<aside> 📎 Here you will find all you need to know about deep-sea mining, its impacts, its industry, and the growing coalition of governments, companies, financial institutions and more, that are calling for a moratorium, a pause or a ban on this destructive and controversial industry.
We collected all the sources, facts, numbers and scientific information at the bottom of this document. You can use the table of contents to navigate.
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🌊 The deep sea is the oldest and largest ecosystem on Earth. But only in recent decades have we been able to explore these dark and hidden depths, revealing an extraordinary diversity of habitats, from hydrothermal vents to seamounts, all bursting with unique, and often otherworldly, species.
🌎 The ocean is also our biggest ally against the climate crisis: it is our biggest carbon sink, absorbing more than 30% of our global greenhouse gases emissions. 93% of the excess heat generated by human activities via the greenhouse effect is absorbed by the ocean, thus mitigating the increase in temperature of the atmosphere.
🐋 The deep sea is home to a diversity of species that live in particularly fragile and unique ecosystems. Many of these species are found nowhere else on our planet. At present, the ecosystems and biodiversity of the deep sea remain largely unexplored and still very little understood: we have mapped the surface of the Moon better than we have mapped the bottom of our ocean, and 90% of species living in the deep sea have not been described by science.
🦑 Most of the deep sea diverse species and ecosystems have adapted to the unique conditions of the deep ocean and are extremely vulnerable to human disturbance. Because of their very slow growth rate, over thousands to millions of years, deep sea ecosystems and species may never recover from deep seabed mining, scientists show.
🪨 In recent years, a particular interest in deep-sea mining has grown worldwide. A handful of mining companies is now looking to access metals such as cobalt, copper, manganese or nickel, from the bottom of the ocean.
🚜 According to scientists, the impacts of deep-sea mining would be global, serious - and even irreversible: