MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, May 15, 2021

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."
(in reference to Starship Enterprise)

Oh dear!

What have we gotten ourselves into?

The expedition MANGAN 2021! Sounds pretty cool. But almost 6 weeks at sea? And then 12 nights of hotel quarantine in San Diego? Such a long business trip is not usual for us, and it took a lot of persuasion at our TV station to allow us to go on board. Especially at this moment in time, when the world has other issues to worry about.

But I absolutely wanted to. I was also happy to convince Thomas of the project. After all, it's an exciting topic. One that I have had on my agenda for a long time.

Deep-sea mining, manganese nodule mining, visions of the bottom of the sea. The industry sees a huge opportunity to secure the energy supply of the future with the metals of the deep sea. Especially now that everyone is talking about the electrification of cars. A complex topic. One that is also potentially associated with significant environmental impacts. Mining down there is not that simple. There will definitely be an impact, that much is already clear. The scientists we are now accompanying are going to investigate this impact. A great opportunity for us! Especially now that the Decade of the Oceans has begun. It all fits together!

So we plunged into a world that was completely unknown to us. Suddenly everyone around us was talking about box corers, amphipod traps, MUC, plume, CTD, crane, rosette water samplers, etc. Eh??? Technical jargon that we first have to familiarise ourselves with.

We are happy to get involved, especially as we are surrounded by really nice, competent scientists and the crew, who always support us.

Almost six weeks on the "ISLAND PRIDE". Two men in one cabin. Whew!

It roars and vibrates. It rocks anyway. The transverse thrusters keep the ship computer-controlled exactly on the given position in the 'Clarion Clipperton Field', somewhere out there in the infinity of the Pacific Ocean. Thomas and I lie in our narrow bunks, wanting to get some sleep - it doesn't quite work. It has become late again. Problems with the winch have caused major delays. Some measuring instruments could not be lowered into the depths on schedule. Delays again and again, plans are constantly being overturned. Poor Matthias! :( His meticulously worked-out work plans are constantly obsolete. And we are always on guard, because important events could take place on board at any moment, which we desperately want to capture on camera.

Don't miss a thing, this thought is always in the back of our minds. This is, after all, a rather unique expedition, the results of which may bring about decisive decisions on how the world community will continue to deal with the remaining resources of this planet - and what effects this will have on nature.

We have a lot to do during these weeks, there is a lot to shoot for our documentary.

The lab work, preparing the measuring instruments, letting the instruments out, interviews, every day brings us something new. And results that need to be interpreted.

At night, the biologists want to use one of the remotely operated robots to search for animals on the deep seafloor. They have been given one hour to do so. Of course, we want to accompany them with the camera in the control room. Maybe there will even be a creature that no one has ever seen before.

We will try to sleep an hour or two until then. In our double cabin with about nine square metres and a bunk bed. Thomas in the upper level, me in the lower level. We get along well, but we also have to keep our clothes and equipment tidied up. It's not always easy in the cramped space, which is also always on the move.

It's an interesting experience and we’re bringing back a lot of stuff.

We still have to do a bit of re-shooting when we get more results and evaluations of the research work from here, from the Pacific Ocean, back home. I'm looking forward to the editing, even though I already know that it won't be easy with all that material.

Doing justice to the topic and the interesting protagonists and their work will be a challenge!

Many thanks to the BGR, to Annemiek, Carsten and Matthias for getting involved with us and taking us along. Thanks to everyone involved for the exciting filming opportunities and all the support. That was great!

Ship Ahoy!

Michael Stocks/ SWR

MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, May 14, 2021

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.

Map of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the tropical East Pacific with the contract areas of BGR (red) and GSR (yellow) and our port of departure in San Diego. Contract areas of other contractors are shown in light yellow and exploration areas relinquished by contractors to the International Seabed Authority are illustrated in blue-grey. Protected areas where no mining is allowed are marked in green Source: BGR

• What is needed and in what quantities?
• What still needs to be bought and what are the delivery times?
• Where will the material be stored?
• What customs regulations have to be considered?
• Are only those things included that are on the packing list for customs?
• Is there airfreight in addition to container transport by ship?
• When does the freight have to be shipped so that it arrives at the port of destination on time?
• ...

