5,000 species not known elsewhere live in an area established for deep-sea mining

An area of ​​the Pacific Ocean that will be carved 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 collect manganese, nickel and copper nodules found at depths of more than 4000 meters in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an area roughly twice the size of India.

To get a better picture of the biodiversity that is threatened by the proposed mining, Muriel Rabone of London’s Natural History Museum and her colleagues decided to review all available data from scientific expeditions on which species are present there. They found evidence of 5,578 different species in the CCZ, and up to 92 percent of them are completely new to science. Only six of the new species found in the CCZ, which include a sea cucumber, a nematode, and a carnivorous sponge, have been seen in other regions.

Rabone, who has been on surveys in the region, says he saw new species each time a sample was raised to the surface. She believes that the current data is the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of fully understanding the biodiversity of the CCZ and predicts that there are between 6,000 and 8,000 more unknown species.

“It is unknown how it will affect mining [the environment]says Rabone. “I think it would not be advisable to go ahead with mining without proper knowledge. It is particularly critical that we double down on efforts to understand this region. 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 Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, Germany, says that while commercial mining has not yet taken place in the CCZ, trials of small-scale mining have been carried out. The region has been partitioned and assigned to various companies, but delays in the development of regulations for deep-sea mining are delaying the start of operations.

“There is a significant risk of liability exposure, not to mention reputational damage, if a member state decides to go ahead and sponsor a mining application in the absence of regulations,” says Singh. “Indeed, the sponsoring state would expose itself to indefinite liability.”