This was by far the most important episode of the series. I am sure that many viewers were troubled by the scale of some of the issues touched upon in the programme; as biological scientists, we live in this state of concern perpetually, both professionally and personally. I tend to see a disconnect amongst the public, that the world we inhabit in our cities and towns are independent of ecological relationships that existed before humans, and now around humans, particularly when it comes to ocean life. In reality, this is not the case. Humans inhabit a unique ecological niche in the history of life on Earth, in that we are the only superpredators ever to regularly predate on the adult forms of other apex predators, in every environment on Earth. There has been talk of considering the era of humans a new geological epoch, defined by extinction, climate change and a stratigraphic layer of plastic for the geologists of the future. Accepting these problems are happening, let alone confronting them, can be depressing. I can’t speak for everyone, but taking a step back, as a scientist, and thinking of these as an interesting series of problems to be understood, is at least how I have decided apply myself to it. Entire books and feature length films have been made on each of the ecological issues in this final episode, so I will only focus on overfishing.

Unlike life on land, which has been drastically modified by humans for as long as we have existed, ocean life has only become heavily exploited more recently (although setting a baseline can be contentious). We have thought of life in the ocean as this resource which will  never be exhausted. Marine biologists have learned in the last few decades that this is not the case. A high profile example is the cod fishery off of Newfoundland, Canada, which was a plentiful food source for 500 years, thought to be the most productive fishery in the world. As fishing technologies improved, more fish could be caught more efficiently and in less time. After regulation failed to curb declines, the cod population completely collapsed in the early 1990s, and has still not recovered. With such a large amount of large predatory cod absent from the ecosystem, a trophic cascade occurred, where smaller fish severely declined and zooplankton, seals and crabs exploded in population. Meanwhile, cod in this area rarely reach adulthood here anymore. Managing the fishery like a resource by considering only population size, and not complex life histories and other ecological relationships, lead to this economic and biological catastrophe.

The wild caught fish that we eat is wildlife, and they shouldn’t be glossed over with the same brush as I sometimes see. Different commercially available fish are as ecologically different to each other as songbirds are to tigers. Tunas for example are apex predators, and although eating tigers, sharks and lions is unusual in the Western world, tuna consumption is extremely widespread. Imagine feeding tiger meat to your cat. Some bluefin tuna can grow to the size of a small car and have endangered or critically endagnered IUCN conservation status (on the same level as the Bengal tiger and black rhinoceros) and yet are still available at most sushi restaurants. There is always talk of ‘dolphin friendly’ tuna, but tuna themselves require urgent conservation as well. Despite improved scientific method, commercial fish species continue to decline worldwide, and faster than estimated.

I am sometimes asked: as a concerned citizen, what can I do in the face of these problems? Honestly, there is no easy answer. Some of the things I would recommend have been suggested a thousand times before, but I will make a few suggestions anyway:

• Only buy what you need. One third of all food is thrown out without being consumed – enough to feed two billion people in a time when one billion are malnourished – a tremendous waste of resources, and your own money. The same applies for all products – for everything you can buy to be produced, finite resources have had to be mined, extensive packaging has been used and goods have been shipped around the world.
• Use less packaging and bottles. 3 billion one-use coffee cups are thrown away in the UK every year, and less than 1% are recycled. This is one cup thrown away in the UK for every person in North and South America, Europe and Africa combined. Get a water bottle, reusable shopping bags and a refillable coffee cup. And is a straw really needed? This is one of the easiest changes to make.
• If you are going to eat seafood, be aware of where it comes from, and what kind of animal you are actually eating. As a general rule, it is better to eat lower down the food chain – sardines, jellyfish and shellfish for instance, and pole and line caught fish minimises bycatch associated with longlines and the habitat destruction associated with trawls. None of this is confidential information – a quick search and you can find plenty of information from the Marine Conservation Society (they even have iOS and Android apps) about where different species come from and how they are caught.
• Similarly, different foods require different resources. As a general rule, a diet with the least amount of environmental impact consists primarily of fruits, vegetables and grains and little or no meat. And if you can, buy produce that has not travelled a long way – less air miles, and less wastage from spoilage during long transits. See video below.
• Above all else, understand these issues – to me, this takes away their overwhelming amorphous terror. Start by learning about the human species in context. I cannnot recommend Elizabeth Kolbert’s incredible Pulitzer-winning The Sixth Extinction  enough, as a highly readable introduction to the concept. She interviews scientists watching their life’s work go extinct, visits an island made of bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef and talks about how perceptions take a generation or so to change. Those more interested in marine life specifically should try Callum Roberts’ The Unnatural History of the Sea, who meticulously ploughs through archaic records from early fishermen, pirates and explorers to set a new baseline for human impacts on the ocean.

