How Deep Sea Mining Could Break the Ocean’s Most Important Wildlife Highways

1:00:00 Deep sea mining could have long lasting effects on the bottom of the ocean. But did you ever consider what effects or consequences it might have for some species in the ocean? Like whales, sea turtles, seabirds, sharks and rays? A lot of people haven't really thought about it, including myself, until I talked to my friend Dr. Andrew Thaler, who just finished an assessment, a gap assessment on how deep sea mining could affect these types of species. Cetaceans, whales, bottlenose dolphins, or any kind of beaked whale, or we're looking at sea turtles, or we're looking at sea birds, or we're looking at sharks and skates and rays and all these types of animals, because we think of them at the top of the ocean and deep sea mining is in the deep sea.

1:00:41 So how can they be affected? We're going to talk a bunch about the logistics of actually what mining is, how animals in the water column are going to be affected, aka through noise, what it looks like on the surface, how many ships are going to be there at full scale plant or full scale project where they're actually deep sea mining in the open ocean. We're going to talk all about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. It's a great one. You're not going to want to miss it if you're interested in deep sea mining, its effect on the ocean. So let's start the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, a marine biologist and science communicator here to tell you what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. Say we're going to be talking about the deep sea because I have a very, very special guest, a recurring special guest, Dr. Andrew Thaler, who's here to talk about a gap assessment, a study that he just completed for the convention of migratory species.

1:01:38 We're going to talk about that study, what he found, and we're really going to get into the logistics of what a deep sea mining operation would look like from top to bottom, literally from the surface down to the deep sea. We're going to talk about the different types of deep sea mining and how that could affect the ocean bottom and how that could affect the water column and all that wonderful stuff. So we're going to talk about that. But you know, there's a lot of mystery around deep sea mining and the effects that it can happen because we just haven't studied it completely where we really understand the effects, especially since it hasn't really been done at full scale. So you know, we don't want to reach that point and be like, hey, you know what we should have done is made regulations to that. So there's a lot of mystery around that, a lot of science that has to be done around that. You know what also there needs to be done? There needs to be done a lot of science and a lot of other habitats in the ocean, including seagrasses. Seagrasses, it has a special place in my heart. I almost did a PhD on seagrasses. I've been always following seagrasses. I've always been interested in the habitat we call seagrasses, because it's productive. It's biodiverse.

1:02:34 It's an important habitat, coastal habitat for the ocean and for its species for other habitats, such as mangroves and such as coral reefs and other places. It's something that we need to talk about that we don't talk about enough. So what I want to do is I want to start and launch a podcast called the Seagrass Effect. Because this podcast, how to protect the ocean is about people. It's to help you understand more of what's happening with the ocean. I want to crowdfund this podcast because it takes money to do it. It takes time. I want to do this. I love doing this. I love talking about seagrasses, but I want to share seagrass science, research, conservation and restoration projects around the world, not only to bring the research community, the conservation and restoration community together about seagrasses, but I also want to help restore seagrasses. So with this crowdfunding, not only will we share the information on seagrasses, but we're going to help restore seagrass habitats around the world. And I can't wait to do that.

1:03:24 But I need your help. I need you to help crowdfund this. I need your donations if you're willing to do this. If you see the same thing I see around seagrasses, go to speakupforblue.com forward slash seagrass to be able to donate today. It's speakupforblue.com forward slash seagrass. I want to thank the partners and the crowdfunding platform Balian for helping us balian.org. That's where you're going to find the project, but go to speakupforblue.com forward slash seagrass goes right to my funding page. Find more information on the podcast. I can't wait. I'd love to hear what you think about that. I'm looking to launch that as soon as possible. All right, let's get back into the show. Andrew emailed me a couple of days ago and said, "Hey, you ready to podcast?" And I'm like, "Absolutely. I'm always ready to podcast." I knew there was a bunch of stuff coming out with Deepsea Mining.

1:04:07 He's done a study on the gap analysis, looking at where the gaps are for migratory species that could be affected by Deepsea Mining. And I was like, "How is that going to happen? How are they going to be affected?" And he broke it down for me and it was wonderful. So without further ado, I want you to listen to this entire interview with Dr. Andrew Thaler talking about the effects of Deepsea Mining on migratory species like cetaceans, which are whales, seabirds, sea turtles, sharks, rays, skates, all these animals that have a profound effect on the deepsea mining. Absolutely I am. I am so excited for this one. I love it. This is going to be definitely an interesting episode because when we talk about deepsea mining, we're going to talk about how to protect the ocean.

1:04:49 There are others northern you did on behalf of, you're gonna talk about who it's on behalf of and so forth. And I'm like, oh, this is an interesting angle. I've got a lot of questions that we're gonna ask just in terms of how this came to be and what those results are and what we're gonna do in the future about this and some of the implications that can have.

1:05:38 So it's gonna be really interesting to talk about. But before we do, why don't you just remind us of who you are and what you do? Sure thing, I am Dr. Andrew Thaler. I am a deep sea ecologist, a conservation technologist, and an ocean educator. And I work on issues surrounding how humans use and misuse technology to explore and exploit the deepest places in the world. Ah, awesome. Love to hear that. (laughs) You know, what's interesting too is let's just kind of go, we've been on the podcast multiple times, I think. We've done a few. Yeah, we've done a few, especially on deep sea mining. When we first had you on or when you were on at one point, we talked about your history with deep sea mining, doing your deep sea ecology PhD on deep sea mining.

1:06:24 And you've been in charge of the Deep Sea Mining Magazine. You've gone to all of the international sea, well not all, but you've been to the national sea bank. Not all of them, they've been there for awhile. Right, right. But you've been following them and you've been giving me information as well as, you know, thousands of other people who read the Southern Fried Science who follow you on your Patreon. And maybe you've even mentioned it when some of your D&D games with some of the local kids, when you talk about forestry, but you've done a lot and you've been on here and you are an expert in this. And I'm glad to have you on to talk about this. We've seen deep sea mining continue to be in the news, somewhat underlining the news where people like mention it and you can almost see people roll their eyes like, oh yeah, we got to worry about that. Okay.

