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A British Columbia company piloting deep-sea mining in the Pacific Ocean says the release of discharges directly into the sea reported by Greenpeace was an accident and was quickly resolved.
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On Wednesday, Vancouver-based publicly traded corporation The Metals Company said video footage released by Greenpeace showing dirty water flowing directly from the company’s mining ship into the ocean was a “minor event and temporary”.
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The company said the discharge was a combination of seawater, sediment and fractured nodules that contained no toxins.
TMC is one of several companies globally that want to mine the seabed for polymetallic nodules, basically fist-sized rocks that contain metals like nickel, copper, manganese and, in particular, cobalt, which is needed for vehicle batteries. electrical.
While the concept of deep sea mining has been around for decades, the rise of electric vehicles and the need for precious metals to build their batteries has sparked renewed interest. Environmental groups are opposed by the damage to the sea floor and the death of the aquatic life that lives there, and especially by the impact of the sediment columns that are created when mining machines move across the bed of the ground.
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The nodules take millions of years to form and the deep-sea ecosystem is currently intact and the least known on the planet.
Deep-sea mining is not currently permitted, with the Jamaica-based United Nations International Seabed Authority working on a framework that would allow the practice. TMC has signed an agreement with the Pacific island nation of Nauru as a sponsor and has permission from the ISA to test mine in what is called the Clarion-Clipperton zone, a huge cylindrical strip of seabed between Mexico and Hawaii.
It was during these tests, conducted last September, October and November, that someone filmed the discharge of mine waste from the Hidden Gem drillship.
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According to Greenpeace, the anonymous scientists working on the ship allege that there are “failures in the scientific program and monitoring system, poor sampling practices and equipment failures that render the data collected meaningless.”
Testing by TMC is supposed to determine how big and wide the sediment plume caused by mining is, and how best to get the nodules from the seabed to the ship through what is essentially a pipe of suction, called an airlift lift. The company received permission to collect 3,500 metric tons of nodules.
The company said it was an unforeseen increase in water, sediment and nodules coming up the airlift lift that caused the intermittent overflow of water over an eight-hour period on an October day that was recorded and published by Greenpeace.
“As described in the Manifold Test Environmental Impact Statement, the purpose of these pilot tests was to test an untested system, on a scale that would not cause serious harm to the marine environment. Testing proceeded as planned with any design flaws identified and corrected immediately, learnings that Allseas will incorporate into the full-scale commercial system design,” the company statement read.
Allseas is a Swiss-Dutch company that works with TMC.