Canadian technology can be used to mines deep seas, but alarm is increasing at risks
Coalingwood, in deep water near Onts, a huge yellow machine with metal claws properly snatches small rock balls from the lake, kicking sediment with each grabbing.
Although it looks like a claw game in an arcade, for impossible metals, it is a display of the technique that the company planned to use more than 10,000 kilometers away, which is to mine mineral-rich nodules from the Pacific Ocean Cabed. But for some scientists, it is a sign of push for more deep sea mining, which they warn that may have disastrous consequences for the world’s oceans.
Writing in magazine Nature On WednesdayA group of environmental scientists from all over the world, including Canada, are calling for a total ban on deep sea mining, saying that underwater ecosystems are very important for the Earth’s habituality to gamble for gambling for narrow and uncertain awards. ”
They say that this type of mining will harass the seabed, Stored carbon release There (more than shallow areas) and thus contribute to climate change. The letter also notes how little is known about the life of the deep sea. It says that the risk of exploitation in these resources is very high.
One of the authors of the letter, Johan Rockstrom, Johan Rockstrom told CBC News, “There is a very strong case on all forms of high sea exploitation.” This means anything outside the National Courts, which expands 200 knots from the coast.
Rockstrom says that the oceans account for 90 percent of the excess heat stuck on the Earth due to greenhouse gases.
The leading ocean and a group of climatic scientists, including Canadian, are calling for a ban on deep sea mining, such as US President Donald Trump increasingly proceeds to undergrain mining approval.
He told Germany, “The Ocean, eventually, (is) the system that buffer and determines the stability of the entire planet,” he told Germany, where she is the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research.
But impossible metal, which is located in San Jose, California, and a technology division in Ontario, claims that it will be able to create a balance between protecting the environment and obtaining nodules, which are rich in important minerals, on the ocean floors.
CEO Oliver Ganskera says, its autonomous underwater robot, Eureka 2, will be careful.
“We use AI to identify life,” he said, performing the unit in Collingwood. “If we see life, we put a quarantine, virtual circle around it, and the vehicle fly to the top and does not affect that life.”
Gunsekara says that using robot weapons means that scraping or excavation in the seabed than less sediment disruption.
He says that a future that is more electrified, “all these metals are needed, and the greatest source of the ocean is” – and that their company can get them rapidly for the lowest cost and the least environmental impact.
It is waiting for approval To remove American samoa In the Pacific Ocean. Although there are currently no commercial deep sea mining operations, US President Donald Trump has a demand for recent executive order Make it easy Within the US Waters – directing agencies to streamlined permissions and invest in such technology. The administration expects to open a new source of important minerals to reduce foreign dependence. The nodules include cobalt, nickel and manganese – useful in batteries and other electronics.
But the order is also Using an old law to justify mining and exploration Beyond American jurisdiction.
With impossible metals, another major mining firm, The Metals Company, Has turned to America To start mining in the sea.
Rashid Sumela, author and Canada Research President of the letter in interdisciplinary oceans and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, is worried that some companies and countries who are very mining supporters can overcome the concerns of the rest of the world.
Many countries have been in talks on deep sea mining in the United Nations-Bed International Cabed Authority for a long time, of which America is not a member.
Sumila is important to approve ocean mining without a global agreement.
“The majority can say,” look, it doesn’t understand, “and yet pushes something loudly … and at the end of the day, they receive at the end what they want to obstruct the great global population,” he said.
Countries will gather in France next week for the United Nations Ocean Conference to talk about sustainable practices.
