Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / 5,000 New Species Prove the "Ocean Desert" Deep Sea Mining Claim Is Wrong

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5,000 New Species Prove the "Ocean Desert" Deep Sea Mining Claim Is Wrong · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  I have a question for you.
• 0:01
  What happens when the person who is trying to convince you a place
• 0:04
  is empty has never actually gone and checked what's there?
• 0:09
  There's one man's quote that gets repeated in a major magazine versus
• 0:12
  what scientists actually found when they went and looked for themselves.
• 0:18
  So what this is telling us here is that when someone says a quote in a major
• 0:23
  magazine, it gets taken out of context, and it gets put all over the world.
• 0:28
  And everybody, your family members, your friends are like, "Oh, yeah, but isn't
• 0:32
  there anything? There's nothing there." There's like, this quote said this
• 0:34
  thing, and this guy's a professional.
• 0:36
  He is a business person, a CEO for a DC mining company, and he says that there's
• 0:41
  nothing there, so he's gotta be right.
• 0:42
  Why would he lie?
• 0:43
  Why would he lie?
• 0:45
  What does he have to gain from lying?
• 0:47
  Well, apparently, millions and millions and millions of dollars, and that's
• 0:51
  essentially what's happened here.
• 0:52
  So today, on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, we're gonna be
• 0:54
  talking about this quote that he made.
• 0:56
  We're gonna go through the quote.
• 0:57
  I mentioned it yesterday in the Gerard Barron pattern, what I call
• 1:01
  the CEOs of natural resource companies that want to exploit and don't
• 1:05
  really care about the ramifications.
• 1:07
  It's not just against him, but it's just, like, some of the things that these CEOs
• 1:10
  do that really tick me off because it just, like, whatever they say, people are
• 1:15
  assuming that they are experts and that they know what they're talking about in
• 1:19
  certain situations in which we really don't, 'cause some scientists, including
• 1:21
  myself, really don't know what's down there, you know, until we see the facts.
• 1:25
  And today, that's exactly what we're gonna go through.
• 1:27
  After we talk about his quote and his claim, we're gonna talk about the facts.
• 1:30
  If you like this kind of stuff, follow the podcast to hear more 'cause we're
• 1:33
  gonna be covering stories like this a lot.
• 1:35
  Like, not necessarily where someone's making a claim that's not right, although
• 1:38
  that happens quite a bit, but we're gonna talk about the ocean, ocean news, ocean
• 1:41
  science, ocean conservation in a fun way.
• 1:43
  And this is a new style that I'm trying this week.
• 1:44
  I hope you enjoy it, storytelling style.
• 1:46
  and I really like it.
• 1:47
  I like doing it, so I'm gonna continue, but I'd love to hear your thoughts too.
• 1:50
  My links to socials are in the show notes.
• 1:53
  All right, here's the claim.
• 1:54
  In September 2021, in Time Magazine, they profiled Gerard Baron, the CEO
• 1:58
  of the Metals Company, it's TMC, and his push to mine the Clarion-Clipperton
• 2:03
  Zone, a stretch of international seabed between Hawaii and Mexico.
• 2:07
  Barron told the Time Magazine directly, and this is a quote, "If we started
• 2:10
  mining over again, knowing what we know now, surely we could carry out
• 2:14
  extractive industries in parts of the planet where there was the least life.
• 2:18
  We wouldn't go to the rainforest; we would go to the deserts.
• 2:22
  That's exactly what we have here in the CCZ, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the
• 2:25
  most desert-like place on the planet.
• 2:28
  It just happens to be covered by 4,000 meters of water." End quote.
• 2:32
  That's a direct quote.
• 2:34
  He's basically calling the deep sea, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a desert.
• 2:37
  So is it a desert?
• 2:39
  If we sit here and read that, and I tell you that quote, and we sit here without
• 2:43
  challenging that sounds reasonable.
• 2:45
  Like, we know that the deep sea, from what we know of before, it's really few
• 2:49
  and far between that we see animals.
• 2:51
  The anglerfish, deep sea sharks like sevengill sharks, and things
• 2:55
  like that are found at the bottom, goblin sharks, all these different
• 2:57
  species, the dumbo octopus.
• 2:59
  But they're not found all together in these habitats that we know of ' cause
• 3:03
  we always see them individually.
• 3:04
  We go based on what we see, what we know.
• 3:06
  But it's worth taking a serious look at the evidence of what has been
• 3:10
  found, especially in this area.
