It is an ‘old saw’ that we know less about the deep sea than the moon. While that may have been true in 1969, the last few decades have seen tremendous amounts of data collection and scientific research on the environmental conditions of the sea floor—much of it enabled by the interest in seabed mining.
The comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies conducted within a specific mining area for planned mining operations provide a detailed understanding of the environment, enabling us to predict potential impacts and subsequently inform regulators’ decisions on whether to issue exploitation permits. Several have been already completed in licensed areas of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, for example.
As there has been exploration activities in the deep sea and abyssal plains for decades, there is actually a tremendous amount of raw data. The problem is that there has been limited funding to process and structure this data — and substantial funding only will become available when commercial activity is permitted.
The International Seabed Authority (ISA) DeepData Database contains data collected from mining contractors since the early 2000s. At the time of writing, this includes:
- Number of scientific cruises: 148
- Total Samples: 759,628
- Total Bio Samples: 150,920
- Total Geo Samples: 608,708
Globally, several programs are combining data to provide a better understanding of our oceans.
- Seabed 2030 aims to map the entire ocean floor by 2030.
- The World Ocean Database hosts the world’s largest database of data about the ocean water column (temperature, salinity, oxygen, nutrients, etc., by location & depth).
- The Ocean Biodiversity System hosts open-access data on marine biodiversity, connecting 500 institutions from 56 countries.
For more details, see our blog post: Data from the Deep Seabed: What Do We Know?
