was finding manganese nodules.
Is the energy really renewable if we're using rocks that exist in limited supply in hard to reach places?
Greatly balanced video showing all sides of the story! Very well done!
I vote asteroid mining, but it's still a ways away. We definitely need to invest more into studying abyssal fauna and mining's impact on other cycles, ideally not involving a conflict of interest. Even if it does lower the cost of minerals to make batteries for electric vehicles, it is doubtful that it will affect mining in the DRC, the total production will just increase. What needs to be done is enforcing laws around ethical labor and environmental impacts of mining, which is hard to do in developing war-torn countries. In the end, reduce, reuse, and recycle are the most simple solutions.
Yea and I vote nuclear fusion, too bad these technologies are not and may never be viable in a practical environment
I agree, but it's only a ways away because we haven't put enough effort into making it a reality. It took less than ten years to put a man on the moon from a pretty much standing start. If we really wanted to, we could put robotic mining machines into the asteroid belt pretty damn fast, considering we have all the needed technology and just need to integrate it into a solution to the problem.
I have to agree with you about space mining.
LOL I can't believe this has so many likes. The impracticality and inefficiency of space mining is so ludicrous it could only make sense if we ever figure out how to build a space elevator, for example. It's basically just science fiction at this point. "a ways away" is an understatement of massive proportions.
@@johnjingleheimersmith9259 The understatement was an intentional figure of speech
The smallest problem is the mining itself. The actual problem is the actual processing. Anyone that has ever worked at a mineral / metal leaching plant (eg Nickel west, Minara resources, MRL etc) know the impact. The amount of tailings that accures is massive, and there is no method to take all the acid, amonia, lime and other toxins out of it. So ultimately you'll end up with millions of tons of toxic tailings dams which will eventually leak out, rendering the surrounds useless for agriculture or human life.
As long as Glencore is open-cut mining hundreds of thousands of tonnes of copper and nickel ore, this small scale operation of deep sea mining has no chance of competing.
That seems like an argument in favor of deep sea mining. The mineral concentrations are much higher, so there will be fewer tailings.
your not wrong process definitely creates issues. however when companys give up a mine. and close it off ground water/rain water that fills it up mixing with the metals causes many toxic pond/lakes in the pits. just look at the many where we have people stationed at many pits in USA RN to protect wildlife from drinking from them as it's turned them into sulfuric acid pits. the deep sea mining in the way they currently doing it eliminates that process and potential eco backlash. it's not perfect but it's definitly less damaging than land mining
This is not surface mining with lots of waste rock. This is manganese bacterial deposition. Very pure.
@@Rokmononov deep sea mining IS MORE environmentally friendly as it leaves virtually no toxic tailings, but it will most likely not be as financially viable as these massive surface operations that are left practically un-checked in comparison. It is much cheaper to use heavy machinery on land than using heavy machinery 3000m under the sea.
I work with mines in Nevada. Mining only exist where it is economically viable in concert with the local laws.
The only way to improve your mining efforts is through higher grades of minerals or through an improvement of technology that is substantially less expensive than prior methods.
Nothing about this is less expensive than current mining methods. The 3000 ton of material they showed in that cargo hull is probably an hour of mining at a large land based mine and they still have to get that ore shipped back to shore for processing (what is that going to cost in fuel?).
It appears they're putting at least 50x the expense of a land based mine to produce a similar result. And the environmental impact does not seem nearly as well contained as in a land based operation (sidenote much of the pollution is going to happen when the ore gets back to shore not in the harvesting).
In my country, removing rocks from the seafloor to use on the coast lines was a thing they did in the past, and now, they found out: oops, we need big rocks collections on the seafloor for the animals to have a habitat to live in. I can imagine something similar is taking place here, even though the we are talking about smaller stones scattered all over the seafloor.
I did a review for a conservation ecology class contrasting deep sea mining to terrestrial mining. This piece is fairly spot on. All the metals you get from DSM tend to be conflict minerals. Which is one of the main drivers of interest in it. Lots of ethical dilemmas here. At least they cannot mine the same spot twice. The ecosystems will take a generation to recover, but they won’t get hit again. Idk. The big barrier is the energy cost of extraction.
That was my thoughts on it too. Hopefully, we can treat it right and make sure we harvest smartly letting the eco system around the mining area repopulate the mined area before moving on.
I understand what you’re trying to say, but for all we know it may take much more than a generation for these post mining ecosystems to recover since we now nothing about them. Some may never even recover and I can’t think of anything more dangerous than playing with something that you know nothing of. It’s pretty sad :(
When has mining ever been done ethically and responsibly. It seems naive to think this will be any different.