1:07:12 And then some people are like, well, how is it going to really affect me? Like, is it really that big of a deal? And then I go into a whole tirade. I'm like, I've got podcasts for you to listen to. Just bear with me. But, you know, it's always an interesting kind of situation. We've talked about the different types of deep sea mining and where they could mine from. We've talked about some of the areas. We talked about some of the gaps. Now today we're going to be talking about some of the gaps in knowledge, but with migratory species and how deep sea mining could affect migratory species. Can we start from the beginning of where the idea came from and why and then how you got involved in it? Absolutely. And kind of before we get into that, I just want to ask you a very important question.

1:07:56 How much do you know about eels? Eels. Well, I know they migrate. They go, there's two eels species, I believe, the European and then the American eel. We actually get some eels up here in the Great Lakes. And they kind of congregate, both species congregate in the Gulf of Mexico, I believe, or Sargasso Sea kind of area. So I got the main. Yeah. And then they go back up to one goes up to Northern Europe and then the other one comes over here. Exactly. So I'm a deep sea ecologist. I'm a benthic man. Most of my life has been spent looking at snails.

1:08:37 Right. Right. You know, you could live an entire life and only look at snails and be satisfied. But I was contracted by the Convention on Migratory Species, which is a UN organization that is tasked with managing specific kinds of wildlife that travel across borders. So highly migratory species that move between borders. The ones that, you know, if you're going to manage them, they have to be managed collectively. You can't manage them country by country. One of those animals is, of course, the common eel or European eel. And the European eel as an adult, it sets sail from the coasts of Europe, crosses the Atlantic.

1:09:21 It reproduces in the Sargasso Sea, spawns in the Sargasso Sea, dies in the Sargasso Sea. And then it's offspring, which are in the form of these tiny little almost transparent glass eels, migrates back across the Atlantic Ocean, settles again in Europe, grows up, grows big, five to 25 years later repeats that process. The migration across the Atlantic can take 18 months to two or three years. So it's a very long process. And one of the things that happens when you migrate across the Atlantic is you migrate across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. And the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, as many of you listeners know, and we've talked about, is a site of tremendous hydrothermal activity and a place where multiple mining companies are looking at exploiting polymetallic sulfides on the seafloor.

1:10:10 So the International Seabed Authority, this organization that oversees mining in the high seas, is issuing lease blocks in areas outside of any nation's boundaries currently just for exploration, not for exploitation. And no one's mining anything yet. And one of the things that the conventional migratory species wants to know is, you know, a lot of the environmental work that's been done around deep sea mining, all of the environmental baseline work today that I've done around deep sea mining is focused on the seafloor. Looking at what impacts mining is going to have on the benthic communities, looking at impacts of the mining plume on mid-water communities. But one of the things that hasn't really been looked at in a lot with a lot of effort has been the big animals, the migratory species that are moving through these areas that are really connected to the global ocean that are traveling around the world as part of their migration, as part of their feeding as part of their migration.

1:11:08 As part of their reproduction and foraging behavior. And we'll encounter these mining sites throughout their lives. So a weird quirky thing that happened in the process of this is, you know, I started with fish because I thought, OK, you know, fish are probably the thing I'm the least familiar with because I do benthic stuff. I had just come off of some work with the International Whaling Commission, so I knew quite a bit about what was going on with marine mammals. Fish and seabirds were going to be the kind of the big heavy lift ones for me. I discovered that, you know, the conventional migratory species doesn't oversee a lot of bony fish because many of the commercially important ones are covered under other treaties.

1:11:51 And most of the ones that the convention covers are ones that we usually think of as anadromous or riverine fish. So they have a lot of sturgeons involved and sturgeons aren't particularly at risk of going offshore and running into mining sites. But they do cover European eels and European eels extract their migration patterns as far as we know. And they do migrate right over some of these lease blocks that have already been issued and currently being explored. So one of the first things that came out of this study was, oh, I have I have been working in deep sea mining since 2008. It had never even occurred to me that eels might be an issue for impact studies. And I'm like, you know, eels are pretty important to the European economy.

1:12:35 They're incredibly crucial fishery. They're fishery that is under tremendous threat. And now perhaps there will be a new threat to them if mining on the mid Atlantic Ridge gets underway. So that's kind of the ages of this project is, you know, to look at the migratory species, to take the known ranges and the known routes of migratory species that we have tracked in the past to see where they interact with known and proposed deep sea mining sites and to figure out what the potential impacts to these animals will be. So we looked at whales, whales and dolphins, cetaceans. We looked at bony fish, which ended up just being European eels. And I ended up spending a lot of time on European eels because eels are really cool.

1:13:22 We looked at sharks, skates and rays, and they have some very interesting interactions with mining sites. We looked at marine reptiles, which is mostly turtles, though there are some other reptiles that are a little bit more coastal and aren't going to see much impact from deep sea mining. And we looked at seabirds to see what kinds of seabirds would be interacting with these potential mining sites. So when we talk about DC mine, like you mentioned it before, you know, we think about the bottom of the ocean. So it was a lot of times we're thinking to 3000 meters deep, maybe more in certain spots, maybe a little bit less to but we're never really thinking about the upper parts of the water column.

1:14:02 You know, we're a lot of these species we think, you know, this is where we think these species are marine mammals, they have to breathe. So they come to the surface sea turtles have to breathe. They come to the surface sharks. I mean, we know certain sharks will stay up, you know, up top, you know, in the shallows and then others will be deep sea sharks or that some will go into the deeper waters. Sea seabirds, while they fly. So they're, you know, if they're going to eat, you know, they're probably going to stay pretty close to the to the to the surface. So when we, you know, I'm sure there are some people who are listening to this being like, you know, why are we concerned with the species that are staying so high up? Is that an impact for deep sea mining?