If planning and execution are poor, the entire expedition can fail. However, even if the preparation is good, there are always factors beyond one's control. For example, the weather. Due to heavy snowfall and black ice, our containers almost could not be picked up by the shipping company from the BGR storage area in Hanover and transported to the port in Hamburg as planned. Only after hours of shoveling snow and scraping ice could the trucks leave. Moreover, on this expedition, of course, we additionally had to deal with COVID and its global effects. A container ship that was supposed to take our cargo was suddenly cancelled without replacement and the newly booked container ship was already several days late in Hamburg and then simply left five of our containers at the pier, so that they had to be rebooked again on another freighter! At the destination port of Los Angeles, a long traffic jam had formed due to congestion and COVID-related staff shortages. It therefore took about ten days before the ships were even allowed to enter the port.

Result: Despite a considerable time buffer of three weeks that we had planned for, the research vessel and we were there, but our equipment was not.

After the delayed arrival of the nine containers in total, they had to be unloaded and all the expedition equipment and working material had to be stowed in the laboratories, on deck and in three containers that we took with us on board the ISLAND PRIDE.

Unloading the containers on deck of the ISLAND PRIDE Source: Mirja Bardenhagen

Boxes with working material are stowed in the port of San Diego Source: Mirja Bardenhagen

After everything has passed through the particularly strict US customs, hopefully without any problems, is loaded onto a cargo ship and has passed through the German customs back home, the containers will arrive back in Hamburg and finally in Hanover at the BGR in a few weeks' time.

There we have to unpack everything again and store it away for the next expedition.

After that work is finished, we can finally take a look at the samples collected in the Pacific Ocean.

Warm greetings from the tropics,
Mirja Bardenhagen

MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, May 13, 2021

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.

Headquarters of the International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica Source: ISA

The ISA is mandated under the UNCLOS to organize, regulate and control all mineral-related activities in the international seabed area for the benefit of humankind as a whole. In doing so, the ISA has the duty to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment from harmful effects that may arise from deep-seabed related activities. It also has the task of advancing the balance of interests between industrialised and developing countries. Since no deep-sea mining has taken place to date, the central task of the ISA is currently to draft the regulations for the future mining of mineral resources in the deep sea, in addition to issuing and monitoring exploration contracts.

Plenarsaal der IMB während der 25. Sitzung in Kingston Source: IISD Reporting Services

Both state-owned institutes such as the BGR and private companies as Global Sea Mineral Resources can apply for an exploration contract for a fee of 500,000 US dollars. The applications must be endorsed by their home state, the so-called "sponsoring state". The sponsoring state verifies the applicant's compliance with the requirements defined by the ISA regulations as well as its financial and technical capabilities. Furthermore, the state is obliged to monitor and is liable for this activity. Since 2001, the ISA has concluded a total of 30 contracts to explore the seabed for mineral resources. So far, eighteen contracts for the exploration of manganese nodules in areas of 75,000 square kilometers each have been issued, five for the exploration of manganese crusts (3,000 sq. km each) and seven for the exploration of massive sulphides (10,000 sq. km each). The contractors are from twenty different countries, twelve of them from Asia, thirteen from Western and Eastern Europe, four from Pacific island states and one from South America. Another contract with a company based in Jamaica is still pending signature. Each exploration contract has a term of 15 years with the possibility of extensions of five years upon application. These contracts also grant a priority right to future mining licenses and - after an extensive environmental impact assessment - allows for the testing of technological equipment, for example for a mining collector, as is planned for the next few weeks in the Belgian and German contract areas.

Warm greetings from the Pacific Ocean,
Carsten Rühlemann

MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, May 12, 2021

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.

