Over 5,000 species call a future deep-sea mining hotspot home
Over 5,000 species could be at risk if deep sea mining begins in the Pacific Ocean's Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Deposit Photos Industrial mining of the deep ends of the ocean for valuable minerals is becoming more of a possibility as companies search for new sources of needed minerals, such as cobalt and lithium. The devastating impacts that this noisy and extractive process could have on the ocean’s numerous species is front of mind for scientists around the world, particularly in the mineral-rich Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean. Now, experts are attaching some numbers to the concerns. [Related: Deep-sea mining has murky aftereffects.] A study published May 25 in the journal Current Biology found 5,578 different species in the CCZ, and roughly 88 to 92 percent of these species are entirely new to...