1:14:42 And as when you answer that, can you also talk just a bit about what the process is going to look like when say an operation like deep sea mining happens? It's not drilling per se. It's taking stuff off the surface. But my understanding is there's like there may there might be a sediment plume. So I can see like benthic stuff getting obviously disturbed. You talk about like, where in the water column are we looking at? Are we predicting these disturbance to happen? How far up? How far down so forth? Yeah, so there are there are three major or deposits that are being targeted. The deepest are what we call polymetallic nodules, and they occur at about 6000 meters depth. And these are the little cobblestones that you'll see on the sea floor, are being targeted because they are fairly abundant in cobalt and copper and nickel, depending on where in the world that forming.

1:15:32 You also get cobalt rich ferromanganese crusts. And these are crusts that form on the sides of sea mounts. And so they can be as shallow as eight to 1000 meters, or they can be tremendously deep if you have very deep sea mounts. And then the third size of the sea mounts are not the top, they're on the sides. They're kind of forming all around the sea mount. Okay, they kind of become the hard substrate of the sea mount. Gotcha. And then you have sea floor massive sulfides or in ecology speak, deep sea hydrothermal vents, and they occur anywhere from 1000 meters to 6000 meters deep. And these are those kind of lush vibrant communities of chemosynthetic organisms that are growing around like these active event plumes that are belching black smoke into the water column. And they're interesting because they're not particularly targeted for critical minerals. So with cobalt crusts and with nodules, people are talking about, oh, it's, you know, it's critical minerals. It's national security.

1:16:29 With hydrothermal vents, it's gold, mostly it's gold, it's silver, there's copper as well. When you think of metals that occur in veins, it's like a vein of gold, a vein of copper, those veins even on land are ancient hydrothermal vents stock works. And there are some cool places where if you go to Cyprus and look at the gold mines in Cyprus, you can find fossil tube worms from 10 million year old 100 million year old hydrothermal vents. Wow. So functionally speaking, up until the last half century, every gold mine and every copper mine is likely an ancient hydrothermal that that's insane. But the process is different depending on your body you're looking at. So in the cobalt, in the cobalt rich crusts and the seafloor massive sulfides, they're using cutting machines that will grind down the topology there.

1:17:23 Both of them are three dimensional structures. You have to grind down the topology to get the ore out and that ore is pumped to the surface as it's pumped to the surface. So that's the process. It has to be dewatered. And then there's a metal rich dewatering plume that is pumped back down, usually into the mid water depending on who's doing a proposal. With polymetallic nodules, it's not quite as violent in operation because nodules are just sitting on the sea floor. So they're being plucked from the sea floor either mechanically with like mechanical arms or like a collecting device or via vacuum pumps. And then the nodules themselves are pumped to the surface, dewatered, dewatered plume returned. There's a couple other different proposals that have slightly different processes.

1:18:09 But for the most part, it is the pump the order of the surface, dewater it, release the dewater and plume in the mid water. So when we're talking about impacts to highly migratory species, there's a direct impacts to the animals themselves. There's also indirect impacts. One of the first things we looked at are what are kind of the compounding impacts, the way that these indirect impacts can compound on top of them. When you destroy a benthic environment, if that benthic environment is a source of food or habitat or structure for migratory species, then they lose access to that as well. So one of the most extreme cases we have is that in the Clarion-Clipperton zone, which is an area where they're mining polymetallic nodules and it's 6000 meters deep, they find gouges on the sea floor.

1:18:55 And those gouges look an awful lot like the feeding scars produced by beak whales. So right now, the maximum recorded depth of a beaked whale is 3000 meters. Clarion-Clipperton zone 6000 meters deep. So if these gouges turn out to be feeding scars, that doubles the known diving depth of an as yet unknown species of beaked whale. And how would it be possible we know what the species is, but we don't know which species is doing it right now. How would they confirm that it is a beaked whale? You'd have to observe it. You'd have to see it happen. So it's not as if they can look at the gouges and like take some samples or whatever and like the gouges look very consistent with shallower beaked whale gouges.

1:19:40 I think the researchers I know who work on them are very confident that it is a beaked whale feeding scar. That's crazy. But it hasn't been double double double their maximum diving depth. That would be incredible. And that I mean 6000 meters is it's mind blowing for marine mammal to dive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's like to hold their breath for that long. Like, yeah, that's gotta take hours to go down. They move pretty quick. I don't know exactly how long tanks but I think I don't have the number off hand. But it's either 200 minutes or 20 minutes for the 3000 meter dive. I'm guessing probably closer to 300 but don't quote me on that as we report upon that. But it could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but we can we can look it up later. I don't have that number off hand. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that would be I mean, that would be an incredible accomplishment for marine mammal. You know, there's other animals that use these areas for nursery grounds. So we've had documentate confirmed documentation now of skates that use diffuse flow hydrothermal events to incubate their eggs.

1:20:43 So they lay their eggs around these diffuse flow events. And it does two things. The extra warmth helps the helps the eggs develop faster. So they hatch quicker, so they're less at risk of predation. And then because the plume is pretty nasty. A lot of predatory animals don't like to be around them. And so it's offers a little bit of a protective barrier as well. So you've got skates to do that. You also have octopuses that doesn't convention on migratory species and particularly concerned with octopuses. But we do know that there are octopuses that have a lot of nursery grounds around diffuse flow hydrothermal events as well. So there is direct habitat use for some of the animals. Well, and going back to the skates that that was we I had Dr. David Ebert, who was on that paper. Oh, yeah, the skates of the Pacific. He'll kill me that I don't remember the name, but it's a quite a cool story when we had him on a few years ago to talk about that. Yeah, yeah. In terms of impacts directly to the animals. So there's this plume and there's a benthic plume.

