MiningImpact logbook 2021
Report of the project:
- Manganese nodule exploration in the German license area
- Manganknollen-Exploration im deutschen Lizenzgebiet
The scientific investigations within the MiningImpact project are controlled from aboard the Norwegian ship "ISLAND PRIDE
Source: Island Offshore
In early April 2021, scientists from the BGR and the European JPI Oceans project "MiningImpact" set off from San Diego (USA) on a 42-day expedition with the Norwegian ship "ISLAND PRIDE" to the Central Pacific. The aim is to carry out detailed monitoring of the environmental impact of mining tests in the manganese nodule belt between Hawaii and Mexico. From mid-April to mid-May, the Belgian company Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR) will test the collection of the metal-rich nodules from the seabed using a pre-prototype nodule collector that has been built at a sub-industrial scale 1:4. The test at a depth of around 4,500 metres is the first of its kind worldwide. The accompanying scientific investigations during this expedition, that is being led by the BGR, are to take place first in the Belgian and later in the German manganese nodule contract areas.
This prototype collector is used to test the collection of manganese nodules from the seabed
Source: GSR
The researchers of the "MiningImpact" project report on the scientific work during the collector test in the following logbook.
Further information:
- International Seabed Authority
(Note: Information on the MiningImpact project and the company GSR can already be found in the linked terms in the text).
Please send questions and suggestions to info@bgr.de.
| Blog #19: Starship "ISLAND PRIDE" "The ocean - endless expanses.... it's the year 2021. These are the adventures of the special ship "Island Pride", which, with its 66-man crew, is underway for almost 6 weeks to explore new worlds, new life and new sources of raw materials. Many nautical miles from shore, the expedition explores regions never before seen by man." |
| Blog #18: Observations of a camera man At first, I don't understand anything about what I'm filming. But I can see that the scientists seem to be working well together. When the sampling equipment arrives on deck from a depth of several thousand meters, everything has to go very quickly in order to bring the samples immediately into the refrigerated cold lab. The water temperature on the seabed is around 1.4 °C in this part of the deep sea. When taking samples, everyone lends a hand, as it’s all about minimising the time in which the samples could warm up too quickly due to the tropical heat and the analysis of the sample would be erroneous. |
| Blog #17: Nothing succeeds without logistics One of the interlinked and complementary activities without which no expedition would succeed is logistics. It ensures that equipment, chemicals, consumables and all other necessary bits and pieces are onboard. Because in the middle of the ocean, the nearest hardware store is far away. |
| Blog #16: GSR's collector test There is increasing recognition that the world needs more metals than current supplies can provide. We need metal to meet the demands of a growing population and urbanization. For clean energy technology we need specific metals such as nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper. Polymetallic nodules of the Clarion Clipperton Zone contain all of these. The world needs metal supply options and we are exploring one such option. |
| Blog #15: The International Seabed Authority Our expedition takes us into international waters, also called "the Area" and I am occasionally asked who issues the licenses for the exploration of mineral resources in that part of the ocean. Well, it's the International Seabed Authority, which is based in Kingston, Jamaica. The seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, i.e. beyond the 200-mile zone, covers about 40 percent of the Earth's surface and is considered as the "Common Heritage of Mankind" according to Article 136 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The International Seabed Authority (ISA) in Kingston, Jamaica, created in 1994, administrates this heritage. It is an autonomous international organisation with currently 167 member countries and the European Union. |
| Blog #14: The challenges of the box corer or the cold in the tropics In the blue-red evening light, the three challengers stand in front of the white barrel of four-degree cold seawater. The coffee-brown sediment in the box corer shines as a bricklayer's shovel approaches and lifts off the first pieces to carefully slide them into the seawater. Three hands approach the water, slowly dipping first the fingertips and finally three forearms into the icy water and begin to stir gently. The sediment must be stirred up, but that really doesn't matter. The real question is: Who will be the first to give up and pull his hand out of the bone-chilling water? |
| Blog #13: Catching trace metals at the seafloor A day without new samples and well rested for the first time since 10 days – now is the right time to write a blog contribution. More than half of the cruise is already over, the boxes for samples are filling up one after the other. We are still in the Belgian contract area but will start our 2-day transit towards the east soon. |
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Not many lab rats, such as myself, can join a seagoing expedition. This is my second trip. The first was an expedition to the North Sea, on our very doorstep, you might say. This one is between Mexico and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. So it's a bit further away. Since we are sailing in Covid-19 times, the preparations were really a nightmare. However, I don't want to expand on that. Let's just start at the airport in Frankfurt. Most of the scientists took the same flight to LA. The journey itself was quiet and, after all, very long with its 12 hours. When we finally arrived, we met other researchers from other countries and took a bus together to a hotel in San Diego, some 120 kilometers south of LA airport. In this hotel, we spent the following 12 nights in single rooms in self-isolation. Fortunately, each room was equipped with a small balcony and we saw each other during daily online meetings. Even an online sports and an online games group were formed. |