Despite grave threats facing the ocean, life is remarkably resilient, and where beneficial alternatives are provided, there are success stories. Despite resistance from the fishing industry, no-take zones like those in New Zealand have proved highly successful at restoring fully mature fish and species not seen in decades, protecting biodiversity and then being available for fishing as well. For us, the four-year Blue Belt plan aims to protect 4 million square kilometres of marine habitat, an area larger than India, across 7 UK Overseas Territories. Ultimately, getting business to prioritise conservation, and large scale international cooperation on legislation are ultimate goals, but these large scale changes always begin with small groups of scientist, campaigners and passionate citizens. Some of this has come from our university. If you can convince your place of work to waste less food or use less plastic, then why not do it? You can also go here to check if your local MP is on board with the Blue Belt plan, and contact them to tell them to vote in its favour. As a country with the fifth largest area of marine habitat in its jurisdiction, having this go through UK parliament would be globally significant.

The public engagement from this new Blue Planet series has been extremely heartening. It was so popular in China that it slowed down the internet there, and is the third most watched series of the last five years. I look forward to seeing what people inspired by the series will do in the future.

Feel free to ask me any further questions on Twitter @kieranyes.

The post Blue Planet 2 | Episode 7 | Our Blue Planet appeared first on Exploring our Oceans .

Following previous blog posts discussing the possible environmental impacts of seafloor mining at hydrothermal vents, and examining the UN International Seabed Authority, this blog post will look at who is investing in the company developing the first deep-sea vent mine.

Shares in Nautilus Minerals are traded on the Canadian Stock exchange, and the investment interests of major shareholders are represented by their nominated Non-Executive Directors on the Board of the company. This post will therefore piece together information about major shareholders, tracing their subsidiary and holding company relationships using information from publicly available sources.

We’ll also have a look at where contracts for technology and services relating to the planned Papua New Guinea operations have now been placed. As a result, this post will be quite heavily peppered with links to the sources of each piece of information, in an attempt just to bring together some facts.

“Joint Venture” agreement with Papua New Guinea

On 11 December 2014, Nautilus Minerals overcame the final hurdle in preparation for mining hydrothermal vents at Solwara-1 near the coast of Papua New Guinea. A promised investment of $113 million from the Papua New Guinea government was released from escrow to Nautilus, and a Joint Venture formally created between Nautilus Minerals and a company representing the Papua New Guinea government, to administer the deep-sea mining.

Under the terms of the Joint Venture agreement, 70% of profits from the deep-sea mining will go to Nautilus Minerals, and 30% will ultimately go to the government of Papua New Guinea.  So under those 30-70 terms of the Joint Venture agreement, for every $1 of profit that Nautilus receives from seafloor mining at Solwara-1, the government of Papua New Guinea will receive ~$0.42 on behalf of its 7.1 million people.

(At the moment, the deal is initially 85-15 in Nautilus’s favour; Papua New Guinea’s government has the option to increase its share to 30% if it makes further investment – but let’s assume 70-30, as the maximum that the government of Papua New Guinea will realise from the Joint Venture).

But where would that money go next, if Nautilus’s profits become dividends to its shareholder investors?

Major shareholders in Nautilus Minerals

Nautilus Minerals currently has three major shareholders (figures here are as of 5th October 2015): mining giant Anglo American Plc has a 5.99% stake; a company called Metalloinvest Holding (Cyprus) Ltd has a 20.89% stake; and another company called Manwarid Mining LLC now has a 28.14% stake.

The latter two are the start of chains that lead further afield: to Oman in the case of Manwarid Mining, and to a Russian oligarch and his billionaire associates in the case of Metalloinvest.

(click to enlarge)

To Russia with love

Metalloinvest Holdings (Cyprus) Holdings Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Metalloinvest JSC, which is in turn is a subsidiary of USM Holdings. USM Holdings is the company that manages the assets of one of Russia’s richest oligarchs, Alisher Usmanov. USM Holdings has three major shareholders: Alisher Usmanov himself owns 48% of stock, with other beneficiaries currently including Vladimir Skoch (30%) and Farhad Moshiri (10%).

Overall, these arrangements make Alisher Usmanov one of the the largest personal stakeholders in Nautilus Minerals. Indeed, his company Metalloinvest’s website lists Nautilus Minerals as an “auxilliary business”.

Alisher Usmanov lives in the UK (he owns Sutton Place in Surrey, previously a home of J. P. Getty) and made his fortune from plastic bags, cigarette imports, iron ore, telecoms and media. He currently owns a stake in Arsenal football club, and recently bought James Watson’s Nobel Prize medal at auction to return it to him.