1:21:44 How much that's going to impact like migratory species of four or five thousand feet of meters above not entirely clear mid water plume though is being discharged in an area where we have this tremendous dial vertical migration. And that is a dial vertical migration of prey species for lots and lots and lots of fish in the ocean and whales and dolphins and turtles and everything else that likes to prey on mid water organisms. And so, you know, we're thinking about disruption to not necessarily the migratory species behavior, but also to the behavior of the prey. So if that prey behavior is impacted or if they're accumulating heavy metals as they're migrating up through this plume and then those heavy metals bio accumulate in the predator species that becomes a pretty substantial problem down the line for these very migratory species.

1:22:37 More direct impacts are these entire process is very noisy. There's been estimates where the volume of the riser and lift systems, the actual pumping of war up, which is, you know, a sound column that goes the entire water column and permeates out through the ocean because sound travels very well in the ocean. There are estimates that it could be up to 120 125 decibels, which is way beyond the recommended safe range for marine mammals. And it's a chronic sound. It's not like, you know, with ground penetrating or seafloor penetrating sonar. It's a tremendously traumatic experience for animals that are nearby, but it's quick. It's one big pulse and then it's done. Yeah, with the riser and lift system. This is a continuous system. That noise is going to be generated throughout the entire mining operation, which could be a year.

1:23:25 And so we don't really know water column to write just like one part of the water columns, the entire water column. Yeah. So we don't really know what the impact of chronic noise at that level has on citations and other sniff for species. So lots of animals use sound to navigate the you sound the hunt they use sound to communicate. And, you know, we have some good studies on, you know, acute sound impacts where you generate a really, really fast high volume noise. We have a few studies on like the impacts of like dredging operations. So kind of that low deep rumble that comes when you're operating a dredge.

1:24:05 But even those are days to weeks, not months to years. So the impact of this kind of sustained high volume sound across the whole water column is something that has not really been studied in any in any kind of detail. And also, like, if you think about it, too, like, it's interesting how you talk about the entire water columns affected, especially, you know, with noise, we know that there are marine mammals that they're use noise to communicate to feed to hunt and all that kind of stuff. They will avoid areas with noise, we've seen it happen before, will they avoid this area? We don't know. But they've in the past, certain marine mammal species will avoid areas that have noise. Now, the one thing about the guns like the seismic guns and acoustic guns is that, like you said, they kind of sneak up on you, they come in, they go regular pace, but it's still, you know, it's a pulse.

1:25:00 It's not like a continuous. So it kind of almost, you know, you can marine mammal, you can almost argue that it gets sucked in not knowing that this, this, this noise is here and then it then it gets exposed to this noise. Obviously, there's rules and regulations around that. But, you know, it's hard to avoid with a chronic one that's happening, though, you're just going to get probably you can almost I mean, this research needs to be done, which we'll talk about at the end of this episode. But you can probably look at with a chronic noise is just going to be avoidance. Yeah, altogether. And we know that marine mammals are in areas like the clarinating clipper zone. So we know that they feed off there. And so if they're if they avoid that because of noise, then how are they going to feed like, it's just it's just this, this problem is continuous problem that happens, even though we don't know for sure. But like the prediction could be there.

1:25:50 Based on the research and so forth. Well, if you imagine it, imagine if your favorite restaurant was right next to a construction site, you just stopped going to that restaurant. Exactly. And if that was, you know, what if that was the only taco place in town? Yep, then that would be a tragedy. Because you wouldn't be able to get any tacos, you wouldn't be able to get tacos, you have to go the next town over. And that's the thing. And then you're looking at, you know, they're already, you know, all these marine mammals are already going. They're under enough. And they're going to be like, oh, I'm going to get a taco place in town. And that's the thing. And then you're looking at, you know, they're already, you know, all these marine mammals are already going, they're under enough stress with climate change and finding food and their food patterns are changing and a lot of areas. Now we're looking at another human caused disturbance, direct human caused disturbance that they could avoid this area altogether.

1:26:34 So climate change also came up as a confounding factor in all of this, because one of the things that is happening is as the world is heating up, and as ocean currents are changing, these migratory species migration routes change. And so we identified several cases where there isn't currently any known interaction. But as we see these range expansions happening, we can see where 10 1520 years down the road, we're going to start seeing many more encounters between certain marine species and these sites. One of the big examples is the camps Ridley turtle. Camps Ridley turtles, they usually hang out in the Gulf of Mexico and the US East Coast. Nice, comfortable, protected, lovely. But they're also starting to turn up in Europe. We found them as far as the Netherlands. So they're undergoing a range of things now.

1:27:26 Yeah. And so they're crossing the Atlantic, then they're crossing those same least plots that the eels are crossing. And so there's a very real possibility that, you know, the problems we think are going to be the big problems today are not going to be the big problems in 20 years because these animals are changing where they're going. And they're changing where they're going because we're changing the climate. Yeah, yeah. And I can see it being a confounding factor. Taking a, you know, taking a bite out of sort of the survivability, you know, as we as we go through and look at these and look at these animals. That's interesting. So we talked. Okay, so we got marine mammals, we can see how they can be affected noise. We can see affected like, you know, prey that goes that might go down. They might be chasing prey down into the deep or into at least the mid column.

1:28:17 Now, let's talk about something like I guess the the the animal that would probably be the extreme opposite that I would think would be seabirds right seabirds fly in the air, they come down to feed, but they're going to try and get back into the air, how would they be affected? I can see prey right off the bat. Yeah. How else would they be affected? So we looked at all the migratory birds and all the ranges covered by the CMS. And it's only about 7% of birds covered by CMS that would interact with known marine mining sites, but it's all the major families of seabirds, which is not a surprise.

