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The Dark Oxygen Discovery: A Game Changer for Deep Sea Mining? · How To Protect The Ocean

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  This dark oxygen discovery in the deep sea changes
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  everything we know about deep sea mining. We're
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  going to talk about on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. Let's
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  start the show. Hey
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  everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I
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  am your host Andrew Lu, and this is the podcast where we find out what's happening with the ocean, how
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  you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by
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  taking action. And for a long time, for probably the
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  last 10 years, deep sea mining has been
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  one of the issues that people and scientists and all
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  sorts of people have been worried about for a long time. in
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  electric vehicle batteries, EV batteries, so that we can
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  do better for the planet. But are we going to do better for
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  the planet? Do we actually have to mess up the
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  deep sea by mining the metals in the deep sea to
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  make the planet better because we will be able to create more cars
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  that have less you know, fossil fuel, exhaust,
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  and greenhouse gases going into the
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  atmosphere. We're going to mess up the ocean, which provides us
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  with the oxygen we need to breathe, and the deep sea, which we know virtually
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  nothing about when you really think about it, and we're going to deep
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  sea mine it to make the planet better. It just doesn't really add
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  up for a lot of people. Although, you know, the people who
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  are doing the work and trying to build more EVs
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  are saying they're doing it better, like they're doing a good thing for the planet, Are
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  they really, is this really what needs to be done? Can we not come up with
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  something different? And that's been the debate. That's really
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  been the debate. Is this really the thing that we need to do to
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  make the planet better? Can we not find an alternative? And even
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  if we did, I remember talking to Andrew Thaler, Dr. Andrew Thaler, who
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  is a deep sea biologist, and he's done a lot of work with
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  deep sea mining, including authoring and being
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  the chief editor of a deep sea mining magazine for quite some
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  time. He even said that even though if we start deep
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  sea mining today, The metals that will be
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  mined from the deep sea won't be put into production until about 50 years
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  down the road. The
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  problem with mining these metals right now is they're mined in cobalt
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  mines in Africa, which do not have good
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  human rights history. In
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  terms of the mining, there are rumors and videos showing
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  children mining. It looks chaotic. It doesn't look like they're being
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  taken care of, like we have in some mines in
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  North America and in the West, as well as in Europe. So obviously,
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  a lot of problems with that. when we start to
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  look at the deep sea and we're doing more and more studies on the deep sea
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  a new discovery was made and that some of those nodules that
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  are going to be mined are actually good for the
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  deep sea and probably belong in the deep sea. Why? Was
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  it because because they create oxygen.
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  That's right. The deep sea, which is a dark zone, it's not a photo
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  zone, meaning light from the sun does not penetrate down to
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  the 2,000 meters or 6,000 meters or even past 100 meters, let's say. to
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  get to light up the area. And why is that important? Why
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  do we think that when there's no light, we don't get oxygen? Because
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  normally we think, hey, photosynthesis gives us oxygen. The process
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  of plants taking in carbon dioxide and
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  spitting out oxygen through that process is what
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  really gives us the oxygen that we need to breathe. So we look
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  at plants, we look at trees, we look at phytoplankton from
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  the ocean, that produces a lot of oxygen. That's
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  why we say every second breath you take, you should thank the ocean and
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  the phytoplankton in the ocean that produces the oxygen that
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  provides us with that oxygen to breathe, with the great air that
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  we breathe in now. But now, That light
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  doesn't penetrate down into the deep sea, yet these nodules
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  that are on the bottom are actually areas where there's high
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  oxygen levels. So the researchers that published this study
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  in a scientific journal called Nature
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  Geoscience They were quite surprised because as
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  they had their detectors, as they had their instruments to
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  detect oxygen down towards the bottom of the sea, they noticed
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  that oxygen was increasing when normally it decreases. So
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  why does this increase? They don't know. They thought there was
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  something wrong with the sensors. So they sent down different sensors, better
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  sensors. And they noticed that they were having the same results,
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  higher oxygen, increased oxygen as they got towards the bottom. They're
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  like, what is the difference now where we're seeing, hey, there's
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  an increased oxygen in these certain areas? And what
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  they noticed was that there were these nodules. These nodules
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  that are known for deep sea mining, that are sought
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  after for deep sea mining, these are nodules that are made up
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  of cobalt, manganese, and nickel, and
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  if they're all jumbled up together, they make this like polymetallic
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  matrix. And it's like this mix of basically
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  metals. And when these are mixed, a
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  single polymetallic nodule will produce
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  about 0.95 volts. Now, hold
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  on a second with me. Just stay with me for a little bit, because I'm going to tell you why this
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  is important. When they're clustered together, Right? Not the
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  singular one that has 0.95 volts, but when they're clustered together, they
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  can actually reach a voltage of 1.5 volts. Why
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  is that important? Because that's what it takes to split oxygen from
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  water. So in the deep sea, there's a lot of water, right? It's
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  pressurized. And it takes about 1.5 volts to split the
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  oxygen from the water, the H2O molecule. And
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  so you will get oxygen. So when you have those nodules there, it
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  produces enough voltage to have that reaction happen without
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  light there. The light produces the voltage to have
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  that reaction to happen. However, when you're in the
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  deep sea, you don't have light. So you have these nodules. So
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  in areas where these nodules are, You get a little bit
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  more biodiverse animals.
