Newly discovered deep sea organisms threatened by mineral harvesting

[Anonymous No.4219215]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/28/exotic-creatures-deep-sea-vent

"Copley said that characterising the life at the world's hydrothermal vents was a race against time. "Earlier this year, China was granted a licence by the UN International Seabed Authority for exploratory mining at deep-sea vents on the southwest Indian ridge," he said. "The vent chimneys are very rich in copper, zinc, gold and uranium. But we have no idea what's actually living there."

In evolutionary terms, hydrothermal vents were like the islands of the ocean floor, he added. "Just like the 19th century naturalists used to go to the Galápagos and other islands to find species there that are different to elsewhere and then use that to understand patterns of dispersal of dispersal and evolution, we can use deep-sea vents to do the same things beneath the waves," he said.

"And we need to do that because the exploitation of the deep ocean is overtaking its exploration. We're fishing in deeper and deeper waters, oil and gas is moving into deeper waters and now there's mining starting to take place in deep waters. We need to understand how species disperse and evolve in the deep oceans if we're going to make responsible decisions about managing their resources."

[Anonymous No.4219223]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/28/exotic-creatures-deep-sea-vent

Posting what they found

[Anonymous No.4219232]

>>4219223
So they just found some ugly snails. I'll take lower gas prices over this shit any day of the week.

[Anonymous No.4219233]

[Anonymous No.4219243]

>>4219232

They are extracting precious metals there, not oil.

[Anonymous No.4219246]

[Anonymous No.4219253]

Also, general Deep Sea thread

[Anonymous No.4219265]

>>4219232

You didn't even know what they were harvesting. You just said fuck it, kill everything that lives there so whatever they are making can be cheaper for me.

This is what kills science. Entitled Amerifats.

[Anonymous No.4219267]

On one side, we have the
>DEEP-SEA EXPLOITING, OUR TIME IS NEAR SEA-BROS

On the other we have
>HOLY SHIT NEW SPECIES WE NEED TO STUDY THE FUCK OUT OF THEM


>mfw

[Anonymous No.4219269]

>>4219265
>Fuck the economy. Science should come first.

This is what makes living costs so fucking high nowadays. Entitled environmentalists and scientists.

[Anonymous No.4219272]

inb4 we rape their land and move them all on to reserves.

[Anonymous No.4219280]

>>4219267

They don't need to conflict. We must conduct a survey of deep sea vents. The species around most are likely to be nearly identical, with only a few really unusual oddball ecosystems worth investigating. Those can be declared off limits and the rest can be mined. Or, we levy a tax on deep sea mining and the proceeds go to new deep sea labs, robots and submersibles.

[Anonymous No.4219291]

>>4219280
They don't need to, but they sadly will, it's a token.
I could be cynical and say money will win, but it's really not sure, and as my pic showed, either way something awful is going to happen.

[Anonymous No.4219294]

>>4219267
>>DEEP-SEA EXPLOITING, OUR TIME IS NEAR SEA-BROS

Did you hear about this?

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-12-29/news/30005676_1_deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-drilling

>"The plan is to construct 'cities’ more than 2,000 metres under water, containing machines, giant pieces of equipment and robots that could inspect the systems being used to extract millions of barrels of oil. Many operations would be fully automated while others would be controlled by humans at a distance."

[Anonymous No.4219305]

>>4219294

IT BEGINS

[Anonymous No.4219337]

We need to start looking into asteroid mining seriously, for the sake of the environment.

Deep sea mineral harvesting is a fucking mess, it causes huge plumes of silt to cloud up the water and could devastate our already fucked sea friends. The short term gains aren't worth it, we need to pace ourselves!

Japan has also discovered a massive (100bn ton) vein of rare metals at the bottom of their sea. Fuckety fuck.

[Anonymous No.4219339]

Well shit I guess we live in the future now. That was sudden.

[Anonymous No.4219348]

>>4219337

It's not especially messy to suction up rare earth mud, as Japan is planning on doing. It's using robots with bucket wheel excavators (like huge circular saws) to carve up deep sea vents that creates the plumes. The thing is we don't have robots dextrous enough to mine more precisely or carefully, the best we can do is have them shred the thermal vents using those huge circular cutting dealies.

If we could put human beings down there with powered mining tools we could extract minerals faster and more cleanly, possibly also preserving much of the vent ecosystem by carving around areas with no precious metals, leaving as much as possible for the remaining animals.

The problem is, robots are cheaper so that's how they'll do it unless environmental regulations force them to use human workers instead.

[Anonymous No.4219353]

>>4219348
>Implying China will obey regulations

This is how they will mine vents until a cheaper method comes along.

[Anonymous No.4219355]

>>4219353

They'll use slaves, breathing from very long bamboo snorkels

[Anonymous No.4219573]

>Japan has also discovered a massive (100bn ton) vein of rare metals at the bottom of their sea. Fuckety fuck.