Out of every $1 realised as dividends to Nautilus shareholders, Usmanov could personally receive up to $0.08 as gross income, before any taxes and costs are applied along the chain of companies leading to him.

The other two major shareholders in USM Holdings are Vladimir Skoch and Farhad Moshiri. Vladimir Skoch is the octogenarian father of pro-Putin politician Andrei Skoch, one of the richest members of Russia’s Duma parliament.

Being a member of the Duma prevents Andrei Skoch from holding any shares personally, but out of every $1 realised as dividends to Nautilus shareholders, his family could receive up to $0.05 gross.

Ardavan Farhad Moshiri is Chairman of the Board of Directors of USM Holdings, in which he also has a 10% shareholding for his service to Usmanov. Moshiri studied accountancy at University College London, and worked for several accountancy firms in the UK, where he came into contact with Usmanov before going to work for him.

Out of every $1 realised as dividends to Nautilus shareholders, Moshiri could receive up to $0.017 as gross income (based on information available about shareholding in the holding companies at the time of writing).

Moshiri has been a director representing Usmanov’s interests in many companies over the past ten years, including Non-Executive Director of Nautilus Minerals from 2007 to 2009. The current Non-Executive Director of Nautilus Minerals representing Metalloinvest’s interests is Mark Horn, a barrister and financial analyst who lives in the UK.

The Oman connection

Manwarid Mining LLC, which now holds a 28% stake in Nautilus Minerals, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of MB Holding Company LLC. MB Holding LLC is based in Oman, and its billionaire founder and Chairman is Mohammed Al Barwani, who also currently serves as a Non-Executive Director of Nautilus Minerals.  MB Holding LLC has considerable subsidiary interests in the oil and gas sector, in addition to mining.

Coincidentally, the Omani oil sector in general has historic ties with China, having been the first Gulf state to supply the People’s Republic in the 1960s. But there is no suggestion of a link between Manwarid Mining or MB Holding and China.

Enter the dragon

So far we’ve looked at companies that are shareholders in Nautilus Minerals.  But who owns the contractors that are now providing technology or services relating to vent mining operations at Solwara-1?

The contract to build the deep-sea mining ship required by Nautilus has been placed with Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding Ltd in China (and a ceremony to mark the first steel-cutting in that project took place last week), via an intermediary company in Dubai.

Nautilus has signed an agreement for ore mined at Solwara-1 to be shipped for processing in China by Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Co. Ltd.

In early 2015 , a Chinese company also bought SMD Machines, a company based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, who have the contract to design and build the seafloor mining machines that will be used at Solwara-1.

Mawei Shipbuilding, Tongling Nonferrous Metals, and China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (parent company of CSR Times Electric, which now owns SMD Machines in Newcastle) are all Chinese state-owned enterprises.  So China effectively now has a major interest in deep-sea mining at Solwara-1, through the contracts providing the production ship, seafloor machinery, and ore processing.

The post WHO ARE SOME OF THE INVESTORS & CONTRACTORS INVOLVED IN DEVELOPING THE WORLD’S 1ST DEEP-SEA VENT MINE? appeared first on Exploring our Oceans .

Deep-sea hydrothermal vents are one of the seafloor environments now being targeted for mining of their mineral resources, because the “chimneys” that form at vents are particularly rich in metals such as copper that we need for modern technology.

But what are the possible impacts on marine life from mining at deep-sea vents?  For the first of three blog posts to accompany Week 6 of our “Massive Open Online Course” on “Exploring our oceans”, I’ll attempt a summary here, because the impact of greatest concern on marine life is perhaps not the most obvious.  And because it’s perhaps not obvious, this will be long article – starting with some key features of deep-sea vents, and what mining at vents will involve.

What are the key features of deep-sea vents?

Deep-sea vents are undersea hot springs, where mineral-rich fluid gushes out of the ocean floor.  On contact with cold, oxygenated seawater, the minerals in those hot fluids precipitate to build spire-like deposits called “vent chimneys”, and sometimes produce a “black smoke” of suspended particles that rises and disperses above the vents.

Deep-sea vents occur in “vent fields”, each of which is a collection of vent chimneys clustered together in a relatively small area.  Vent fields vary in size: some are just a couple of hundred metres across, while at others the vent chimneys can be spread over several kilometres.

Vent fields are separated from each other on the seafloor by relatively large distances where there is no vent activity.  In some regions, vent fields can be a few kilometres apart from each other, but in other regions it can be several hundred kilometres from one vent field to its nearest neighbour.  So overall, vent fields are rather like “islands”, dotted around the ocean floor, and varying in size and spacing.