1:28:58 So you're talking about things like wandering albatrosses and petrels and, you know, a lot of these big ocean spanning birds that spend most of their life in the air. And so you think, okay, there probably won't be a ton of interactions there. But a few things really interesting happen when you have a ship on station for a long period of time. In the case of a mining operation, we're talking years, ship becomes a fish aggregating device. And you've been out to sea, you've seen it. So when you've got a ship on station, and you sit there for a month, a year, tons of fish underneath you, if you're there for a year even more. And so there's a question of if you have predatory seabirds, now you are creating feeding sites for them, is that going to negatively impact them? We have studies from offshore oil and gas where oil rigs are attracted to a lot of seabirds.

1:29:53 So they'll come in the land and then it will disrupt the migration patterns. And, you know, if you're an albatross and you land somewhere where you don't have a big enough runway to take off again, you can't fly. Because albatrosses are the least effective bird that can actually fly. They are massive too. They're massive. They need a long run. I mean, I've seen albatrosses break their legs on landing. They're not like, they're not built for the they may be built for the flight. They're not built for the flight. Evolution is nothing kind of them. But, you know, so you have this, this bird attractant. On the other hand, when you look at offshore wind farms, birds tend to avoid them. The big seabirds tend to not go near the offshore wind farms.

1:30:40 And so, you know, we don't know, are these mining vessels going to act more like oil rigs? Or is it going to be more like an offshore wind farm? They produce a lot of light, light at night. So that's going to be attracted to seabirds. But in terms of in terms of the groups of animals that are going to suffer the most consequences from deep sea mining seabirds are not high on that list. I think, generally speaking, they wouldn't be my my first point of concern. My first point of concern would be the cetaceans. Yeah. Sea turtles. Less so sharks other than for like the essential nursery ground issues and for those specific specific feeding sites.

1:31:20 And then, you know, I talk a lot about eels because I just found the eel store story so fascinated. But fascinating. The reality is that, you know, I think eels have a lot more things to worry about before they. Well, they're very threatening and it's a threatened fishery. And they're very highly managed. And, you know, they're facing a lot of environmental challenges right now. You know, it's a shame if deep sea mining adds to that. But, you know, I think the greatest threats from deep sea mining are the threats to the cetaceans. Great. And threats to sea turtles. The other thing that happens that we haven't talked about yet is ship strikes. So these are these mining operations are not happening in happening in areas that have a lot of ship traffic. But if you are like some of the companies have proposals where they have barges coming in and out to offload nodules or to offload or and bring it back to shore.

1:32:11 So you're talking about, you know, several ships a week, maybe several ships a day, depending on the scale of the mining operation that they're offloading into. Now you've dramatically increased the number of vessels in the area. And that dramatically increases the risk of ship strikes to whales, to dolphins and to sea turtles. The good news with ship strikes is we know how to avoid ship strikes. Like there are protocols in place that you can implement to reduce the risk of ship strikes. And the challenge there is convincing mining contractors that, hey, if you're going to be running a lot of boats out here, and we know that whales migrate through this area. Especially like the CCZ we know for sure, because we've got those feeding gauges. We also have one in the mining companies was nice enough to put out acoustic moorings, both at depth and at the surface. And so we have a lot of very lovely recordings of dolphin whistles and minky whale calls and sperm whale clicks.

1:33:04 So we do know that cetaceans are very active in that area. And so, you know, if you're operating an area where you know that cetaceans are going to be, you got to slow your boats down. You got to have continuous persistent monitoring. And you got to keep it low, keep it slow. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things like that we don't really realize is happening. I think a lot of times we think of just the operation itself, you know, down at the bottom, we don't realize the logistics of getting ships there, getting ships like situated on their own. Like situated on there, how long they're going to be there, how they're getting the or up to the boat, the noise that's around it, the lights, there's a lot of when you look at it in a proper study like you did and look at these effects, we see that these animals can be effective.

1:33:52 Now this is very localized areas to write like these are like these are going to be ships in the middle of the sea. Is it going to be one ship is it gonna be many ships? Like how do you think this is going to play out from what you know about these deep sea mining operations? So if you look at the projections for the scale of the industry, and you take their most optimistic projections, you know, in the near future, if deep sea mining goes forward, it's going to be probably one mining vessel to mining vessels operating in the Pacific at any one time with support vessels coming in and out.

1:34:32 But to actually meet the resource demands that deep sea mining companies claim that they can meet to functionally outcompete the Democratic Republic of the Congo for production of cobalt. You're talking about 30 vessels operating in areas that cover hundreds of thousands of acres of sea floor. So small cities. So it can be I mean, it's a mega project. It is, you know, it is on the scale of building some of the biggest dams in the world that is on the scale of some of the biggest engineering projects that humans have ever undertaken. It's huge. If it gets all the way to scale, I you know, whether or not you see mining reaches the scale that is predicted in the most optimistic projections is definitely something that remains very much to the point where you're going to be able to do that.

1:35:19 And I think that's a very much tenuous. I think the most budgeting. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Sorry, as you before you go on to that, when you mention it, I think of the sort of the oil and gas field in the Gulf of Mexico, right? Yeah, just south of Louisiana, where you just see all these oil platforms, and they look like a city. That's what I'm picturing. Is that what you're thinking? If it gets to full scale, like we're gonna see that, but it's boats, essentially. Essentially, yes. Yeah. You know, I don't think we're going to see that likely in the next few years. I think, you know, even if it does progress at its current pace, it's still going to be a slow developing industry and it's still got a lot to prove and a lot of technology that's still up in the air. So, you know, one of the beautiful things and I've said this before, one of the great things about this current moment is that, you know, never before in history, have we started an extractive industry by leading with environmental development.

1:36:30 And so, you know, we have a real opportunity now. And this is like, you know, this is, you know, pedal to the metal at the moment for making sure that we know everything we possibly can before the first ounce of commercial or is lifted from the sea floor. But like, this is our moment to really figure out, okay, what do we know? What don't we know? How is this industry going to affect the global ocean? And what can we do to make sure that we don't cause lasting harm to the ocean in pursuit of, you know, temporary material games? Amazing. Now, with all the information that you came up with, I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. So what we are gonna start off with, there's still a lot of information that we don't know. Can you talk? This is a knowledge gap study that the entire studies about what we don't know. So How do you how do we progress in an assessment where we don't have a lot of information?