Get your facts straight (it's not a vein it's mud): Assuming an average REY content of 1,180 +/- 189 ppm and dry bulk density of 0:66 g cm^-3, the 10-m-thick bed of REY-rich mud in an area of 1 km^2 at Site 76, in the eastern South Pacific, has the potential to yield 9,110 +/- 1,460 tonnes of REY oxides (tREY-oxides), or one-fifteenth (one-eighteenth to one-thirteenth) of the global annual consumption of REY in 2010 (134,000 tREY-oxides). Similarly, assuming an average REY content of 640 +/- 102 ppm and dry bulk density of 0:477 g cm^-, the 70-m-thick REY-rich mud layer in an area of 1 km^2 at Site 1222 in the central North Pacific holds nearly 25,000 +/- 4,000 tREY-oxides; 5 km^2 (about 2:3 km x 2:3 km) of this material at Site 1222 could possibly supply the majority of current annual REY consumption in the world. Considering that the REY-rich mud shows a thick distribution at many sites throughout the eastern South and central North Pacific, the seafloor REY resource potentially could exceed the world's current land reserves of 110 +/- 106 tREY-oxides, although more detailed sampling and analysis are needed to properly evaluate this possibility. Irregular
bottom topography, local currents, and highly variable rates of
biogenous sedimentation together may produce major differences in the REY-rich mud thickness over relatively short distances, hence resource estimates for large regions cannot be made until more detailed data are available for areas lacking cores.

Also, the life at that depth is minimal - mine the fuck out of it and fuck China. Also, mine the moon for rare earths.

[Anonymous No.4219581]

>implying lower gas prices or anything will be passed on to consumers
That shit never happens. It is just going to make the rich gooks and sand niggers even richer. People are so fucking dumb. Wasting unique and potentially cool species on money we will never see.

[Anonymous No.4219584]

seabros are the devil

[Anonymous No.4219991]

>dat feel when you wish they left the deep-sea creatures alone so we can watch more David Attenborough narrated documentaries about them.

[Anonymous No.4221752]

No, shut up, Amerifats need cheaper iPads.

[Anonymous No.4221767]

Who the fuck cares? Seriously?

[Anonymous No.4221772]

>>4219584

Don't blame this on seabros. Nobody here wants to see these creatures wiped out before we can study them. We're for science and exploration of the deep, not just industrialization and colonozation.

[Anonymous No.4221776]

>>4221767

This is one of the last unknown places we can explore that is not expensive and a total letdown like space. They actually find pretty weird interesting shit down there and I don't want to see it all killed before we can study it it just so electronics can be cheaper.

[Anonymous No.4221779]

The world needs affordable electric cars more than it needs documentaries about deep sea organisms. Sorry biolofags.

[Anonymous No.4221797]

Can't believe this shit is finally happening. They were talking about doing deep sea mining back in the 70s. Too excited about scifi coming to life to care about hideous deepsea snails dying out. They will not be missed.

[Anonymous No.4221816]

>>4221797

>last and most exotic untouched biome on earth being ripped up for metals

>HURR WE SEAQUEST NOW

Hope you realize how much natural beauty and biodiversity your childish futurist/colonialist way of thinking has obliterated in the past.

[Anonymous No.4221836]

So China is leading the world again at exploiting natural resources. What else is new? Perhaps for once the rest of world should get its act together it could beat China at this race whilst being slightly less of an environmental train wreck.

>>4219269
>believing that public spending on science research is the reason things are expensive, rather than the artificial scarcity imposed in corporatist society
lolwat

[Anonymous No.4221838]

>>4221816

We are running out of easily accessible resources. The ocean floor contains a whole second planets worth. Concern for wildlife will not keep us away from those resources. We need them to continue modern technological civilization, especially post-oil. Without the metals we need for electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels and nuclear reactors, life will suddenly become extremely shitty as the wells run dry. We can strike some compromise to protect the deepsea ecosystem, but we literally must industrialize the seafloor to keep society running and to make progress towards cleaner, more efficient forms of energy possible. You would nee dto be suicidal or misanthropic to stand in the way of that.

[Anonymous No.4221845]

Mad sci?

[Anonymous No.4221874]

>>4221845

Pretty sure he got sick of Violent Simians and left. But the seabro spirit carries on.

[Anonymous No.4221876]

>>4221874
Violent Simians?

[Anonymous No.4221886]

My dick is used for mining sometimes

[Anonymous No.4221898]

>>4221876

A malthusian troll who used to shit up sea/space threads with predictions of doomsday and mass death when oil runs out.

[Anonymous No.4221901]

>>4221898
:(

Mad sci was my favourite thing about this website.

[Anonymous No.4221906]

>>4221901

We can still have these threads without him yenno. I'm sure he'll come back once he figures out VS is gone.

[Anonymous No.4221909]

>>4221906
His last post here was on the 27th, he posted more about hampture on /diy/ on the 7th too.

[Anonymous No.4221920]

>>4221909

You stalking him or something?

[Anonymous No.4221928]

>>4221901

Don't fawn over tripfags. When they get a cult of personality it ruins their post quality. And pisses me off.