They say nodules take millions of years to form and are essential to some life forms.
If you remove them it will wipe out habitats for millions of years, not 1 generation.
they can try to space mining but have not done it yet lol
Why does this give me Dune vibes where creatures and the environment are somehow linked together depending on each other to survive
thats not dune thats just real life lil bro 💀💀
Ummm we are, everything is connected.. It's like if bees go extinct, we die LITERALLY. If we damage the oceans do much, we die LITERALLY.. Everything is connected and we will suffer greatly for the damaging we are doing.. Actually your kids will suffer more so but the damage will be felt in the end 50 - 100 years... Human life will be lost in massive amounts which is maybe what we actually need
Asteroid Mining solves both issues.
But you have to buy out and shut down the land based mining companies, and outlaw it.
And push governments to Asteroid mining instead.
Mass funding will be needed to seed the startups.
Etc.
*I work with subsea robotics, am on shift right now, let me just tell you majority of the seabed is lifeless as it's no features for anything to grow, thats why dumping old ships and things on seabed promotes growth, fish love it, plants grow etc, as soon as we install a pipeline or subsea manifolds things move in and life starts.*
this is the most obvious corporate copied and pasted thing
@Buisness Insider the sediment outlet should be larger diameter and reduced flow, also it should be stationary on the sea floor to have a smaller mud cloud
as a marine biologist that study about benthic ecosystem, this is breaking my hard. people concerned about the big animal they can see but they are so many more smaller animal under the substrate (macro and meiofauna) like worms. They are all important.
genuinely, why is it important to care about them. please I'm not being snarky but if most people in the entire world do not know about these creatures, literally undiscovered organisms, and they cause no difference whether we know about it or not, why is it now suddenly important to care about it
@@aaronwang565 As they are not discovered, they might have capabilities we don't know yet that can help in many fields, like treating diseases for example. With that mentality we would never have discovered penicillin.
Ya then don't use ur Mobile ur electronic products plz leve a life of Amish
@@dkbros1592 go back to your mental ward k thx
@@aaronwang565 As the saying goes, " we will not value something until it is lost." The science should come first, but its always forgotten.
I understand that there are issues with this whole idea, but the engineering is still pretty cool ngl.
Engineering? Really bro? It's like an oil ship mixed with a sea vacuum, it's hardly as advanced as an actual oil rig itself. I'll start being impressed when their underwater Roomba can successfully dislodge sealife from all the habitat it's sucking up.
@@vice.nor.virtue Your Roomba is a great idea. My understanding is that the supply and discharge pipe is constantly breaking because it's miles long.
We need to do what you suggest and make the mining crawler battery powered. And just send the ore up by inflating a balloon over the ore bin so it simply rises to the surface.
So was the atomic bomb engineering pretty cool but the effects were catastrophic
That CEO guy sounds like a cartoon villain.
We really about to F up the only place which can kick start life again if we mess up the land
You gonna love the those videos from Insider. Every side of the coin is covered without taking a side and making conclusions.
@@TheCrepusculum As one if the interview said, paraphrasing, it order to know if is bad we need to start mining and monitor the results for 10 years. Good or bad, the world won't stop spinning. We live is complex system of economic rules, we can't stop progressing, we can't live in peace with each other or the nature. There is one big issue and that's the existence of the human kind.
@@TheCrepusculum Everyone have different view, I won't interfere with yours, please don't with mine. I too prefer minimal footprint existence, I too have phone from 2015 and computer from 2011. I buy second hand clothes. Does that mean I'm not part of a problem? No, I contribute. Maybe I don't directly need a new battery powered device, but maybe those who sell me the food, the water or the electricity may need such. Because my existence, and other's existence the need for problem causing items will exist. The human race won't reach some higher level of renaissance, civilizations have failed too many times. We can't work as one entity, greed and destruction will always exist. Human race will continue to cause environmental problems until it seek to exist. But I agree with you, if we can minimize the issues caused, then we could meet our demands with less of foot print.
@@TheCrepusculum Very rude, thanks. Get lost (politely).
Reminds me of the spice harvester from dune
I CALL DIBS ON BEING THE KWISATZ HADERACH
@@michaeljeanrichard4 you got my vote
@@dakken74 I seem to recall that the Kwisatz Haderach was a religious position that was cosmologically bestowed. There was no democratic process. Which makes it somewhat problematic. Even the Pope is elected. By a small franchise of Cardinals...but voted nonetheless.