I’m Katja and I work as Geochemist at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in the department for Marine Resource Exploration. It is the third time for me that I spend several weeks here in the Central Northeast Pacific Ocean, an area where the seafloor in more than 4000 meters depth is covered by ore deposits called manganese nodules. This year’s cruise aims at monitoring and investigating the direct environmental impacts of a prototype mining vehicle operation at the seafloor that lasted for several days. I will look at it from a geochemical perspective, focussing on trace metals.

An anthropogenic release of trace metals that are naturally bound in the seafloor mud and in the manganese nodules is of concern when considering deep-sea mining. The collector activity leads to the formation of a particle-loaded plume of whirled-up sediment. The plume is dispersed with the currents at the seabed, and a mobilization of trace metals in these plumes may potentially impact the fauna. Many trace metals are essential micronutrients in the environment, but become toxic at elevated concentrations. Different uptake routes are possible: diffusion through cell membranes of organisms or uptake of metal-rich particles by filter-feeding organisms. For assessing the impact and defining threshold values it is of importance to not only know the absolute concentrations but also to understand in which physical and chemical form the metals occur. Furthermore, impacts on the natural cycling of elements in the water column and in the sediment are expected.

In the geochemistry team on board we are three people. Mirja (BGR), Matthias (GEOMAR) and myself are responsible to collect all relevant samples for later geochemical analyses. Components, such as nutrients, organic and inorganic carbon, alkalinity, physical sediment properties as well as the elemental composition, including trace metals, are essential variables that need to be determined. Our main working places to process the samples are the cold room at 4°C and the geochemistry lab. All scientific labs, including the cold room, consist of containers fixed on the outside deck and we better not forget something, before we switch from one location to the other. Before we go on deck, we need to dress up with our safety boots, helmets, and coveralls. In the cold room, we better wear warm clothes and a hat. In the laboratory container in turn, we leave all dirty clothes outside and wear lab shoes. Once our samples arrive on deck, they need to be processed immediately, which takes many hours. And in the meantime, the next samples already arrive… . Sometimes it feels like a never ending story. Few hours of sleep, often enough interrupted by the ringing phone … . But at least, our laboratory container has large windows so that we get daylight and a nice view. A little break in the sun, with afternoon cake and fresh coffee (Figure 1), also helps to refresh.

Coffee break in front of the geochemistry container, from left to right: Mirja, Katja, Matthias Source: Annemiek Vink

As mentioned, we sample both, seawater and surface sediment. So, how does a typical work-flow look like once the samples arrive on board?

(1) For seawater trace metal investigations, the first challenge is to get the water samples without already contaminating them. Trace metals are not only in the water that we want to sample. May it be contaminants in tobacco smoke (such as rare earth elements cerium and lanthanum), dust particles in the air (copper, cobalt or zinc) or metal alloys (iron, cobalt and zinc) - metals are everywhere, just waiting to screw up our samples. As we don’t want to see any of these signals in our samples but only what is transported in the water, a successful trace metal project always starts with proper cleaning and proper sampling. For collecting the water, we use the special GoFlo water sampler bottles (Figure 1) that are designed for trace metal sampling, without any metal parts being in contact with the water. Once on deck, the sampled water is split and preserved for different purposes, while continuing to work as metal-clean as possible – which is a tough challenge on a ship made of steel (Figure 2).

Mirja and Katja on deck, filtering water from the GoFlo water samplers and measuring pH and conductivity after a successful deployment Source: Annemiek Vink

On deck, we avoid any contact with air while collecting the water in different plastic bottles, and in the geochemistry laboratory, we work under clean air boxes, use ultrapure acids for preservation, and try to keep our lab as clean as possible – not a simple task at all. We filter the water samples to separate clay-, silt- and sand-sized particles and also the invisible nanoparticles from the water and finally, all samples are stored.