1:37:25 that we're talking about are going to be protected from the implications and the consequences of DC mining. So at the international level, and this is a UN report by a UN agency, so it's working on international issues that, you know, some countries like the United States of America are not as engaged on as others, but in the international arena the Convention on Migratory Species is having their COP, their Convention of the Parties, in February. They will adopt a set of recommendations about research priorities and management priorities that they want to see reflected in the mining code, and they will liaise with the International Seabed Authority about how their priorities and their needs get implemented into the code being developed by the International Seabed Authority.

1:38:15 For the vast majority of countries in the world that are party to both the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea and the conventional migratory species, which is most countries, the US being the big exception to that rule, we never ratified UNCLOS, so most countries will be beholden to those decisions. Unfortunately some countries won't and that will require campaigning within your country if you are a citizen of a country that is not party to those treaties. Right, right, interesting. So like the research that's going to come out after this, are people watching this study, are people looking at the study, are other researchers being like, "Okay, this is how we are going to look at it in the future?" And does funding allow to fill those gaps?

1:39:11 So yes, there are research institutions and countries, so the study itself was sponsored by Australia and Monaco. So they have a very big interest in determining what the research priorities should be. But the recommendations themselves go through the ISA and so then the ISA comes back and says, "Okay, understanding impacts on highly migratory species is a necessary part of the environmental impact assessment that a mining contractor has to conduct." So now this also has to be a part of their environmental studies as well. So it is a way to ensure that the data is being collected by the mining companies beforehand because right now no one's really collecting a ton of data about highly migratory species.

1:39:57 We actually went through the deep data database which is maintained by the ISA to look at all the actual records of highly migratory species and it was less than 20. Really? Really? Yeah. So no one's like, and most of them were identified to like family level, some of them like phyla level. Yeah, so when you really include those, you can put it at one point. There were groups that was just like the lowest taxonomic identification was avian. Which, you know, fair if it's a bunch of geologists on a mining boat, they don't know what a bird is. No, true, true.

1:40:39 But you can't expect people to anticipate ahead of time like, oh, all the things we're going to need to know, that's something that develops in the industry matures. And so, you know, being able to say, you know, you should have someone on your boat that can identify an albatross. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Might be a useful thing. Yeah. Well, and that's where I think, you know, when you look at the regulations. So you mentioned, you know, this goes to the ISA. The ISA kind of says, okay, we're going to start to, they're going to look at it. And hopefully they adopted as part of like the assessments that are done by each country, you know, or each, I guess, operator with any, like wherever that whatever area that they're doing, whether it's the high seas or it's in a country.

1:41:20 Does the ISA have the ability to enforce that to say, hey, you guys have to get these consultants who know birds and know marine mammals, and they're going to start looking at what's around while you're doing your exploration and all that kind of stuff? Like, do they have my understanding is they don't have that authority. And basically, I say has no has no enforcement capacity right now. They have an enforcement mandate. They don't have enforcement capacity. This would be more of a like, you know, these are the kinds of requirements that we need from an environmental impact assessment. And then that assessment gets reviewed by the ISA and get signed off on or rejected depending on whether or not they hit a certain level of benchmarks.

1:42:02 You know, that means like, this is all politics at that level. Yeah. And so there will be many delegations that will be arguing, no, no, we must know exactly what is happening to our sperm whales. And there will be delegation going. We don't really care that much about wandering albatrosses. And so that will be part of a discussion that happens at the ISA. If if these recommendations get presented there. Interesting. When I did a lot of work when I was at school, my master's actually on looking at, you know, marine protected areas and on the discussion itself. And we looked at macro invertebrates like the like, you know, big macro invertebrates and looking at, you know, where they were. So we're looking at like what was expected to see there. And if there were assemblages around there, we call them like the representative areas of like, what dominated what what species dominated community, what was the makeup was a different from others and so forth.

1:42:54 And of course, a commercial fish study was done as well. But then we never like the other side of it was like the distinct areas and the distinct species like the migratory species where they come where they go like upwellings and so forth and like nursery areas and spawning sites and so forth. But they were the migratory species were the hardest because it's like, how do you protect migratory species when things move and their foods, their prey moves, their habitats move because they're done by like these large processes that move with currents. And now we talked earlier about climate change that will move and everything like that. Is it more difficult to protect these species? Because like, or these types of species, as you mentioned, like we don't even know which species specifically they are.

1:43:37 We're talking about, I'm sure we can come up with a list. But is it more is it complicated because these are migratory species and not just like say the benthic species that would be found directly underneath the site where they're or in the site that they're they're exploring? Absolutely. And part of the problem is because they're migratory, you know, there's a seasonality to that, right? So if you are, you know, doing a proper high endurance environmental campaign to really characterize the impacts of a mining company, you know, you could be talking about a research cruise that takes three months, like three months is a long research cruise.

1:44:18 Yeah. If you do that research cruise in the summer and humpback whales migrate through the area in the winter, you're just never going to see them. And you'll never quantify that at all. So you have to cross reference with like known migration patterns and things like that. And very specifically think about that kind of thing. And that, you know, that gets to another problem. Like if noise is driving, say, beat whales away from the CCZ, but you never observed beat whales because they're only there in October and you only sample in August. You don't know that you've driven them away because you just never see them. Yeah. And so, yeah, it does get very, very challenging. You know, beat whales are a great example. Beat whales probably make up a quarter of all whale species.

1:45:02 And we've identified very few of them. We know precious little about the behavior and ecology of beach whales. So one of the most understudied whales in the world and they are one of the most abundant groups of whales in the ocean. So it is very hard to get information, even though these are the big animals. These are the most of them are the big animals. Some of them are tiny. But these are the big animals. And even with the big animals, it's very hard to get that kind of information because they're so mobile, because they're moving around so much. And because we're operating and talking about areas of the high seas where, you know, the high seas in general does not get studied as much as coastal waters just because, you know, people live on land. Yeah, no, absolutely.