I got a feeling this will do more harm than good. And by the time this company realizes this, it's going to be too late.
as someone who’s community was evacuated in Oklahoma and considered a ecological disaster from mining this sounds awesome
Why is the world so focused on developing lithium based batteries that destroy our planet rather than researching and developing new types of batteries that are more powerful and use common resources?
because the other battery types dont work and are just hype
So that only the super rich can afford to do it and therefore they controls the tech and stay rich
Fixation on wealth or other motives, that's just there type of mindset.
Lithium batteries are not destroying our planet, I guess you mean destroys particular animal/human habitats. There isn't anything better than lithium batteries at present that is safe and commercially viable would be the answer to your question. Commercially being the key word, takes ages to get new products into the mainstream.
I recommend you look into graphene aluminum ion batteries. Two very abundant resources.
The guy in 11:00 is right, even if it has minimal damage, we now have both land mining "and" deep sea mining.
🤦
Bro that’s y yo ass is eating farm raised fish that taste like shit cause there isn’t enough in the wild to supply the demand doing this entire operation will only increase this for other varieties of fish and not only the homes of Sea creatures on the floor
And we will have it whether they shut this down or not. What usually happens: a corporation from a wealthy western nation tries to gather a crucial resource while minimizing damage to the ecosystem. Activists and politicians decide that's not good enough and shut it down. So all of those technologies and concepts go to China or Russia or some other country that has no oversight, and then we pay them for the resources that they gather cheaply with no thought to the damage to the ecosystem.
This is one of those situations where they don't fully understand like dumping old tires in the ocean thinking they will substitute coral reefs and instead they completely destroy any remaining habitat that existed.
What a hilariously sad failure the tire reef is. Literally created a dead zone
Okay, question. If removing the nodules removes the habitat of the deep sea life, is it possible to just seed new “habitable zones” by dropping unusable quarry stones (or something) behind harvested zones and rotate fields between seasons in order to allow chances for the lifeforms to reproduce or migrate to these new fields? Not a complete or good solution but a solution.
I don't see how that wouldn't work
@@edwardwonghaupepelutivrusk9270 there’s always going to be some unforeseen consequence, just wanted to see what some other people thought and if there are better options than what I’m suggesting.
There would be some difference, but it would be effective at atleast 90%@@Nemesis0513
In the Baja California peninsula an American company wanted to use one of these technique's to extract compounds for fertilizer porpoises out of the sea coast, so locals and authorities didn't want this and that company went to an international trial to get the permit(don't know if it got it), yeah water gets murky because of this process.
I think it was either Phosphor or Nitrate. I thought they managed to stop that too?
Just need to go down town LA and they can recover human fertilizer from off the sidewalks!
@@TheJon2442 HUMAN FERTILIZER IS WORTHLESS !
This is exactly how reporting is supposed to be done. Present both sides without bias. Extremely well done.
Add a personal opinion piece and it's a solid format.
We need candid insights in this day and age.
Everyone has their own biases.
Let it be known it's an opinion, after both sides have been presented.
Land mining has already put to extiction all the sensitive specieses, deep sea mining will also affect the sensitive species, but is more mobile and less stationary, leading to faster recovery (hopefully)
Awesome video! loved the presentation of both sides to allow a viewer to created an informed viewpoint.
Watching that poor child working in that cobalt mine is heartbreaking.
Then dont watch them, easy.
@@gg.youlubeatube6249 what a dumb thing to say
I disagree. He's working and earning money. Thank goodness for the company being there, otherwise they'd probably all be dead
@@IAmTheGlovenor Mr ...... wtf are you disagreeing on?💀😃 is it not heartbreaking to see kids do shit like this when they should be in school
@@lgt_jne Glovenor, Mr. Glovenor. And nope. See my original comment on why. Toodles 👋
This is going to happen no matter what. Even if Greenpeace stops western mining companies from mining the seafloor, the Chinese will keep doing it ignoring all problems it may cause to the environment.
I think their population is smart enough to understand that now. No one is going to get any better with the world climate at risk. Simple organisms sustain various types of life.
It's not their population....
@@mustafabhadsorawala9608
100% the OP understood the assignment. The Chinese government does not give a crap.
@@mustafabhadsorawala9608 The CCP is smart enough to understand but they don't give a sh*t about long term consequences, only the vast amount of wealth they will gain in the short term. The average "Peasant", as people refer to themselves in China, is only taught what the CCP mandates and allows. Irreversible Environmental damage caused by government backed enterprises is not something they teach the average Chinese Citizen.
people who destroy the earth for profit should not be allowed to live on this planet
Great visuals in this video.
