Polychaete found in the Clarion-Kripperton Zone
Trustee of the Natural History Museum, London
The Pacific region, which will be cleared and mined for precious minerals, is home to more than 5,000 species never found anywhere else on Earth.
Mining companies are keen to extract nodules of manganese, nickel and copper found at depths of more than 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 planned mining, Muriel Rabon of the Natural History Museum in London and colleagues are looking for information about what species might be there. We decided to consider all available data from scientific expeditions. They found evidence of 5,578 different species in the CCZ, 92 percent of which were completely new to science. Of the new species discovered in the CCZ, only six have been confirmed elsewhere, including sea cucumbers, nematodes and carnivorous sponges.
Sea cucumbers in the Clarion Clipperton area
Trustee of the Natural History Museum, London
Labone, who continues to explore the area, says he sees new species every time a sample is brought to the surface. She believes current data are “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to fully understanding CCZ biodiversity, and she predicts that there are between 6,000 and 8,000 unknown species. increase.
“It is very unclear what impact mining will have. [the environment]says Labone. “I don’t think it’s wise to proceed with mining without sufficient knowledge. It’s especially important to redouble our efforts to understand the area. Most of the species appear to be very rare.”
Mining in the CCZ is regulated by the International Seabed Authority, an intergovernmental organization with 167 member states.
Pradeep Singh of the Sustainability Institute in Potsdam, Germany, said commercial mining has not yet taken place at the CCZ, but small-scale mining trials are underway. The area has been partitioned and allocated to various companies, but delays in regulation of deep-sea mining have prevented operations from starting.
“If a member state decides to sponsor a mining application in the absence of regulation, there is a significant risk of exposure to legal liability, not to mention reputational damage,” Singh said. “Certainly, the host country will be exposed to indefinite liability.”
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