Manganese nodules on the seafloor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean, photographed by a 2015 expedition
ROV KIEL 6000/GEOMAR (CC BY 4.0)
Biodiversity is depleted and large furrows still lie in the seabed where deep-sea mining equipment operated more than 40 years ago, in findings that suggest it will take the deep sea multiple decades to fully recover from mining activities.
Deep-sea nodules are packed with valuable metallic resources such as cobalt and manganese, critical components in electric car batteries and other devices.
In 1979,…