Glomar Challenger in the 70s was the first to try vacuums to pick up manganese nodules. There is a huge bed off Nicaragua. I thought it mined there.
And the Glomar Explorer was used to recover part of the Russian military sub that sank after imploding. These ships were not used for research of the oceans, but by the CIA to get secrets from other nations...
Great idea. Sterilize the sea floor, remove precious substrate and make it uninhabitable for all aquatic life.
Makes land ming look good. At least we’re not combing over massive areas of land.
Bruh, they have a whole entire planet they can swim or walk over to
@@IAmTheGlovenor those animals are only in that one spot they need very specific pressure and water temperatures and stuff like that
@@IAmTheGlovenor Let's keep doing that until we have nothing left...
@@Lauraisabelgonzalezart I guess you didn't pay attention to the map where it showed specific area to do the mining 🙄
The second he went with the "would you like us to dig up the rainforest instead??" argument I knew this was shady af.
would you rather society just go back to living in caves waiting for the next non man made disaster to wipe us out?
WOULD you like us to dig up the rainforest instead? The minerals have to come from somewhere.
Pick your poison.
@@dadbear5316 Google "false dichotomy"
I didn't realise they weren't an activist against it and assumed it was a comparison between the two
@@dadbear5316 exactly. The resources have to come from somewhere. but there is a lot of people who can't see beyond their nose.
Ever noticed how Lidl Sardines packed in tins and sold in UK are full of eggs - and yet have a sustainable sign printed on them?!! That’s the contradiction we’re already living in.
i love how they say they "hope to pursue recycling later on" ha so did the plastics industry
Ahh yes the old "Out of sight out of mind" trick. It works well when talking about pollution.
"We do not inherit land from our ancestors. we borrow it from our children" - Old Native Verb
Glad to see theirs more like me who questions everything
I think the environmental impacts are overstated. It’s not the complete obliteration of all sea life. It’s the limited effects that localized mining operations have on the sea life. It’s the equivalent of driving down a road and scooping up everything on it. Yeah you’re going to get some animals, but the majority of them still live in the forests. The density of life that far below the surface is incredibly low. There may be new species found but we’re talking one or two organisms per 300 square feet ish. I mean, they brought up 3000 metric tons of product and only encountered what looked like 5 creatures. I’m sure that was just b-roll and they must have encountered more but my point still stands. It has a massive return possibility with minimal to no damages to the ecosystem. The sediment that was kicked up from mining is, I think, not a big deal. Fish and other aquatic organisms are evolved to filter and. Breathe water. A human equivalent would be breathing in smoke. Not good but not the worst either. It’s not going to affect marine life to the extent that people are saying.
Idk most of this is my own opinions. Y’all are free to think whatever. I ain’t gonna stop you.
10:06 IMO , based on the LITTLE amount of info I have , it seems that we would have a much better result from just regulating land mining better , than to tear up the ocean floor. From what I’ve been hearing and learning about the ocean is that the less we touch the ocean , the better.
Yes Mr.Nimbus would wreck our shit if we touched the ocean.
Is their any data that would prove mining is bad on areas the are valuable to humans but not in a place like a TON OF FISH people consumes directly or indirecly exist that's possibly shown in this video?
Except green terrorists oppose even the strictest of mining operations. You can't win either way.
@@Gotalanes789 He controls the police!!
right but land mining companies won't, because do you wish to pay 2-5 grand for your phone? Thought not
The sediment return problem can be easilly solved by adding a sister vessel to temporarily collect and process the sediment for proper return. I'm pretty sure any engineer can build a dehydration chamber and compacter to desoil and split the waste into two streams, one for water and one for solids that can be safely released at different depths without causing much impact. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned anything about it. I bet they even have it figured out already.
I think sediment clouds are less disruptive than the upper horizon of of the sea floor that gets destroyed and the biome with it. All this work and bs just to avoid using nuclear fission. Fkin activists 🤢
Some people care more about getting the end result then then what method they used diesel powered harvester or slave labor same result but different paths
I think the amount of solids you would be collecting is too much to store and transport to say land or another part of the ocean or whatever.
yeah.. like any company cares.. they will destroy everything for money
You’re taking about a vessel that is all expense and generates no revenue with no authority forcing the company to do so. That means you have to rely on the company’s good will to do such a thing. Call me a pessimist, but I highly doubt they would do what you’re suggesting, even if they could.