| Blog #11: Microbes are everywhere, so are we! It is four in the morning on main deck of Island Pride; Massi has found me among the people who are taking samples from Niskin bottles which came on deck recently, and said: “I’ve just finished the in situ pump sampling; after sleeping a couple of hours I could take care of samples from the multicorer, then I could start with nodules from the box corer. Once Jakob finished the assays for extracellular enzymatic activities, could you please start slicing the cores? I guess filtration of the seawater from the last CTD would be completed until that time. Then, if Felix and Duygu finished their job with the oxygen profilers; we can discuss water sampling and push core plan for the upcoming ROV dive”. It may sound exciting and the same time chaotic (maybe it does not make much sense for many of the readers…). For us it is more an issue of clever sleep-deficit management. |
| Blog #10: The AUV of the MANGAN 2021 expedition: What a beast! Sensors are on the seafloor, Patania II is making a loop, but how can we see what is happening in real-time? Mando is doing the job for us! The Hugin Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) that we have onboard the MANGAN 2021 expedition, and lovingly named Mando, is capable of flying independently from the ship for kilometers in water depths up to 6 km, for several days (up to 90 h in our case), carrying many different sensors. |
| Blog #9: Hunting the sea cucumber Imagine, you sit in a large, dark room with a lot of screens at the wall. In the front part is a control panel similar to control panels in science fiction movies and two chairs for the pilots. Behind these ones is another row of chairs for us scientists. This is the ROV control room where the remotely operated vehicle (ROV), a type of deep-sea robot, is operated. Controlled by two pilots, this ROV can dive to the abyssal plains of the deep sea at 4,500 m where the pressure is too high for any human diver. Still, on the screens you can observe a lot of life at the seafloor. The animals that you can spot are several centimeters in size and mainly consist of fishes and invertebrates. |
| Blog #8: The copepod in the mud pile Large animals can be recognized immediately. But besides the bigger and smaller animals, the mega- and macrofauna, there are the very, very small animals, that we call meiofauna. Although they always remain hidden from most people, they play an important role in the ecosystem and must therefore naturally be taken into account in our investigations. Due to their small size, working with these animals is often like the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack, because these tiny animals spend their lives in the seafloor. And looking for them there among the grains of sand can bring back old sandbox memories. |
| Blog #7: Greenpeace always on the watch From the onset of our research campaign until last Saturday, Greenpeace accompanied the Patania II collector test of GSR. The RAINBOW WARRIOR always stayed close to the GSR-chartered ship NORMAND ENERGY to observe what was happening, even though there is usually not much to see up here, as the test takes place 4.5 kilometres below our feet. It is not surprising that Greenpeace positions itself against deep-sea mining, and it is appropriate that the environmental organisation - like other NGOs - highlights the risks associated with potential future mining. Greenpeace has published information on the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining several times during recent months and years. |
| Blog #6: Groping around in murky water As explained in the introduction to this blog series, the plume of sediment stirred up from the seabed by mining machines is one of the major environmental concerns regarding deep-sea mining. The stirred-up sediment will be carried away by currents and for some part settle out in areas adjacent to the actual mining site, burying seabed fauna or impairing their breathing and feeding functions, and mixing the scarce nutritious material that sustains deep-sea life with large amounts of inedible mud. How much sediment is mobilised in the mining process and how far it is dispersed over adjacent areas are questions that urgently need to be answered in order to assess the full extent of environmental impact of deep-sea mining. |
| Blog #5: Preparing for the Patania II trial: Recap of an exciting week at sea After transiting to the first working area on Monday and Tuesday last week with calm seas and at an average speed of 12 to 13 knots, we arrived at the designated Belgian collector trial area on Wednesday afternoon at 13:00 hours. As expected, the GSR vessel MV NORMAND ENERGY was encountered working about nine kilometres to the southwest of the trial area, where they have been carrying out trials and functionality tests with their pre-prototype collector Patania II during the last few days. The Greenpeace ship RAINBOW WARRIOR was observed in its close proximity, remaining there during the first two days of our presence in the area, but following the NORMAND ENERGY into the trial area on Friday evening. They are still hanging around but have left us alone up to now and have not taken up contact with us or our vessel. |
| Blog #4: A marine expedition on hold: COVID-19 You could say that COVID-19 influenced the logistics of this cruise at all levels. We had loads more work and much greater uncertainties than any expedition I have been involved in so far. Working with all the MiningImpact partners from 10 institutes and 6 countries didn’t make it easier. We had to develop an exclusive COVID-19 outbreak management plan just for this expedition that needed to fulfil both the expectations of all our partnering institutes and those of the ship and its operator. |
| Blog #3: Polymetallic nodules: How they are formed and why we are interested in them Polymetallic nodules, often simply called manganese nodules, cover many millions of square kilometres of the deep seafloor in water depths between 4000 and 6000 metres. Besides manganese, they also contain nickel, copper, cobalt and traces of other metals such as molybdenum, titanium and lithium, and are therefore of economic interest. The largest and economically most important deposit is located in the 5 million square kilometre Clarion-Clipperton Zone of the tropical North Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico. It is thus slightly larger than the total area of all countries in the European Union and Great Britain. |
| Blog #2: MANGAN2021 – Meet the team Deep-sea mining is a highly complex topic. Studying the potential environmental impacts of mining manganese nodules at the seafloor, therefore, requires an equally diverse group of people. Today, we would like to introduce you to the MiningImpact team on board and tell you a bit about their prospective tasks during the expedition. |
| Blog #01: Expedition MANGAN 2021: A challenging cruise with high expectations There were many times in the last few months that we weren’t sure this was going to work out. What a crazy idea, trying to get two ships out synchronously into the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific in the middle of a global pandemic! Why did we do it? Well, because it’s now or never. |
