Scientists Continue to Advise Deep-Sea Mining Discussions

Last month, experts from around the world came together in Kingston, Jamaica, to discuss the future of Earth’s enigmatic and vast deep sea. Gathered for the second meeting of the 30th session of the International Seabed Authority, participants were there to continue developing regulations for the emerging deep-sea mining industry in international waters. During the meeting, several ISA Assembly members called for increased investment in deep-sea science and technology. The Assembly as a whole reaffirmed its plan to continue developing draft regulations of a mining code and designated November 1 henceforth as the International Day of the Deep Seabed to raise awareness about the ocean floor environment.

Among the diplomats, advocates, and lawyers, were a small but mighty contingent of scientists, including Bigelow Laboratory’s own Vice for President Beth Orcutt, a recognized expert in deep-sea science. Scientists like Orcutt have been deeply engaged with the ISA throughout the regulatory development process to provide expert guidance.

“Even though companies have generated a lot of data, there are still really big knowledge gaps in our understanding of this ecosystem and what impact mining could have,” Orcutt said. “As a scientist, my job is to explain those gaps — and what information we need to fill them — to help regulators and companies make scientifically-informed decisions to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment.”

Orcutt has attended several meetings of this international body with the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative, a global network of science ambassadors that has official observer status with the ISA. During the second week of this month’s meeting, the network organized a side event to explain the latest science. Orcutt attended the first week of the meeting in order to participate in an event arranged by the Legal and Technical Commission.

The LTC has been tasked by the ISA with developing recommendations for “thresholds of harm,” or the tipping points beyond which impacts from metal toxicity, sedimentation, and noise and light would trigger specific policy responses. Orcutt is part of an expert group advising the LTC on those recommendations.

“What are the baselines? What do we know about harmful effects? And how might they approach setting thresholds?” Orcutt said. “The expert group has been trying to synthesize all known information on those topics, including both publicly available data as well as proprietary data from contractors. As you can imagine, it’s a lot.”

At the meeting, the LTC recognized the enormity of that task and asserted its hope to have recommendations available for public input within the year.

As this vital work continues at the international level, scientists like Orcutt have also been engaging with policy conversations here in the U.S. to ensure that science remains front and center in American policy. The U.S. is not a member of the ISA’s Council, but the current administration’s position has received increasing attention after an executive order on deep-sea mining was announced in April.

Orcutt and her colleagues continue to lay out what scientists know about the deep sea, what concerns there are under existing environmental laws, and what will be needed to address the significant knowledge gaps (she recently spoke on the NPR science podcast, Short Wave, on just that).

One such need they highlight is new technology, such as the advanced environmental DNA techniques that Bigelow Laboratory scientists are developing, to rapidly assess and monitor these understudied environments. However, Orcutt stressed that those technologies must be massively scaled, which, in turn, requires significant investment.

“There is a clear desire to understand the deep sea and if it has economic and national security value,” Orcutt said. “Right now, the gaps in information are just so significant, and developing robust baselines to guide management decisions will require significant new data and sample collection efforts.”

Photo Captions:

Photo 1: Orcutt speaks as a representative of DOSI at the recent ISA meeting on July 10 (Credit: IISD/ENB | Andrés Felipe Carvajal Gómez).

Photo 2: The DOSI delegation pose for a photo during the second part of the 30th session of the ISA in Kingston, Jamaica.