• 3:11
  'Cause you know what?
• 3:12
  In 2016, there was a study that was done in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the
• 3:16
  CCZ, and we're gonna talk about that.
• 3:18
  Cause, like, here's what, like, real surveys in that zone have actually
• 3:22
  measured, not just estimates, not just saying, "Hey, there's nothing there."
• 3:25
  Like, the actual counts from images and physical samples taken on site.
• 3:28
  So for the larger animals, the megafauna, one major 2016 survey of the CCZ, the
• 3:34
  Clarion-Clipperton Zone, found an average abundance of 1.8 individuals
• 3:37
  per square meter of seafloor.
• 3:39
  These are, like, larger animals.
• 3:41
  Like, the ones that you would see, so, like, 1.48 individuals per square
• 3:44
  meter, that means that's a pretty dense area for larger animals, like
• 3:48
  the larger fish and things like that.
• 3:50
  For the smaller animals living in the sediment, like the macrofauna, you're
• 3:54
  looking at typical abundance across the CCZ nodule regions, which is what's
• 3:57
  gonna be mined, runs between 200 and 500 individuals per square meter.
• 4:03
  We're looking at, like, macroinvertebrates and things like that, like worms and crabs
• 4:07
  and shrimp and all that kind of stuff.
• 4:08
  One specific Korean-led survey in the region documented 183 distinct
• 4:13
  macrobenthic species from just 36 core samples at a mean density of
• 4:18
  257 individuals per square meter.
• 4:21
  Does that sound like a desert?
• 4:23
  Like I'm not overselling it here.
• 4:25
  Like, these densities, they're generally low compared to coral reefs and
• 4:28
  rainforests, so you see that a lot more.
• 4:30
  But you're not looking at that comparison.
• 4:32
  We're looking at what's called a desert, which really implies
• 4:35
  like near absence of life.
• 4:36
  When somebody says, "Yeah, it's like a desert out there. If we
• 4:38
  mine there, we're not gonna bother anything." That's not true here.
• 4:42
  We're looking at pretty dense areas in the deep sea that we
• 4:45
  didn't really think was that dense.
• 4:47
  And what they show, instead of low density paired with exceptional
• 4:51
  diversity, hundreds of species identified from a small number of samples.
• 4:55
  The majority of them still undescribed in science.
• 4:57
  They're new.
• 4:59
  There are real direct before and after comparisons available now of this, right?
• 5:03
  Not a hypothetical one.
• 5:04
  So 2025 study examined an actual industrial deep-sea mining trial conducted
• 5:09
  in the CCZ, found that the machine's track left behind 37% lower macrofaunal
• 5:14
  density and 32% lower species richness, that means number of species, compared
• 5:18
  to the nearby untouched seafloor.
• 5:20
  So we're looking at evidence now where there's been samples.
• 5:24
  We've seen that there is a density, not as high as like coral reefs,
• 5:27
  which is like one of the highest diverse habitats in the world.
• 5:30
  But we're seeing dense.
• 5:31
  This is not a desert.
• 5:32
  This is something where there's animals that are living, and they
• 5:34
  are there for a function of some sort.
• 5:36
  We just don't know yet, but they're there for a function.
• 5:38
  And we're doing these tests, and we're seeing that there's animals
• 5:41
  there, and we're seeing that these are like biologically productive
• 5:44
  areas and areas where we don't even know these species existed before.
• 5:49
  Like insane to see, you know, that you're gonna be disturbing things.
• 5:53
  And the species that are there that we don't know about could be helping the
• 5:56
  human race at some point in time with vaccines or our health to help us get
• 6:00
  over like cancers and things like that.
• 6:02
  We have no idea, no idea what these things can do.
• 6:06
  Now, some people like thought the claim was believable.
• 6:08
  So the CCZ sits about 4,000 meters below the surface, so far past the
• 6:12
  reach of sunlight, so nobody can see.
• 6:13
  It's cold.
• 6:13
  There's high pressured water.
• 6:15
  And to the untrained eye and even early photography of the area, the
• 6:18
  sea floor looks like it's an endless plain of mud dotted with rocks.
• 6:21
  So like all they saw were these nodules.
• 6:23
  So for decades, deep abyssal plains like this one were assumed
• 6:26
  by many to be biologically sparse compared to shallower sunlit areas.
• 6:30
  That's what it was.