The activity of each vent field does not last forever.  Depending on their geological setting, some vent fields may only be active for a few decades, before their fluid flow shuts down, for example if the area is smothered by lava flows from nearby undersea volcanoes, or if the “plumbing” beneath the vent field is disrupted by earthquake activity.  In other regions, however, a vent field can remain active for thousands of years – and go through cycles of activity, switching “on and off” for several millennia at a time.

So this is a key point that we will come back to later: deep-sea vents are not the same the world over.  Some are smaller in area than others, and some are naturally active for thousands of years.

At active vents, microbes thrive by using some of the dissolved minerals in the vent fluids as an energy source, in a process known as “chemosynthesis”.  These microbes in turn provide food for species of deep-sea animals, many of which are only found in such “chemosynthetic” islands of life on the ocean floor.

However, those animal species are never unique to an individual vent field, because if they were, they would go extinct when that vent field shuts down naturally.  The “vent” animals therefore have larval stages in their life cycles that are adapted for dispersal between vent fields, which allow them to avoid extinction despite the ultimately ephemeral nature of the colonies of their adult forms.

Although vent species are not unique to individual vent fields, however, they are specific to particular regions – one species, for example, may be found at vents along 3000 km of mid-ocean ridge, and then either geological or oceanographic barriers may isolate it from other species at vents in neighbouring regions.

So this is another key point that we will come back to later: vent fields are naturally ephemeral, and may be inhabited by species of animals only found at vent fields in a particular region, but never only at one individual vent field.

What is involved in mining at vents?

From plans already made by mining companies, “mineral extraction” will involve machines on the seafloor scraping up and pulverising the “seafloor massive sulfide” (SMS) deposits at a vent field, i.e. the vent chimneys and associated rubble around them.

This material will be pumped to a surface facility, where the metals will be extracted.  The remaining matter will be turned into a slurry, and in some cases may be pumped back down into the depths, to disperse from a pipe in mid-water and eventually settle across a wide area of the seafloor at very low concentration, similar to the fall-out from the natural plume of particles dispersing from the vents themselves.

What marine life will be most affected?

Now let’s think about the marine life that is likely to be most affected by mining at deep-sea vents.  Mining on land has an impact on local wildlife, but on land that wildlife usually occupies habitats much larger than just the area being mined.  So although some garden snails or earthworms may be killed by an excavation on land, that impact doesn’t usually cause concern, because those species are still common in unaffected areas.

So it is important to make a distinction between “normal” deep-sea animals that are found in extensive habitats beyond deep-sea vents, and “vent” animals that are only found in vent environments.

The plume of particle-laden waste water from seafloor mining could have an impact on “normal” deep-sea animals, for example suspension-feeding corals living on rocky seafloor away from the vents, or mid-water animals if the plume clouds the water (remember that many deep-sea animals still use light to communicate, hunt, and evade predators, even at depths beyond on the reach of sunlight).

But those kinds of animals usually have very wide distributions away from vents in the deep sea, so in terms of habitat loss or species extinction they are not particularly at risk from mining at vents; the impacts on them are similar to those on the garden snails and earthworms of our land-mining analogy.  The same applies to animals that may be affected by noise or other disturbance from mining activity, if their species have wide distributions and large populations beyond the impact area.

How will “vent” animals be affected?

But what about the impacts on the “vent” animals, which only live in vent environments?  The animals living on vent chimneys macerated by the mining machines will be killed.  But vent fields are naturally ephemeral features: when a vent field shuts down naturally, all the animals living there die out.  So mining, it is argued, simulates a natural disturbance process at an individual vent field.

In fact, mining does not “switch off” activity at a vent field; instead, it effectively resets the vent field to “time zero” in its natural development, by scraping the seafloor back to bare basalt with hot fluid still gushing out of it.  We know that the larvae of “vent” animals can recolonise that site from other vent fields in the region, because they did so when venting at that site first began (though how variable larval supply is, and whether a community will always follow the same pattern of development, is not yet known for vent fields in many regions).  And the chimneys grow back too (for example, we have seen chimneys grow several metres in a year between visits to some sites).

So on the face of it, mining at vents might seem an attractive proposition (and the word “sustainable” has even been used by some to describe it).  But as is often the case in the natural world, issues arise when we consider cumulative effects across a region, rather than individual sites.

What are the risks to “vent” animals from mining?

In the Western Pacific, where plans for mining at vents are arguably most advanced, most of the vent fields are associated with “back-arc spreading”, rather than being found on mid-ocean ridges.  These “back-arc” vent fields can be extensive, for example stretching over kilometres of seafloor in a ring around the summit of an underwater volcano.