(2) The 30-cm long surface sediment cores are processed in the cold room. This is necessary to keep the in situ temperatures and not change chemical equilibria in the sediments. After taking pictures and describing the cores visually, we sample the sediment in 0.5-cm to 1-cm slices to obtain depth profiles (Figure 3). The vials with sediment are then brought to the lab, where we separate the pore water via centrifugation. We take different sample splits of the obtained pore water (Figure 4), do first measurements of sensitive parameters, and then preserve the samples by acidifying or freezing them. The analytical results will allow us to quantify how much of the surface sediment layer was removed by the collector machine and to characterize the quantity and quality of the material that has resettled from the plume. Biogeochemical processes in the sediment provide the basis for all life in and at the seafloor, and our work represents one of the puzzle pieces to understand the medium- and long-term impacts of deep-sea mining.

(3) In addition to bringing water and sediment on deck and sample it, we also use the method of in situ passive sampling, a really smart way to collect metals. A membrane hangs around in the water and attracts a specific part of a trace metal: that species which is not tightly bound to other components in the water and can be easily taken up by organisms (the so-called labile pool). Once these metals get close, they are “caught” and stick to the membrane. That’s why it is called passive sampling. The passive samplers collect metals constantly over time as long as they stay in the water. We mounted the small membrane holders onto the sensor platforms that were deployed at the seafloor for the time during and after the test to record the water turbidity at different distances and orientations to the test area (Figure 5, refer to sensor blog). As the passive samplers selectively collect those trace metals that can be taken up by organisms and hence be potentially harmful, we will here get more information on the bioavailability of the metals mobilized from the sediment that is whirled up from the seabed. Passive samplers are further a promising tool for long-term monitoring purposes, as they can be deployed in situ and minimize metal contamination during sampling and sample treatment on board and in the home laboratory.

As the passive samplers selectively collect those trace metals that can be taken up by organisms and hence be potentially harmful, we will here get more information on the bioavailability of the metals mobilized from the sediment that is whirled up from the seabed. Passive samplers are further a promising tool for long-term monitoring purposes, as they can be deployed in situ and minimize metal contamination during sampling and sample treatment on board and in the home laboratory.

All the best from MV Island Pride,
The geochemistry team (Mirja, Katja, and Matthias)

MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, May 10, 2021

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.

In fact, these activities have become the routine for the last two weeks, as well as the 6-8 hours of sleep at night replaced by a nap when the opportunity arises. Yet, the tiredness is always accompanied by a smile and an attentive gaze, reflecting a strong motivation to achieve the goals of the expedition. Our team from HGF MPG Joint Research Group for Deep-Sea Ecology and Technology, of Alfred Wegener Institute and Max Planck Institute is prepared and trained for these working conditions. In fact, awareness of the challenges and the importance of this project for safeguarding the deep sea encourages us to make the best use of time and sampling activities on board of Island Pride.

Nobody in the Microbiology Container? They might be in the cold lab if they are not hurrying to the muster station for a safety drill Source: Batuhan Yapan

As mentioned on previous posts in more detail, the aim of the expedition is to assess the impact of a polymetallic nodule prototype collector Patania II on the deep-sea ecosystem. In order to evaluate the type and the extent of the impacts we followed the mining operations of Patania II closely, monitoring the behavior of the sediment plume created by the collector, and collecting samples from the plume, the tracks left by Patania II, and from close-by sites where suspended sediments resettled. The task of our group is to assess the impact of mining operations on microbial abundance, diversity and metabolic activities. Although invisible to the human eye, microbes (which includes Bacteria and Archaea) typically constitute the largest proportion of the biomass in deep-sea sediments and play important roles in carbon and metal cycles. They are therefore crucial for the function of the largest, yet largely unexplored, ecosystem on Earth. Elucidating the microbial diversity and their functions in the deep sea requires combined studies of the interlinked microbial communities in bottom waters, sediments and polymetallic nodules. This is why the microbiology team onboard has to take samples from every type and each deployment, and apply different analytical methods.