• 6:31
  So like you had these older pictures that we couldn't do the sampling that we
• 6:34
  are doing now, and we just didn't have the technology to be down there to not
• 6:38
  cause a ruckus to see these animals.
• 6:41
  And so it looked like it was biologically a desert, right?
• 6:44
  I get it.
• 6:44
  I get it.
• 6:45
  But like in 2023, research at the UK's Natural History Museum
• 6:49
  funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, published the first comprehensive
• 6:52
  species inventory of the CCZ.
• 6:54
  This is the area that they're going to target for deep sea mining, so this is the
• 6:57
  area that has been focused on the most.
• 6:59
  The count came to more than 5,000 species documented in the zone,
• 7:03
  including sea cucumbers, corals, glass sponges, and various worms.
• 7:07
  Corals and glass sponges, these are habitat-forming species.
• 7:11
  Somewhere between 88 and 92% of those species had never been recorded
• 7:15
  anywhere else before, meaning that they were completely new to science.
• 7:19
  So you're going from desert to 88 to 92% of the 5,000 species that were found
• 7:25
  had never been described by science.
• 7:27
  That's a pretty high percentage.
• 7:29
  Not a desert, that's for sure.
• 7:31
  The species discovery still haven't stopped.
• 7:33
  In 2026, researchers described 24 new amphipod species from the CCZ.
• 7:38
  This is the same region, including a species representing an entirely new super
• 7:42
  family and family, and a genuinely rare kind of discovery in modern taxonomy.
• 7:47
  Like, roughly 90% of all the species found in the CCZ remain formally
• 7:51
  unnamed even now, 'cause it takes a while to name them and describe them,
• 7:54
  years after the mining companies began pushing for the start of extraction.
• 7:57
  Now, the International Seabed Authority itself launched an initiative called
• 8:00
  the 1000 Reasons, aiming to formally describe 1,000 new deep sea species by
• 8:05
  2030, specifically because so much of what lives there is still undocumented.
• 8:09
  This is the Seabed Authority.
• 8:11
  This is the International Seabed Authority that is responsible for creating the
• 8:13
  regulations for deep sea mining, and now they want to be able to describe these
• 8:19
  species, at least 1,000 species, DC species, so that we can know what's there.
• 8:24
  The same agency that's responsible for regulating mining in the exact same zone
• 8:28
  is also running a campaign to acknowledge that there's little known about this area,
• 8:32
  and that's why, like tomorrow's episode, you're gonna hear from Matthew Gianni
• 8:36
  of why there is so much skepticism about whether deep sea mining is a good idea.
• 8:42
  If it's economically viable, it's even worth it.
• 8:45
  But from an environmental standpoint, is it gonna be too
• 8:48
  damaging where we just can't recover?
• 8:50
  So now one of the things here is what's actually making deep sea
• 8:54
  mining possible, is like what lives in the CZ and why it all lives there.
• 8:59
  So the polymetallic nodules that Barron's company wants to mine, they're not just
• 9:04
  valuable rocks sitting on empty mud.
• 9:06
  They're not just there for them to be plucked so that we can use.
• 9:09
  They are themselves the reason so much life exists in that environment.
• 9:13
  Beyond that they produce oxygen study that happened.
• 9:16
  The sea floor in that zone is otherwise soft sediment, and most deep sea
• 9:21
  animals can't attach to the mud.
• 9:23
  That's why a lot of these areas look like they're just quote unquote, deserts.
• 9:26
  So the nodule provides something rare in the deep abyss.
• 9:29
  It has a hard surface to grow on.
• 9:31
  So a 2016 study by friend of the podcast, Dr. Diva Amon and colleagues published in
• 9:36
  Scientific Reports that was led out of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, found
• 9:39
  that more than half of the megafaunal species living in these nodule fields
• 9:43
  depend on the nodules directly as a hard substrate to attach to and survive on.
• 9:49
  Like, now we're looking at the nodules that we're looking to take, these
• 9:51
  animals are literally living on them.
• 9:53
  So yes, you are going to be killing species.
• 9:55
  We know that for a fact, not only from the actual operations of these
• 10:00
  machines, but you're actually gonna be taking animals that need these
• 10:03
  nodules, and you're gonna be killing them 'cause you're gonna be taking them
• 10:05
  off as you bring them up to the surface.
• 10:07
  So the same study found more than half of the species collected during the
• 10:10
  survey were entirely new to science.
• 10:12
  So again, more new to the science, more rare species,
• 10:16
  more damage to the environment.