At many of these “back-arc” vent fields, it is possible to mine just one part of the vent field, while creating “set-asides” or “reserves” within the same vent field or area, from which animals can recolonise the mined area afterwards.

That is exactly what mining company Nautilus Minerals proposes to do at the Solwara-1 vent field near Papua New Guinea, and they have worked extensively with scientists in the US to understand patterns of gene flow and thereby define what should be effective reserve areas as sources for recolonisation.

Looking at those plans as an independent observer, I think they will work in terms of mitigating the impact on “vent” animals.  The mined area should recover, with chimneys regrowing and “vent” animals recolonising them.

But – and it is a very big “but” – not all the vent fields on mid-ocean ridges are like the “back-arc” vent field of Solwara-1.  At mid-ocean ridges, would-be seafloor miners are targeting vent fields on “slower-spreading” ridges, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and SW Indian Ridge.  Vent fields on a slower-spreading ridges are often much less extensive in size than “back-arc” vent fields such as Solwara-1, and each vent field on a slower-spreading ridge is typically active for several millennia.

The TAG hydrothermal mound on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, for example, is one of the largest known mid-ocean ridge sulfide deposits, but its main active mound is only ~200 metres across, unlike the chimneys spread over kilometres at Solwara-1.  And the TAG mound has been active for at least 20 000 years, in cycles of activity and inactivity each lasting 4000 to 5000 years, revealed by “geochronology” of its mineral deposits.

So at the smaller vent fields on mid-ocean ridges, it is not feasible to create “set-aside” or “reserve” areas within a vent field that is being mined: it will be “all-or-nothing” for that particular vent field, considering the footprint required for machinery on the seafloor.  And most importantly: the natural rate of vent-field-wide disturbance on slower-spreading ridges, to which their marine life may be adapted, seems to be once every few millennia.

What we don’t yet know on slower-spreading ridges is how rapidly a colony of “vent” animals develops from “time zero” to become identical to the well-established colonies that we have found so far.  We have not yet found a vent field close to “time zero” on a slower-spreading ridge: the ones we have seen so far have large mineral deposits, indicating that they have been active for some time, and their ecology has remained largely unchanged over the decades that scientists have been visiting them, unlike shorter-lived vent fields elsewhere in the world.  If early stage vent fields on slower-spreading ridges have a different ecology, then mining of several vent fields in a region could reduce the habitat available for species that only inhabit mature colonies.

So this the main impact of concern for “vent” animals: if mining “resets” vent fields in a region at a much higher rate than they “reset” naturally, then we could see overall habitat loss for some “vent” species particular to that region, and ultimately an increased extinction risk for those species as a result of our activities.  So what really matters will be the rate at which we disturb these systems by mining, across a region, compared with their natural rate of disturbance at vent-field scale, and the rate of response of animal colonies to such disturbances on slow-spreading mid-ocean ridges, which we don’t yet know at vent-field scale.

What can be done to reduce the risk of habitat loss and species extinction at vents on slow-spreading mid-ocean ridges?

The most obvious answer to that question is “not to mine those vents”; however, as I will discuss in a further post, the decision has already been made (on behalf of all of us, yet seemingly without us being asked).

If mining goes ahead at active vents on slow-spreading mid-ocean ridges, it is therefore essential that it is carefully controlled at a regional scale, for example identifying a network of vents in a region that must be conserved to ensure viable “metapopulations” of species to recolonise mined sites.  And it will take considerably more research and exploration to inform such an approach in each region.

There is also an alternative at this point: for every “active” vent field on a slow-spreading mid-ocean ridge, there are probably at least ten inactive vent fields, where venting has ceased naturally but where the vent chimneys have not yet been buried by sediments.  As venting has ceased at these sites, the “vent” animals have moved on – but the metal-rich mineral deposits remain.  So potentially, it might be possible to mine inactive vent fields on slow-spreading mid-ocean ridges without the impacts on “vent” animals that we have considered here.

(Recent research shows that marine life at inactive vents can still benefit from chemosynthesis at nearby active vents, but the species involved are “normal” deep-sea animals, typically with wide distributions beyond inactive vents, so they may be similar to the earthworms and snails of our land-mining analogy).

Inactive vent fields may be less attractive to would-be miners, however, because they are harder to find.  We find active vent fields thanks to the plume of mineral-rich fluids gushing out of them, but inactive vent fields lack those tell-tale signals.  But it could still be possible to restrict mining of vents on mid-ocean ridges in international waters to inactive sites.

Whatever the future, effective regulation will be essential for vent mining; and in my next post, we’ll take a look at the organisation that already exists to regulate vent mining in international waters. And then in the final post, we’ll also take a look at some of the investors and contractors involved in developing the world’s first deep-sea vent mine, in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea.

