News: By Source
An international group of marine scientists published an article in Science in which they outlined the desperate need for an international effort to regulate the ocean floor, in order to preserve the deep sea's unique and largely uncharted ecosystems. The article came in response to the growing threat to these ecosystems from commercial deep sea activities, particularly deep sea mining.
[ More ]Deep seabed mining for the rare earth minerals necessary for electronic devices like smartphones will expose deep dwelling sea creatures and their fragile ecosystems to new dangers from mining operations.
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This week, scientists made a disturbing discovery in the Arctic Ocean: They saw "vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor," as the Stockholm University put it in a release disclosing the observations. The plume of methane—a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat more powerfully than carbon dioxide, the chief driver of climate change—was unsettling to the scientists.
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