• 10:18
  Now, a separate line of research measured raw abundance rather than
• 10:21
  species count and found nodule-dwelling animals can make up to 60 to 70%
• 10:26
  of the total number of individual creatures present in nodule fields.
• 10:30
  Now, all of these indications really start to point that we are
• 10:34
  going to damage the environment.
• 10:36
  The nodules that they're actually targeting in this area are the
• 10:40
  very habitat that is expected from many of the species, like 60 to
• 10:44
  70% of those species in that area.
• 10:46
  That's just talking about, like, the animals that are there.
• 10:48
  A follow-up food web modeling study estimated that removing the nodules
• 10:52
  could cause a loss of up to 18% of all species or taxa present in the CCZ.
• 10:58
  So the rocks he's, like the areas where he's calling a desert that these
• 11:01
  rocks sit on, far more than half of the animals living there, it's the
• 11:05
  only reason they can live there.
• 11:07
  So removing the nodules doesn't just disturb the area, it actually takes
• 11:10
  out all of the species, like the habitat itself for those species.
• 11:13
  And this is what they're there for.
• 11:14
  This is what they're gonna be grabbing.
• 11:16
  Now, scientific studies have specifically identified what
• 11:19
  are called nodule-dependent or nodule-obligate species.
• 11:22
  It's the animals that rely on those nodules for some essential part of
• 11:25
  their life history, whether it's their adult life or whether as
• 11:28
  they're developing into an adult.
• 11:30
  And it cannot just simply relocate if the nodules are gone.
• 11:33
  So like they need to be, they need to have the nodules.
• 11:36
  All this puts like a number on what disappears if mining proceeds at a scale.
• 11:40
  So it's not just the claim of a desert, it's like this is what's gonna happen
• 11:43
  because if you take these nodules, which you're targeting for this money, then
• 11:47
  you are going to destroy the environment.
• 11:50
  We know this for a fact.
• 11:51
  It's not a small fraction, it's more than half of the larger
• 11:54
  animal species in these fields.
• 11:56
  And that's according to that Diva Amon study in 2016.
• 11:59
  Now, other research confirms that nodules provide the hard substrate
• 12:02
  that suspension feeding and stationary animals like sponges and
• 12:05
  cnidarians depend on, so corals.
• 12:07
  And these are the very animal groups that dominate the megafauna in Eastern CCZ.
• 12:13
  So like again, we're seeing this hit every single time.
• 12:17
  A CEO comes in, so it's like my claim yesterday that these CEOs come in
• 12:21
  and they say, "Hey, you know what?
• 12:22
  We're not gonna do any damage.
• 12:23
  Don't worry about it.
• 12:24
  We're fine.
• 12:24
  Like it's a desert down there." And the scientist is like, "Well, we're gonna
• 12:26
  call your bluff on that and we're gonna go down there ' cause we think we wanna
• 12:30
  know what's there, and then we're gonna just take it all up and we're founding."
• 12:33
  So like if we go back to the Baron's own words from the opening of this
• 12:37
  episode, " The CCZ is the most desert-like place on the planet." And then now
• 12:41
  we have all the evidence, over 5,000 species documented and still climbing.
• 12:45
  Roughly 90% of them are entirely new to science, and more than half
• 12:48
  of the larger animal species there depend directly on the very nodules
• 12:52
  that the company wants to remove.
• 12:54
  When I say that we don't know the damage that's gonna be done in the deep sea, in
• 12:58
  this particular case, we know the damage that's gonna be done in the deep sea.
• 13:02
  And it's probably why the Metals Company is not pursuing deep
• 13:06
  sea mining through the ISA, the International Seabed Authority.
• 13:08
  They decided to go with the Trump administration because everything
• 13:11
  they say, all the claims that they make have been debunked, especially
• 13:15
  in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
• 13:16
  So now they're going a different route.
• 13:18
  They're going to the Trump administration, who we know they
• 13:20
  don't care about the environment.
• 13:21
  All they care about is making money, and for the country,
• 13:24
  or for themselves, who knows?
• 13:25
  Allegedly.
• 13:26
  They're already showing that they're gonna pursue with these leases.
• 13:28
  TMC's got major investments going, and if they get this lease that's
• 13:33
  coming up in the Northern Mariana Islands, their stock is gonna go up.
• 13:37
  Now again, I said yesterday, whether they decide to continue to mine, like
• 13:41
  to actually do the deep sea mine, or they just sell their stock because
• 13:45
  it's gone up, that's another story.