1:45:42 And that's an interesting thing. You know, we're looking at the high seas. The high seas treaty has actually been ratified as of this year, which is basically beyond national jurisdiction. Unreal. With that said. It entered into force, ratified by 60 countries. 60 countries and probably more after this, I assume. Yes. Now, that's going to be... Notably not the United States. No, not yet. Not yet. No. We signed it. We haven't ratified it. Just like on class. How is that going to do you think that's that's obviously going to play a role in the future of of DC mining and looking at the high seas and managing the high seas? Where where do you see that? I know it's kind of like a prediction question, but where do you see that policy coming in for deep sea mining or has there already been like a clause within the treaty on deep sea mining already?

1:46:35 I think where it lands is the creation of a new kind of conflict. So, you know, at its core, the biodiversity treaty recognizes biodiversity as a resource as a resource to be protected and exploited just like a mineral resource. That's a gross oversimplification of what the treaty actually does, but it does treat biodiversity itself as a resource. And so once we start thinking about biodiversity in the deep sea as something to protect as a resource rather than something to protect as a thing that we love because biology is awesome. I think that creates new conflicts because it creates conflicts with people who want you know, biodiversity has value to ecosystems which can be quantified as financial value and in some cases that financial value of the environmental value of keeping an ecosystem intact may vastly exceed the value of the minerals underneath.

1:47:37 You know, there's a pharmaceutical value that's tied with biodiversity that I don't like to get into because you know, you know, bio prospecting is a tenuous thing and a really fascinating and interesting industry that doesn't always function exactly the way we think it does in terms of how discovery works. But is, you know, it's important to recognize that we do gain a lot from the deep sea that is, you know, scientific that is cultural, but it's also financial and it's intangible financial. So it's not something where you can say we picked up eight ounces of cobalt and it's worth X dollars. It's something where you can say we gained this new insight into how a certain protein can function at high temperatures and now we have PCR and have revolutionized the $30 trillion medical industry. Yeah, so it's a very difficult way to quantify it.

1:48:31 But I think one of the things that the high sea treaty does really well is get us to think in terms of what that value really means to us beyond just the material value of the animals or the minerals. Interesting. Where do we go from here? Like we've the study has been done. There's obviously there's a lot of gaps that need to be filled. What are the what's the next step when we look at deep sea mining and we look at migratory species? We're gonna need a boat. A big boat. No, I mean the next the next step is a knowledge gap study. This is understanding where the gaps in our knowledge are. You know, I want to know how sound is going to impact migratory marine species, especially whales. So, you know, we need to figure out ways to do proxy studies like obviously we can't just like annoy whales for two years and see what happens.

1:49:28 But we have to find we had to find places where we can, you know, as prox use as proxies examples from my offshore dredging offshore drilling and see if we can't get a little bit more clarity on that. You know, for some of the big target things like some of it is going to be working with mining companies because they're the ones operating out there and having observers on their boats and documenting and putting out acoustic moorings. You know, there's a lot of its research. This is, you know, one of the fun things about this project is just imagining all the different kinds of research projects you can do based on the sort of identified knowledge gaps here. I want to be going around as many diffuse flow hydro some event sites as I can and seeing, you know, who's using what is a nursery ground. That's such a wild thing that we weren't looking for before.

1:50:15 And now that we know what to look for just being like, okay, how common is this phenomenon? It's a it's a an interesting perspective, like to look at all this stuff. I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of graduate studies that can happen from this and fund a lot of a lot of projects. And it's going to be have to be like, I assume a lot of the deep sea mining companies are going to have to foot the bill for this type of work to kind of like fill that. Yeah, you know, the nice thing about this kind of work is that it's not the expensive stuff. You know, the expensive stuff is giant robots on the sea floor. Right. You know, having an observer on your boat that can identify birds is yeah, is, you know, a rounding error in your daily operating budget.

1:51:03 Right. Like, you know, putting out acoustic moorings to look listen for marine mammals is, you know, they're already putting out more moorings to look for other other oceanographic conditions. They can add acoustic mornings to those like, yeah, in terms of recommendations that are not particularly expensive for the amount of science you get out of them. Like, you know, the beauty of a whale is you don't need a microscope. That is true. That is true. And yet, you know, with the the advent of like drones and stuff like that, you can go a lot further out from your boat, you know, in terms of sightings, not just binoculars, a pair of binoculars and somebody there, you can actually go above and beyond and see, see where they they are.

1:51:48 And they're there, you know, where they tend to go, where they if they're avoiding or not and check those patterns. So we're a helicopter, as we talked about earlier. Yeah, we both love helicopters. We'll be on the boat. We'll be on the boat watching the helicopters like, yeah, you're right over there over there. That's good. That's cool. It's like, is this like so if you know, there's a there's a lot of researchers that want to to participate in this type of work. We'd love to, to, I mean, myself included, we'd love to do that. You know, what would is this like an advent of like a new conglomerate of studies, do you think like where, like, if you're looking at somebody who's trying to get into graduate work, and they want to start to look at this kind of stuff, where do you think where's the start? I mean, it's such a broad topic, and there's so many species and so forth. But where would you recommend people begin to look into this kind of stuff?

1:52:42 So, you know, the things that are coming down the pipeline, if you're in the United States, there's going to be, you know, science investment right now is at a historic low. Right. But there is going to be investment in deep sea mining. And so if you're interested in understanding the environmental impacts of deep sea mining, or if you're just interested in studying these kinds of highly migratory species in the ocean deep sea mining is not a bad hook to get yourself in the door. Yeah. In terms of funding. I don't know what the funding calls will look like coming out of this because I don't, I don't know what the CMS process is coming out of this, I would suspect that there will be, you know, different countries will set different priority areas and some of them will include these. So keeping an eye out for that. You know, the reality is, I'm still a deep sea ecologist that works at hydrothermal vents and loves to look at snails. And so like, you know, I don't foresee myself being super involved in a lot of the downstream studies, but I am actually absolutely, you know, a social node that loves connecting people to other people.

