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Interest in mining manganese nodules is focussed mainly on the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the eastern equatorial Pacific and Central Indian Basin in the Indian Ocean. Here the seabed faunas are sparsely distributed but are very varied in composition. Many different species live in the upper few centimetres of the sediment or attached to the nodules.

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Very few, if any, vent-endemic species are globally cosmopolitan or even known from throughout a given ocean basin, and vent communities differ in their species lists from one region to another (Tunnicliffe and Fowler, 1996; Van Dover et al., 2002; Bachraty et al., 2009; Figure 2), as does the spacing between habitats (e.g. Baker and German, 2004) and the duration of venting (Hannington et al., 1995). This suggests that management and conservation strategies will not be the same from one place to another.

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Abyssal plains are characterized by stable physical conditions, with low sedimentation rates and current velocities. Nodules form extremely slowly, with a growth rate of 2–15 mm per million years (Levin et al., 2016); therefore, the removal of nodules and the indirect impacts of sediment plumes may cause substantial ecosystem changes over large spatial and temporal scales.

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The humpback whale population of New Caledonia appears to display a novel migratory pattern characterized by multiple directions, long migratory paths and frequent pauses over seamounts and other shallow geographical features.

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Sediment plumes will also absorb light and change backscatter properties, reducing visual communication and bioluminescent signaling that are essential for prey capture and reproduction in midwater animals

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Our experiments clearly demonstrated that metal dissolution from hydrothermal sulfides into seawater may occur without long term exposure to the atmosphere.

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Abundant suspension feeders, including protists, crustaceans, polychaetes, salps, and appendicularians, filter small particles from the water and form an important part of the pelagic food web.

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In our model, polymetallic nodule removal led to 18% less faunal food-web compartments (Table 1). Food-web compartments that were affected consisted of protozoan and metazoan meiobenthos (4%), macrobenthos (50%), invertebrate megabenthos (45%), and fish (0.5%). The removal of nodules caused the reduction of microphagous feeders by 50%, of suspension feeders and carnivores by 58%, and of suspension feeders by 58% (Fig. 1A). Furthermore, the feeding-type group bacterivore and suspension feeder and the feeding-type group deposit feeder, carnivore, and scavenger disappeared completely (Fig. 1A). The most affected phyla were Bryozoa (81% loss), Cnidaria (52% loss), Platyhelminthes and Porifera (both 50% loss) (Fig. 1B). All compartments that were lost from the food web, except for the fish Pachycara sp., were lost due to a loss of non-trophic interactions, i.e., obligatory dependence on nodules as substrate (69%), facultative dependence on nodules (6%), obligatory dependence on other faunal compartments (12%), and the facultative dependence on other organisms (13%) (Table S1).

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Potential long-range, lateral and vertical dispersion of fine-grained plume particles would have a lower impact but is expected to spread over several hundreds of kilometers from the disturbance location (“far field”). Both processes would affect the deep-sea ecosystem structure and functioning to a certain, although presently unknown, extent (Ramirez-Llodra et al., 2011).

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The vehicles will also resuspend seafloor sediments, creating environmentally detrimental plumes that may disperse for tens to hundreds of kilometers from the mining site (8–11), depending greatly on the nature of the deposit, local currents, and the mining technology used

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Mining strategies will vary significantly between mineral resource types and perhaps between contractors, but they will involve some combination of seafloor collector vehicle with a vertical transport system to carry the ore and sediments to a surface vessel, shipboard separation of ore-bearing materials (dewatering), and subsequent discharge of sediments and water either back into the water column or at the seabed (ref. 7; Fig. 1).

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Indeed, the concern is greater for the ocean in which suspended particles settle much more slowly in seawater than in air, owing to the much smaller density difference between the particle and the ambient fluid. Modeling studies have focused on seafloor collector plumes and benthic deposition but have generally failed to consider the three-dimensional spread and temporal persistence of plumes in midwaters.

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Polymetallic nodules are formed in deep ocean basins where sedi- mentation rate is very low, thus allowing the nodules to grow slowly by precipitation of metals from seawater and sediment porewater [30]. These environments have very clear bottom waters owing to the very limited particle supply [23,76] and the low likelihood of sediment resuspension [64]. The organisms that live in abyssal nodule environ- ments are adapted to very low turbidity and low food supply conditions [76] and have lower metabolic rates owing to the cold temperatures of deep bottom water [7]. The effects of sediment laden plumes, such as those that will be generated by mining nodules, will be much more pronounced than in areas where organisms tolerate bottom waters with higher particle loads [76]. Even very low particle concentrations in plumes may have a significant impact, especially if they continue for long periods of time (chronic effect) [43,89].

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Restate thesis

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With increasing demand for rare and critical metals—such as cobalt, copper, manganese, tellurium, and zinc—there is increasing interest in mining these resources from the seafloor (Hein et al. 2013; Wedding et al. 2015; Thompson et al. 2018).

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According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a membership Union composed of government and civil society organizations, “Deep-sea mining is the process of extracting and often excavating mineral deposits from the deep seabed. The deep seabed is the seabed at ocean depths greater than 200m, and covers about two-thirds of the total seafloor. Research suggests deep-sea mining could severely harm marine biodiversity and ecosystems, but we still lack the knowledge and means to implement protections.”

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“In the depths of the ocean, there are mines of zinc, iron, silver and gold that would be quite easy to exploit” - Captain Nemo, hero of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

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Many animals depend on the mineral deposits for shelter, food, and more.

Organisms depend on mineral deposits.
The organisms at hydrothermal vents are unique by area.
Animals depend on polymetallic nodules for things to latch onto at the bottom of the sea.
Animals depend on cobalt crusts to search for food, etc.
Removing nodules, cobalt, and sulfide deposits will result in extinction of many species.

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Sediment plumes from mining machinery harm sea life.

Sediment plumes come from machinery and runoff from filtering systems.
Plumes can spread large areas, making mining have a huge impact.
Animals are not used to murky water, so murky waters can lead to a number of consequences.

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RQ: To what extent should deep-sea mining be commercialized?

Thesis: With regards to the environment, deep sea ming should not be commercialized to a great extent. In addition to sediment plumes from mining machinery harming sea life, potentially leading to a loss of biodiversity, many animals depend on the mineral deposits for shelter, food, and more.

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Verne's book shows how deep-sea minerals were common knowledge for a long time, introducing topic.
IUCN shows how these minerals come into play in a modern context as companies take advantage of them.
Orcutt talking about how although resources are needed, there may be consequences, leading into RQ and thesis.