Experimental Seabed Mining. The latest frontier that science has come up with to satisfy other (as in NOT Papua New Guinea’s) man’s craves for mineral resources.

This video features Dr Chris Yeats (Ore Geologist, The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) and Professor Cindy Lee Van Dover (Marine Biologist, Duke University) who were sanctioned by Nautilus Minerals to undertake research on the geology and biology of Experimental Seabed Mining.

Dr Yeats, downplayed the effect Experimental Seabed Mining would have on the ocean floor environment describing it as

"something like ploughing a field or raking your garden, that you're, stirring up the environment but you're not fundamentally changing it”. 

But you would expect that from someone whose field of expertise are inanimate subjects.

Professor Lee Van Dover on the other hand (who was already piloting a deep-diving submersible when Dr Yeats was getting his PhD) sees it in another light. She knows that although there is research to show that these vent structures will reform and the organisms will re-colonize, the fact remains that we don’t know how long this will take or how the removing of these structures will affect the whole cycle of marine life and the food web. There is no one that can claim to be an expert on the impact of Experimental Seabed Mining.

Professor Lee Van Dover summed it up nicely with

“There's nobody who's an expert in that. No expert exists right now who has any idea how to tackle that. I'd love to know that a hundred years from now people would look back and say, 'That's the generation that got it right'.