– Jon Copley (original post March 2014; updated October 2015)

Supplemental, July 2014:

Two further items relevant to this post, in recent weeks:

(1) At the Council of the United National International Seabed Authority (ISA; responsible for administering seafloor mining in international waters) in July 2014, the Netherlands submitted a note recommending that the ISA consider establishing regional environmental impact assessments before awarding any “exploitation” contracts for seafloor mining.  Such a measure, if eventually adopted by the ISA, could address the concerns about “cumulative” impacts of mining at deep-sea vents described here.  So let’s watch this space…

(2) Andrew Thaler and colleagues have recently published an analysis of how connected some populations of animals are between deep-sea vents (which Andrew discusses eloquently in a post here).  Surprisingly, their new study shows that  a “non-vent” animal (Munidopsis squat lobsters, found in lots of deep-sea environments other than just hydrothermal vents) shows greater genetic sub-division than populations of Chorocaris shrimp (which are only known from “chemosynthetic” environments such as deep-sea vents) among deep-sea vents in different areas.  So the assertion in the post above that we should be less concerned about mining impacts on “non-vent” animals, because they can live in areas away from vents, may not actually hold true in all cases…

The post MINING AT DEEP-SEA VENTS: WHAT ARE THE IMPACTS ON MARINE LIFE? appeared first on Exploring our Oceans .

In my previous post, I outlined some of the possible impacts of mining at deep-sea vents on marine life, and how effective regulation at a regional scale will be essential to reduce risks of habitat loss and potential species extinction.

So for a second post to accompany Week 6 of our “Massive Open Online Course” on “Exploring our oceans”, let’s now take a look at the regulator that already exists for seafloor mining in international waters: the United Nations International Seabed Authority (ISA).  As we shall see, its procedures perhaps deserve some scrutiny and constructive critique, given their responsibility for environmental protection of the deep-sea floor.

How the ISA works

First of all, we should note that the International Seabed Authority exists to administer seafloor mining in international waters; it does not actually have a mandate to consider whether seafloor mining per se is desirable or not.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the deep sea is defined as “the common heritage of mankind”.  In other environments – such as the Moon – that same legal definition has been interpreted to prohibit the exploitation of resources, at least for now.

But in the implementation of UNCLOS, “common heritage of mankind” has been interpreted to mean “everybody should get a cut whenever someone makes a buck out of it”.  And hence the ISA was created to administer seafloor mining in international waters, not to ask the question “is it a good idea?”.  That decision has effectively already been made, in the 1994 Implementation Agreement for UNCLOS.  (And if you blinked prior to 1994, you may have missed any public consultation about it).

So here is how the ISA operates: it has identified different types of non-living resources of interest on the seafloor in international waters, and drawn up plans to regulate the development and mining of each of them.  So far there are three types of resources covered by the ISA: “polymetallic sulfides” (aka seafloor massive sulfides) formed at hydrothermal vents; “polymetallic nodules” (aka manganese nodules) on abyssal plains; and “cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts” that form on seamounts.

For each type of resource, there are two phases involved in development and eventual mining: “exploration licensing” and “exploitation licensing”.  Contractors apply for these licences, and contractors have to be “credible operators” with applications supported by a host country that has ratified UNCLOS.  Contractors so far include companies, research institutions, and government agencies.  There are currently 15 exploration licences in operation across all three types of resource, with four more about to be signed (and here is the list of contractors).

(As an aside, the requirement for sponsorship by a nation that has ratified UNCLOS excludes the USA from participating at present, and would therefore seem to exclude US companies as contractors.  But multinational companies, even if of US origin, can have subsidiaries in other countries that can apply as contractors, if that subsidiary’s application has the support of a “host” nation that has ratified UNCLOS. UK Seabed Resources Ltd, which is a subsidiary of US giant Lockheed Martin, holds two exploration licences sponsored by the UK government).

Licence applications cover geographical “blocks” of the deep sea, which vary in nature depending on the resource involved (for polymetallic sulfides at vents, for example, an exploration “licence block” is typically a ~1000 km section of mid-ocean ridge; and here is a map with blue blocks showing the four current exploration licence areas for polymetallic sulfides).

Contractors are then required to subdivide their licence block into an area that they will develop themselves, and a “reserved area” of equivalent potential value in which developing nations can operate with the assistance of the ISA, or where the ISA can operate through its own commercial “Enterprise” arm in a joint venture with the contractor.

(And given that the ISA has in principle created a commercial arm with the potential right to operate in licensed areas, it is therefore perhaps in the interest of the ISA to award licences… this structure seems to create a potential conflict-of-interest, from a perspective of environmental stewardship).

