More Bad News for the Oceans

The Brooks Bulletin has a recent news item about how the mining industry is now increasingly looking to the high seas for more ways to keep their shareholders happy. Explaining the move toward sea-bed mining, CEO of Nautilus Minerals, David Heydon, is quoted saying "land-based areas have been explored to death." No kidding. The ocean floor in many areas has already been bottom trawled to death, so mining would seem like an appropriate follow up. Heydon goes on to explain that lower operational costs on ocean mining compared to land-based mining (read 'absence of environmental regulations') is a boon to would be mineral companies.

Some have argued that sea-floor mining may have lower overall impacts than terrestrial mining. However, as so little is known of the structure and function of deep marine ecosystems a rational and appropriate approach may be to use some caution (what the hell, how about a full blown precautionary approach!) and find out what we've got before we destroy it.