This week, the Natural History Museum published this article that hit my sweet spot as an invertebrate zoology nerd! The article was based on this research published in Nature Ecology and Evolution about changes in faunal abundance and biodiversity from a large-scale test of commercial deep-sea mining in 2022.

The exciting news for me is they identified many new species and they documented how deep benthic ecosystems change over a two year timeframe. The bad news is that within the path of the nodule collector macrofaunal densities were still 37% lower and species richness still 32% lower two months after the test. No changes in these two measures were found in the control sites. The researchers observed natural variability over two years that was correlated with the El Nino/Southern Oscillation and they speculated that it may be related to food availability. On a somewhat positive note, densities were not statistically different between the area affected by the sediment plume and the unaffected control area.

Credit: Natural History Museum & University of Gothenburg

Credit: Trustees of the NHM London & University of Gothenburg

The results in this investigation highlight that: 

A) there is a high degree of species richness in the deep sea but our knowledge of the ecology of these habitats is very limited, and 

B) deep sea mining has measurable impacts to these benthic communities about which we know so little. 

While we need to secure minerals critical for our transition off fossil fuels, we must not trade one set of environmental impacts (irreversible impacts to deep sea ecosystems) for another (avoiding terrestrial impacts from mining.)

To that end, I recommend you learn more about the amazing deep sea environment as well as the International Seabed Authority’s recent events and upcoming session in early 2026 related to deep sea mining.

Cheers, Bill