• 13:47
  But I guarantee you that if Barron can make money, he will make
• 13:50
  money from whatever he can do.
• 13:52
  And as the ISA, you're gonna hear tomorrow from Matthew Gianni, as
• 13:55
  the ISA kinda concluded, we don't really know if there's economic
• 13:59
  sustainability in deep sea mining.
• 14:01
  Because the way things are going, the claim for deep sea mining is
• 14:04
  to help perpetuate the EV market.
• 14:07
  Grow the EV market by making more batteries through critical minerals,
• 14:10
  and by taking the pressure off of land mining in rainforests
• 14:13
  like human rights violations.
• 14:15
  Yet these batteries are getting better and more efficient, and
• 14:17
  they're depending less on the metals that are being mined in these areas.
• 14:22
  So what do we do?
• 14:23
  Right?
• 14:23
  What do we do?
• 14:24
  Is this really worth it?
• 14:25
  Is it really gonna be worth it?
• 14:27
  Not to mention that this US effort right now in the Northern Mariana
• 14:30
  Islands, they haven't really consulted with the local people and government
• 14:34
  of the Northern Mariana Islands.
• 14:36
  And this is happening right off of their shore, where there's a marine protected
• 14:39
  area called the Mariana Trench, right?
• 14:41
  Which is one of the deepest parts of the world.
• 14:43
  There's no consultation on how the people will benefit.
• 14:47
  There's no indication of sharing of profits to the local people.
• 14:51
  but they're gonna take the brunt of the consequences, just like I
• 14:54
  said yesterday Papua New Guinea did, if things don't work out.
• 14:57
  So really it's up to you.
• 14:58
  There's a lot of pressure on what's happening here.
• 15:01
  Deep sea mining doesn't look like it's gonna be economically viable, and
• 15:04
  that's according to the International Seabed Authority, not just scientists.
• 15:07
  These are regulators, these are business like economists and things
• 15:09
  like that, that are all a part of this.
• 15:11
  It's a UN body.
• 15:12
  Yet the US government is like, "Hey, we can do this. We can make money.
• 15:14
  We can do this," although we don't even know if we can make money.
• 15:16
  We just know that the stocks will go up if there's an indication
• 15:19
  that we are going to do something.
• 15:20
  And so, we know that's gonna damage the environment, like a lot.
• 15:24
  In my opinion, there's really nothing to do but to vote this down.
• 15:27
  And for those of you who are in the US and you have a chance to vote this November
• 15:31
  or the elections that are ongoing as we speak, I highly recommend that you vote.
• 15:35
  If you are listening to this, you care about the environment,
• 15:37
  or you're interested at least.
• 15:38
  And it's really up to the policymakers.
• 15:40
  There have been lots of cases and lots of committee meetings, Senate and House
• 15:46
  committee meetings on deep sea mining, and there's a lot of information there that
• 15:50
  shows that this is not a very good idea or we don't even know the ramifications
• 15:54
  economically and socially for the people who are around these areas, the Northern
• 15:57
  Mariana Islands, the American Samoa.
• 16:00
  Yet this government continues to ignore those people's concerns.
• 16:04
  And when they did the request for information and feedback from the
• 16:07
  public, over 60,000 people said, "We don't want this. We're concerned."
• 16:12
  And like three or four comments said that they're okay with it, and they
• 16:14
  doubled the actual size of the lease.
• 16:17
  It just doesn't make sense.
• 16:18
  And so the November elections, the midterms are coming up.
• 16:21
  There could be a significant change.
• 16:23
  I'm Canadian, I'm not here to manipulate or influence in any kind of way.
• 16:27
  But if you wanna save the environment, especially that, and you care about
• 16:30
  some territories in the US that, have become very important and take the
• 16:33
  brunt of the consequences from decisions that have been made over
• 16:37
  decades and decades and decades of bad decision-making by the US federal
• 16:41
  government, this is your chance.
• 16:43
  So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
• 16:44
  Hit me up in my socials on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.
• 16:48
  Love to hear your thought, or on LinkedIn if you can find me.
• 16:50
  But other than that, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
• 16:53
  Share this with somebody that you know would enjoy this, and don't forget to
• 16:57
  hit, hit the follow, and please vote.
• 16:59
  Please vote this year.
• 17:00
  And I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
• 17:03
  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 17:04
  I am your host, Andrew Lewin.
• 17:05
  Have a great day.
• 17:06
  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.