Award of a licence can exclude other contractors from operating in exactly the same areas for that resource, but cannot exclude scientists from conducting research there (access to international waters for scientific research is guaranteed under other terms of UNCLOS; it may get interesting, however, if a research expedition turns up for work at a site when a contractor is working there).

“Exploration licences”, which typically last for fifteen years, allow contractors to survey and assess the value of the particular resource in their block area.  Some extraction of the resource is allowed, as that is necessary to assess the value of mineral deposits.  The “exploration licence” also allows contractors to test and develop technology for future resource extraction.  So “exploration licences” do involve actual “mining” activities on the seafloor, which will have environmental impacts.  “Exploitation licences” then form a second phase, during which contractors extract the target resource from the areas identified during the “exploration phase”.

Contractors pay fees for their licences (e.g. currently $500 000 up-front for a polymetallic sulfide exploration licence, followed by an annual fee proportional to the area of the licence), which provide an income for the ISA to support the activities of countries that do not currently have their own capability to operate in the deep ocean.  And that is how the “common heritage of mankind” is implemented: nations that cannot access deep-sea resources in international waters can thereby receive a share when someone else exploits those resources.

ISA procedures in more detail

Applications for exploration or exploitation licences are reviewed by the “Legal and Technical Commission” (LTC) of the ISA.  That committee is comprised of 25 people with “personal qualifications relevant to the exploration, exploitation and processing of mineral resources, oceanography, economic and/or legal matters relating to ocean mining and related fields”  (note no explicit mention of environmental qualifications in membership there, beyond the broad term “oceanography”). Those 25 people (and here is a list of the current LTC members) effectively have responsibility for environmental stewardship of 45% of our planet’s surface (the proportional area of international waters) with regard to mining.

The majority of current LTC members, whose five-year term ends in 2016, are geologists or geoscientists, typically with relevant experience from petroleum or mineral prospecting.  Most of the remainder of the committee have backgrounds in law, and two current LTC members have backgrounds in environmental science or deep-sea biology.

LTC members are appointed by the Council of the ISA, which includes of representatives of nations that are the potential beneficiaries of the ISA’s activities.  The rules for the appointment of LTC members specify that “due account shall be taken of the need for equitable geographical distribution and the representation of special interests”.  Some members of the LTC are therefore the nominees of nations with perhaps most to gain from the award of mining licences under current ISA arrangements.  Individual LTC members, of course, cannot have any personal financial interest relating to seafloor mining in international waters.

Incidentally, some of the nations sponsoring applications for licences have voluntarily donated funds to cover the travel costs for delegates from developing nations to attend ISA meetings (e.g. see this press release), including meetings where those delegates consider licence applications by those nations.  I am not suggesting that arrangement in any way influences the decisions of committee members involved, but it seems an undesirable situation for the independent evaluation of licence applications (and given the overall >$14 million budget of the ISA, which already includes non-voluntary contributions from the same nations).

Overall, I think the ISA could benefit from greater transparency and public engagement.  The deep sea is the “common heritage of mankind”, and scientists exploring the deep ocean often go out-of-their way to share what they are finding and doing with wide public audiences, in the spirit of that common heritage.  The ISA, in contrast, seems almost hidden away in its headquarters in Jamaica, with a website that is rather impenetrable to non-technical visitors.  It does support training bursaries for scientists from developing nations, and convenes meetings and workshops with the scientific community about issues relevant to its work.  But as far as I am aware, it has never held any kind of public dialogue about its activities.  Given its responsibility to act on behalf of all of us, I hope that the ISA will consider increasing its efforts in wider public outreach.

An ISA anecdote

A couple of years ago, I was interviewed by a journalist writing a feature about mining at deep-sea vents.  I took them through the key points summarised in my previous post, including the suggestion that restricting vent mining in international waters to inactive sites could buy us time to develop a greater understanding of vent ecology before considering any mining at active sites.

A few days later the journalist phoned me back, saying that they had spoken to the ISA, and that everything was fine, because the ISA said that only inactive vent fields would be mined in international waters.

I was rather surprised, so I asked the journalist to clarify exactly where that restriction was specified in the ISA regulations for vent mining (having been through them carefully myself, and you can see them here).  After querying that point further with the ISA, the journalist called me back to report that the ISA simply expected that contractors would target inactive sites (for various reasons, for which I think there are credible counter-arguments), so the restriction was not made explicit in the regulations.

My concern about some of the procedures of the ISA perhaps took root at that point.  If restricting mining to inactive sites at present is desirable on environmental grounds, then that needs to be specified in the regulations.  Expecting an industry to regulate itself on such a point is weak, at best (particularly given that inactive sites are harder to find than active ones).

