What Mining Will Do to the Bottom Of The Pacific

By Insane Curiosity

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Miles beneath the Pacific Ocean lie trillions of rocks packed with nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese. They are called polymetallic nodules and some took millions of years to form. Now companies and governments are preparing for something that has never happened commercially at this scale: mining the deep ocean floor. In this documentary, we look at why these metals suddenly matter, who actually has the right to collect them, how deep-sea mining machines work, and what happens to the ecosystems living on and around the nodules once they are removed. We also examine a remarkable experiment begun in 1989 that returned to disturbed seafloor 26 years later and found that some of the damage was still visible. Deep-sea mining could reduce pressure on destructive land-based mines. But it would also industrialize one of the least understood ecosystems on Earth before we have finished discovering what lives there. -- DISCUSSIONS & SOCIAL MEDIA Commercial Purposes: insanecuriositybusiness@g

Tags: insane curiosity, science, mining the mariana trench, mariana trench, mining the bottom of the ocean, china mariana trench, deep sea mining, seabed mining, ocean mining, polymetallic nodules, deep ocean, ocean floor mining, Clarion Clipperton Zone, CCZ, critical minerals, cobalt mining, copper mining, manganese mining, battery metals, deep sea ecosystem