1:53:46 So I'm happy to work with researchers to figure out who's doing what. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'd be really interesting to see how you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'd be really interesting to see what people come up with. You know, obviously it's, you know, catapulting from this from this study will be will be huge. We have to find out as much as possible before DC mining, you know, gets underway a lot faster and a lot more consistently than than it has been in the future. When you know, there are a couple of I know it's not really the topic per se, but there are a couple of projects that are going on right now that are being proposed in US territories. Yeah, is one of them. I believe Samoa is the other.

1:54:28 So there have been Boaam, which is the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has issued two RFIs in the last several months. So request for information about resources and interest in areas off of American Samoa and areas off of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American Samoa one has closed, they received something like 76,000 comments, most of which were very negative. Right. But a lot of them coming from people in American Samoa. Yeah, so you know, the folks who live out there and, you know, generally speaking, like my highest priority when looking at potential deep sea mining is do the people most directly impacted by it do the people who live nearby are the actual indigenous stakeholders on board or are they opposed?

1:55:17 That's like, yeah, that's the make or break for any of these. You know, that can happen like the Cook Islands has been interested in looking at deep sea mining. If the Cook Islanders decide they want to mine their own waters, I have, you know, I have nothing bad to say about that, you know, indigenous sovereignty is in absolute in things like that. At the moment, the people of American Samoa sure don't seem like they want to see deep sea mining off the coasts. And you will see from the current RFI how the people of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands feel to but that one's a strange one because there's not particularly valuable or deposits in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. There's there's some but there's not a ton. And it's also the Mariana Trench. So it's, you know, from a political standpoint, like if I were a mining company, the last thing I'd want to want to be is be associated with mining the only deep sea feature in the world that everyone can recognize, right?

1:56:11 You do not want to be the guy that mind the Mariana Trench, like that's just especially for not particularly valuable or deposits. That's just not like from a PR standpoint, that's just seems like a bad move. Yeah. So you're surprised at this. I'm surprised the RFI went out and apparently no one requested it. So it seems like boom is just trying to assess all of its resources for potential future lease sales. Now as of this recording that comment period is still open. Anybody comment or is it just more of the people of the cinema? Anyone can comment us citizens generally unless you have specific expertise. So I'm working with a group of international scientists to put in a comment from the international community because they have particular expertise in that area. But generally speaking, anyone is allowed to comment. They really want to hear from us citizens and the people of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are also US citizens, of course, of course. Yeah, yeah.

1:57:07 One of the many territories of the Empire continues to hold. Yeah, interesting. Okay. Well, thank you so much. We'll put links down so that people can get access to those comments as long as they're open. And you can highly recommend that if you are qualified to put out a comment, please do. It's really important that you get your say in, especially if you're listening here from the CNMI or from American Samoa. It's always good to hear, you know, in your own backyard. It's happening in your own backyard. So I'm happy to have you here. But yeah, thank you, Andrew. This has been amazing. As usual, this is always fun to have you on the podcast and you always bring so much information. We really appreciate such an important topic to so we really appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing this with us.

1:57:52 Thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to be on here. You bet one more thing if people want to get to know you a little bit more and connect with you. There's Southern fried science calm, but where else can people can go to learn more budget projects? I exist on Southern fried science and I exist on blue sky at Dr. Andrew Taylor. Awesome. And I know you won't do this, but I'm going to do this for you. Please support Andrew on Patreon. He's he's up to so many different things, things that are not traditionally funded or not traditionally paid for by the things but such an important things like creating the open CTD line of products, doing, you know, D&D with with people in his own town and kids and stuff on forestry. We're talking about being on a climate change commission, you know, in his own town, doing the I forget the name of it. What's the the the tide gauge that you put in the smart buoy, the same Michael Smart buoy, Smart buoy like Andrew is up to so many different things.

1:58:53 Innovative, very technology focused, very important, always on the right side of history. I highly recommend I'm going to put the link in there if you don't mind, Andrew, so that people can go and support them if they choose and are able to. I really recommend that you do again, Andrew. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it. You're very welcome. Happy to come back anytime. Thank you, Andrew, for joining us again here on the how to protect the ocean podcast. It was great to have you on as usual. And I can't wait to have you back on to talk about all the other projects, especially deep sea mining that you are focused on. It's always great to be able to share this information, especially from an expert like yourself who's been working on this for more than a decade. And I think it's really important that we talk about these issues. I'm going to put links to the public comment from the public comment.

1:59:35 I think it's still open and for those of you who watch this after continue to come back and watch these episodes because I'm going to be doing more advocacy action like if you want to put in a public comment or if you want to contribute in some kind of way, I'll have links to help you to do that and offer you resources to that because I think it's really important in today's day that we are able to advocate for the ocean, learn about science and conservation and restoration of ocean habitats like sea grasses, but also just like a public comment. And I think that's really important to the people that live around these areas where they don't want this to happen. So always great to be able to talk to Andrew always great to be able to provide this information from Andrew directly to you through our conversations.

2:00:19 And I think that's the whole point of the podcast to provide a resource for people who don't have that resource handy is just freely accessible. It's all for you. For those of you who want to donate to help launch another podcast, you can go speak up for blue.com forward slash seagrass. But until then, I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. Oh, by the way, if you want to leave a comment, leave it below in this YouTube video. If you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app like Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, whatever that might be, please contact me at how to protect the ocean on Instagram or go speak up for blue.com forward slash contact fill out the form. It goes right to my email. I'd be more than happy to answer it. Thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the true North strong and free. Have a great day.

2:01:00 We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.