"Should we be going to dig up our rain forests to get these metals, or should we be going to this abyssal zone to pick up rocks"
The latter sounds better, but the thing is, that it's not "this or that", it's both, they're not just going to stop digging up rain forests.
The oceanographers opposing this most likely drink bud light exclusively over the last couple weeks
Even if this company is as responsible as they say they are, if it’s this lucrative I’m certain the other companies to follow will not be so careful
And there in lays the problem, the hidden danger of trying something new to get ahold of stuff we need. Once someone does something and it makes them a butt load of money other companies try to sweep in and take advantage of the pickings, sadly though most of those companies even though they weigh in everything that may or may not happen, and the advantages vs the disadvantages, they tend to lean on what makes them the most money vs how to make that money without damaging the environment, after all we know the oil companies are willing to do anything to keep drilling money because they know they make millions or billions of dollars off of it, whether they leak oil into the oceans killing loads of animals and polluting the ocean, or whether they trample over native American's holy grounds and pollute their only water source matters not to them, in the end profit is their only concern, so really if they lose money treading carefully so to not upset or destroy the local environment then they will choose to just run head on, push forward and make as much money as possible then when they take everything leaving nothing behind and no more money to make, then they will leave and make someone else clean up their mess. And our government is so corrupt they will take money to look the other way just like they always have and always will, it's a sad sad world we live in and our planet is paying the price for our progress whether it wants to or not.
Have them use that nice machine to clean up the toxic waste drums rusting off the east coast o the US
I agree I don’t like this idea, this screams danger. Removing minerals from under water habitats will decimate life
Question is, what's more damaging. Overland mining or deep sea mining?
@@jean3030 The former has much more observable effects whereas the latter can be deliberated upon as much as you wish and still come up with 'probably not as bad' due to how isolated the ecosystem's small biodiversity is from practically everything else (at least in the location mentioned in the video), there is still a negative effect that might actually wipe out or destabilise entire species, but in terms of weighing the pros and cons, nothing there is 'important enough' to care about (to humanity as a whole); it will definitely still be a 'f*ck around and find out' moment.
“Already wealthy people looking for the next gold rush”..
I’m so scared for the future
So sediment pollution, rockless habitats and direct wildlife casualties. Maybe the sediment can be pressed and baked into new seed nodules.
They should be using robotics instead of vacuuming to keep sediment agitation to a minimum. May be slower but a lot less damaging.
Every mine constitutes lost of habitat for species. In fact every plot of land used by humans with exception to national park leads to habitat loss. This appears to be the cleanest form of mining i've ever seen.
Cleanest? There moving sediment
It will change the ocean's ecosystem that will not be restored. It will affect fishing communities and larger fish and organisms.
Far and away the cleanest. Research Indonesian mining and see how destructive that is to the rainforest
@@sugar2943 dust settles
When the CEO say it's either this or we have to dig up the rainforests, you know they have some problems they are trying to help you overlook.
I mean, alternatively we can ditch the "green" energy activists are so worried about promoting, because then there won't be the demand for it 🤷♂️
strip mining is nothing new the idea is it would be better on an empty sea floor than something like a rainforest
The empty sea floor...? The sea floor is not empty. Far from it. @@rootvalley2
Exactly, its a false choice and at the end of the day, we will end up doing both.
Dead planet above and below. It's like a new meaning to "as above so below".
Okay? Just dump random ass rocks down there for the ecosystem, and take the useful ones for harvesting up on land.
This took me 20 seconds to figure out how life down in the ocean wouldn't be impacted.
The rocks will not "Power electric cars". They will simply be a means to make energy portable. The energy will be produced by some other means, mostly fossil fuels, in another place with all of the attendant inefficiencies of tranferance involved.
So we are going to pollute the oceans from above and below is what I am hearing. I can’t imagine an area on the sea floor the size of the continental U.S is a desert. We know so little about the deep oceans. But a desert seems hard to believe.
Go explore it and tell us about the wealth of ecology at those depths on the ocean floor. I'm sure it's worth preserving.
Since when did dirt and sand become pollutants?
@@ernestsmith9474 When it gets in your eyes or mouth and makes basic navigation or breathing difficult, kinda like walking in a sandstorm
People don't seem to understand the scale of our oceans. They lose their minds over such a small area.
i do love the irony of how the main consumers driving this mining (for wind, electric cars, solar etc) are the ones protesting the mining.
I love the irony of the commenters who complain about anything bad done to the environment, yet here they are on their phone and using electricity