I guess by now you may be confused enough by terms such as CTD, Niskin bottle, ROV, multicorer, core slicing, in situ pump… So let’s try to clarify what, how and why we are collecting/doing here.

Water samples are taken just above the seafloor with special plastic containers, called Niskin bottles, attached to a metal frame equipped with several sensors measuring temperature, oxygen, salinity and turbidity. The heart of this instrument is the CTD that measures Conductivity (used to calculate salinity), Temperature, and Depth plus – in its current configuration – oxygen and turbidity. The latter sensor is specifically important in this project as it allows identifying the presence of the sediment plume, which increases the water turbidity. Water samples are used to investigate the taxonomic diversity (via the extraction of DNA), microbial cell abundance and the amount of organic carbon (as a proxy for the food availability). The seawater is also used for incubation experiments, which measure metabolic rates such as oxygen consumption (respiration), potential degradation of organic carbon (via extracellular enzymatic activities) and biomass production (via incorporation rates of specific substrates). Additional sampling devices are the in situ pumps: those specially designed pumps are programmed to filter hundreds of liters of seawater directly at the bottom of the ocean (that’s why “in situ”), providing therefore enough microbial biomass for extraction of RNA (yes, the same type of molecule used to produce COVID-19 vaccines!) which allows us to study the microbial physiology under natural condition. In this cruise, we were able to catch sediment plumes created by Patania II and take samples, which will allow evaluating the effects on microbial communities and their activity in the water column.

Filtration setup; an old but still useful way to study microbes in the water. “FISH” on the labels has nothing to do with real fish. It is abbreviation of a cool cell visualization technique: Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization Source: Batuhan Yapan

Sediments samples, located more than 4 km below the ship (!!!) were collected with the multicorer: as suggested by the name, it is a metal frame equipped with several plastic cylinders, that we call “cores liners”. These penetrate vertically in the seafloor getting undisturbed, approx. 30 cm long cores of sediment. Once on board these sediment cores are horizontally cut in different sections from the top to the bottom. This ‘slicing’ of the cores allows getting separate layers of sediment to study features at high resolution and to resolve the patterns along sediment profile. For this expedition, we increased the resolution of sediment slicing in order to detect the exposure of deep sediment layers, due to the removal to top sediments by the prototype collector, and the layers of sediment that resettled from the plume to the top of seafloor near the collector-trial area.

Fate of a sediment core: to be sliced to different depth levels and put into tubes for further analyses. Which requires hours of work in a cold and noisy lab; some see it as a nice chance to hide from hot tropical afternoons Source: Batuhan Yapan

Nodules, potato-shaped mineral concretions lying at the top of the seafloor, are the targets of deep-sea mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, due to their valuable metal content. However, for us they are more unique habitat features that provide hard substrate for sessile animals and host specific communities of microbes. Yet, little is known about the function carried out by microbes associated with the nodules and the role that microbes have in nodule formation. One important goal of our project is to disclose microbial diversity and understand which processes could be lost by nodule exploitation. In order to do that, nodules were collected in many areas and subsampled for DNA and RNA sequencing, cell counting, and metabolic measurements. We therefore sample three different parts: the surface exposed to seawater, the internal core, and the bottom layer that is in contact with sediments. Nodules were collected with a box corer: an effective sampling tool for larger amounts of sediments as compared to the multicorer, yet a bit rougher and more basic.

