Hydrothermal vents have been compared to oases. That’s a good description. Oases are lush areas in a desert based on a water source. In a similar way, a vent is an oasis: it is teeming with life in the middle of the nearly barren ocean floor. A vent spewing microbe- and mineral-rich, super hot water is this oasis’ water source.
Vent communities are an ecotone. They are a transition zone between the hot water emerging from the vent and the cold environment of surrounding sea water. Just 15 centimeters (6 in.) laterally away from the vent, the seawater is cold, yet the heat and chemicals rising from it can be measured with powerful thermometers for many miles.
The life forms we see are truly bizarre, and some are very ancient. The vents probably predate life on earth. Scientists believe vents have been around for 3.5 – 4 billion years, and life in them probably began soon thereafter. We saw vents for the first time fewer than 25 years ago, in 1977.
I first came across the issue of seabed mining rights when studying maritime law in the early nineties and I thought then that the lack of international legal safeguards against exploitation meant that here was a disaster waiting to happen.
Well, that disaster’s here:
Nautilus Minerals, a small Canadian company backed by the giant mining company Anglo-American, has just received an environmental permit from the government of Papua New Guinea to conduct the world’s first deep-sea mining in the vent fields of the Bismarck Sea.
Giant undersea excavators will be built this year, and ore could be rising from depths of 1,600m by 2012.
Conservation biologist Professor Rick Steiner, formerly of the University of Alaska, was called in to examine the company’s original environmental impact assessment study.
He is concerned about the dumping of thousands of tonnes of rock on the seabed and about the danger of spillages of toxic residue, but his real objection is more fundamental.
He explained: “The site that they mine, they’re going to destroy all these vent chimneys where the sulphide fluids come out.”
The HyBIS submarine captured images of the vents on cameraHe added that it could cause the extinction of species that are not even known to science yet.
“I think that, from an ethical stand-point, is unacceptable,” he said.
Steven Rogers, CEO of Nautilus, said that he accepted that the mined area would be damaged, but said he was convinced that it could recover.
He believes deep-sea mining will be less damaging to the environment than mining on land.
He said: “I think there’s a much greater moral question…. here we have an opportunity to provide those metals with a much, much lower impact on the environment.”
The success of the Nautilus enterprise is dependent less on questions of morality than of profit.
Steven Rogers estimates that this first mining site could yield anything from tens of millions of dollars up to $300m in value.
But Professor Steiner believes that success in the Bismarck Sea will provoke a “goldrush” at vent systems around the world, most of which have yet to be properly studied.
Vent systems are fundamental to life on this planet, each one a fully functioning ecosystem that supports the web of life on the planet in ways we are only just beginning to understand.
“….deep-sea mining will be less damaging to the environment than mining on land.” says Steven Rogers; what he actually means is “If I can’t actually see the damage, it isn’t actually happening”.
What the hell are New Guinea thinking, letting these profiteers destroy the vent fields?
And that’s only within their territorial waters. There’s nothing to stop similar profiteers doing the same in the open ocean. No governmental permission is required. How long before the profiteers destroy the mid-Atlantic Ridge vent fields and their associated fauna and flora?
Not very long – plans are already in hand. Pass me a hanky, please.