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  You still get a diversity of animals there.
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  When there are no nodules on the seafloor, you're not getting as
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  many animals out there. You're not getting the diversity. You're not getting that complexity.
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  So these nodules, which are sought after for deep
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  sea mining, are also good for
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  oxygen. So this begs the question, What
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  do we do? From a conservation perspective, from an oceanic perspective,
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  how does this change the sought-after
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  deep sea mining that countries are looking for? How
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  does this change the companies who have spent millions upon
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  millions upon millions, maybe tens of even hundreds of millions, trying
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  to find ways to efficiently extract these nodules
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  from the deep sea without harming the surrounding
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  deep sea areas? How do, what
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  do we say to these companies? Is this the thing that
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  will ban deep sea mining, knowing that having oxygen down
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  there is going to be really important for these
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  habitats, right? Really important for the
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  geochemical processes in the ocean,
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  in the deep sea ocean. If we take those out, what is that going to
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  do to the deep sea? We're just scratching the
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  surface with its discovery, but this is a massive discovery in
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  deep sea science. This is something that could change
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  everything. You know, this 1.5 volts basically
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  appears to, the authors say they
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  discovered a natural geobattery. That was
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  from Franz Geiger from the Northwestern University,
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  he's a chemist, says these geobatteries are the basis for
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  a possible explanation of the Earth's dark oxygen production. So
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  knowing that oxygen is produced in the deep sea is one discovery, knowing how
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  it's produced is another. Obviously there are more experiments that need to
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  be done, more studies that need to be researched, and we need to find out how
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  this is going to happen. But this is huge. And
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  he says, this is a reason why such dead zones persist
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  for decades until unknown. So they did actually do.
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  In 2016, 2017, marine biologists visited sites
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  that were mined in the 1980s, so deep sea sites that
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  were mined in the 1980s, and found that not even bacteria had recovered in
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  mined areas. In unmined regions, however, marine
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  life flourished. So why such dead zones persist
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  for decades is still unknown, but however this
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  puts a major asterisk onto strategies for seafloor mining
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  as ocean floor fauna diversity in
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  nodular rich areas is higher than the most diverse
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  tropical rainforests. That is insane. Right?
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  This is why we need to do more discovery. We need to be doing
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  more exploration in the deep sea. We need
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  to find out why this is happening, where this is persisting,
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  and how that affects the deep sea. How do
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  we look at what we do? And it's really interesting because it
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  says, ancient microbial cyanobacteria have
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  long been credited for first supplying oxygen The oxygen required
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  for the evolution of complex life billions of years ago as
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  a waste product from photosynthesis turning sunlight
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  into their energy source. We now know that there's oxygen produced
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  in the deep sea where there's no light whatsoever. Right?
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  That is huge. That is massive. So
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  we have to revisit the question of where could
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  aerobic life have begun? We don't know. That's another question
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  that could be answered. There's more information in the
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  Nature Geoscience publication. I'll link to it in the show notes. But
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  this is a huge discovery. This is massive. This could change
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  the way we see deep sea mining. This could answer that question. Should we be
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  mining the deep sea, especially for nodules, taking those nodules out
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  of habitats where it produces oxygen? And
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  what is that going to do to the deep sea? How is that going to affect the
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  processes that work? How are those animals that are not there,
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  if there's mining that happens, what is that going to do to the deep
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  sea if those animals are absent in those particular areas? How
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  is that going to affect? We all know the deep sea is connected. We all know the
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  ocean is connected in a variety of ways. We know that some
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  crabs, some fish, all these different organisms,
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  the way they even disperse their larvae, right,
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  or even their eggs before they're even fertilized, sometimes those
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  eggs will travel, you know, a couple of feet, other times it'll
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  travel a number of kilometers just to, you know,
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  disperse as much as possible. And so we know the ocean
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  is connected to certain spots and certain organisms are, will fill
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  and become like a source for other places in terms of
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  the way they disperse their young, And so how
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  is that going to be affected in the deep sea? Is that going to be affected? Or
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  there's some similar processes for animals in the deep sea
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  that help, you know, populate other areas of the deep sea. We're
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  going to find that out soon enough, I'm sure. But should
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  we be deep sea mining knowing this information about dark oxygen?
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  That's what we're going to find out soon enough. I'd love to hear your thoughts though.
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  I'm going to put a poll in our Spotify account because you
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  can do that. I can actually add a poll. I would love for
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  you to answer that. Go over to Spotify, listen to this and just answer
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  the poll. Do you think this will affect the way we do
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  deep sea mining or if we're going to do deep sea mining at all? Love to
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  hear from you. And this is also going to be on YouTube, so if you want to put a comment, down
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  below, feel free to do so and answer that question. I'd love to
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  hear your thoughts on this, because this is the beginning of a conversation. I want to
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  hear your thoughts on this as much as possible. And you can also DM me
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  on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean. So many ways to get a hold of
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  me, but that's why we do this podcast. Anyway, thank
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  you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How To Protect The Ocean podcast. I'm
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  your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy