Mining the seafloor for valuable metals could harm ocean food chains.
Tiny plankton, which are the base of the food web, can accidentally
swallow sediment stirred up by deep-sea mining. When they do this,
they miss out on more nutritious food of the same size, researchers
reported on November 6 in Nature Communications. This could lead to a
chain reaction of starvation that affects bigger animals, even large
ocean predators.
Scientists have long worried that deep-sea mining could seriously
damage underwater ecosystems. Machines that scrape the seafloor about
4,000 meters down can disturb delicate microbes in the sediment for decades.
They can also create clouds of sediment that may block the filters of animals
living on the ocean floor.