Polychaete worms found in the Clarion-Clipperton area
Trustees of the Natural History Museum London
An area of the Pacific Ocean that needs to be carved up and mined for valuable minerals is home to more than 5,000 species that have never been found anywhere else on Earth.
Mining companies are eager to harvest manganese, nickel and copper nodules found at depths of over 4,000 meters in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an area roughly twice the size of India.
To get a better picture of the biodiversity threatened by the proposed mining, Muriel Rabone at the Natural History Museum in London and his colleagues decided to examine all available data from scientific expeditions on the species present there. They found evidence of 5,578 different species in the CCZ, 92% of which were entirely new to science. Only six of the new species found in the CCZ, including a sea cucumber, a nematode and a carnivorous sponge, have been observed in other areas.
A sea cucumber from the Clarion-Clipperton area
Trustees of the Natural History Museum London
Rabone, who has been involved in surveys in the area, says she has seen new species each time a sample has been brought to the surface. She believes the current data is the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of fully understanding the biodiversity of the CCZ and predicts that there are 6,000 to 8,000 more unknown species.
“It is unclear how mining will affect [the environment]“says Rabone. “I think it would be ill-advised to continue mining without adequate knowledge. It is particularly important to work hard to understand this region. Most of the species seem very rare.
Mining in the CCZ is regulated by the International Seabed Authority, an intergovernmental organization with 167 member states.
Pradeep Singh at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, Germany, reports that although no commercial mining has yet taken place in the CCZ, small-scale mining trials have been carried out. The region has been distributed and assigned to different companiesbut delays in develop regulations for deep sea mining delay the start of operations.
“There is a significant risk of exposure to liability, not to mention reputational damage, if a member state decides to go ahead and sponsor a mining app in the absence of regulation,” says Singh. “In effect, the sponsoring state would expose itself to indefinite liability.”
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