(An attitude of self-regulation perhaps seems to pervade other areas: for example, the responsibility for reporting incidents resulting in environmental damage currently rests with contractors – “A contractor shall promptly report to the Secretary-General in writing, using the most effective means, any incident arising from activities which have caused, are causing, or pose a threat of, serious harm to the marine environment” – Regulations on prospecting and exploration for polymetallic sulphides in the Area, Regulation 35, Section 1; this raises several questions in my mind, not least how “threat” and “serious harm” are to be interpreted or defined).

UN ISA vs UN CBD?

To me, currently there is an even more fundamental issue in the ISA’s procedures.  At present, the default outcome for any licence application is that it will be awarded (and if an application is rejected by the LTC, it has two further opportunities to be revised and resubmitted).  For a licence application to be rejected on environmental grounds, there must be evidence of likely environmental harm.  Specifically: “Prospecting shall not be undertaken if substantial evidence indicates the risk of serious harm to the marine environment” (Regulations on prospecting and exploration for polymetallic sulphides in the Area, Part II, Section 2; my bold-font emphasis added).

That is something of a reversal of the usual “precautionary principle”, whereby evidence of no likely harm is required for an activity to go ahead.  And that “precautionary principle” lies at the heart of another UN instrument: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); for example, Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration states that “lack of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

Consequently, the principles by which the UN ISA currently operates are potentially at odds with those of the UN CBD.  And I will illustrate that conflict with a personal example.

In November 2011, I led the first remotely operated vehicle dives to hydrothermal vents on the SW Indian Ridge, where the Chinese Ocean Minerals Research Agency (COMRA) had already been granted an “exploration licence” by the ISA for the minerals at hydrothermal vents, despite no-one knowing what lived at those vents.

We collected the first samples of vent animals from that region, finding some species previously known from other regions, but also several new species.  Although there are certainly more colonies of those new species at other vent fields along the SW Indian Ridge, for now we don’t know where, or how interconnected their populations are.  The impacts of any “exploratory” mining activities at the site we visited will therefore be uncertain until we have that knowledge.

Subsequently, I prepared an application for that vent field to be designated an “EBSA” (“Ecologically or Biological Sensitive Area”) under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.  The criteria were clear: the presence of populations of species not yet known anywhere else on our planet, and at potential risk from human activity.

The EBSA application was submitted by the UK delegation at a UN CBD meeting for the Indian Ocean in 2013, and perhaps not surprisingly, award of EBSA status was blocked.  I completely understand the reasoning: how could one UN body (the ISA) award China the rights for mineral exploration activities at that site, only for another UN instrument (the CBD) then to designate that same site “ecologically or biologically sensistive” with regard to human activities?

Hopefully, our EBSA application for the SW Indian Ridge vent field has helped to highlight a current gap between the ISA and the principles of the UN CBD.  Adding a biodiversity-conservation agreement to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is now being discussed, with the deadline for a decision at the end of 2015.  The options include establishing a new body to protect deep-sea biodiversity in international waters, or expanding the mandate of the ISA in environmental protection.

Environmental responsibilities in international waters are currently managed by “sector”, for example with separate instruments covering seafloor mining, cable laying, ocean dumping, shipping, and fishing.  That disjointed system is not best suited for the ecosystem-based approaches required to manage the impacts of our activities on the oceans, as recently highlighted by the Global Ocean Commission.

Recently some of my colleagues indicated that the International Seabed Authority (ISA) is best suited for the wider task of creating and managing deep-sea reserves for biodiversity, in a comment article published in the journal Nature.  The United Nations may indeed be the logical authority to oversee environmental protection in international waters.  But personally, for the reasons I have outlined here, I think that some fundamental reforms of the International Seabed Authority will be essential, if it is to be given greater responsibility for the environmental stewardship of our planet’s largest biome.

In the next blog post about deep-sea mining to accompany our free “Massive Open Online Course” (“MOOC”) on “Exploring Our Oceans”, we’ll take a look at some of the investors and contractors involved in developing the world’s first deep-sea vent mine, in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea.

– Jon Copley, originally posted March 2014, updated October 2015

Supplemental, July 2014:

Soon after this post, the ISA conducted a “stakeholder survey” about deep-sea mining, inviting views from potentially anyone, “to allow the Authority to prioritize issues based on stakeholder responses”.  In total, it received 55 responses: 20 were from governments (did your government submit one? And did they ask you about it, before doing so?) and 9 were from mining companies.  The ISA is considering holding this consultation open, however, to allow more participation in how it should govern the use of resources in the ~45% of this planet under its jurisidiction.

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