A closer look at a manganese nodule and its parts. As clearly seen manganese nodules are not homogeneous structures, they have different parts with different characteristics Source: Massimiliano Molari

By measuring the oxygen distribution in the sediment one can calculate the rates of oxygen uptake as a measure of the activity of the organisms living in the sediment and their uptake and use of organic carbon. For that job we have on another “in situ” exciting tool: the oxygen profilers. Basically, they are very cleverly designed needle-shaped sensors that penetrate into the sediment and measure oxygen concentration based on changes in oxygen-reducing current or fluorescence of oxygen-sensitive dye. Although the principle is pretty simple, running them at thousands of meters of depth is not easy, especially if there are nodules waiting to break the fragile needles. That is why Duygu and Felix spend hours in their lab/workshop hybrid to calibrate new needles and maintain the profilers before they move on to the control room to see their tools being deployed at the seafloor (hopefully with sensors pointing at gaps between nodules) by a robot (ROV) piloted by a skilled TOP-GUN team of the deep sea! However, results are worth the effort. By now, we have collected enough profiles to understand the oxygen consumption of microbes and are able to calculate oxygen flux and carbon metabolism. Also, profiles collected after the Patania test clearly deviate from undisturbed profiles and will be valuable to characterize the disturbance and document short-term effects on oxygen distribution and fluxes. We are keen to compare these results to modeling predictions of the effects of the removal of the active surface layer and deposition of oxygenated sediments from the plume.

The lab where oxygen profilers are prepared to work under 4 km of water Source: Batuhan Yapan

The title of this long post is “Microbes are everywhere, so are we” - just in case you were patient enough to read until here, and forgot the title. When I decided on it I was thinking about our microbiology team’s hard work onboard, and our rush to take samples from every type and each deployment. When I thought a bit deeper, I noticed that we, humankind, are here thanks to microbes. They are everywhere and they have run this planet for billions of years, they are the organisms that keep it as a habitable planet, a unique one (as far as we know) in an infinitely big Universe. Just like microbes, we as humankind are also on our way to be everywhere; so, we need more and more resources. It looks like deep-sea mining is our next stop for these resources, but we have to be cautious and watch our impacts on ecosystem carefully, and we should take what we need with minimum negative impact. If we lose against our greed, we will be one of the first species that will be swept from this planet. Microbes? I do not worry about them too much; they will survive and continue to be everywhere, just as told in the quotation from Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos: “Truth be told, the planet’s most victorious organisms have always been microscopic. In all the encounters between Davids and Goliaths, was there ever a time when Goliath won?”

From here Gabriella will bring you to the borders of living being and will talk about the archenemy of life! VIRUSES!

Batuhan Cagri Yapan
PhD student at Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen

The perfect deep-sea “gentlemen” killers

Yes, this is true, Bacteria and Archaea are everywhere, and they will survive, no matter what. As David, they are tough guys. But, would you believe me if I told you that the deep sea, as well as any other ecosystems on the Earth, hosts biological entities even smaller than microbes, whose sole purpose is to kill the winner (“Davids”)?

These natural born killers are the viruses. Viruses are present everywhere, wherever there is life, viruses are present. Especially now, everyone has experienced how huge the impact of these tiny units of proteins and nucleic acids can be on global human society… However, in this case there is nothing to worry about, as far as we know, deep-sea viruses are no danger for humans; their favorite hosts are the Bacteria and Archaea. As I said, these intriguing particles are far smaller than bacteria (from 20 nm to 250–400 nm), but 10 to 100 times more abundant. Just to be clear, imagine the sky during the darkest of all the nights, with no clouds and with bright stars as far as your eyes can reach, well, viruses in the Ocean are even more abundant than all those stars and, if your imagination is strong enough, you can think of stretching end to end all the viruses present in the ocean, they would span farther than the nearest 60 galaxies.

You all think now: “Wow viruses are so cool!”, don’t you? They are not even living organisms, they cannot “eat”, “reproduce”, and they even cannot “die”. Just think about a protein envelope (the capsid) enclosing viral genetic material (viral DNA or RNA) which contains all the information the virus needs to replicate and re-assemble himself within the cellular host, this is more or less a virus, as simple as that! The most abundant and fitful microbes are the first to be infected. And once infected, these wealthy bacterial (or archaeal) cells have only a little chance to survive, and they will end up as “cellular debris soup” (plus the new viral offspring, of course). A delicious soup I would say. Indeed, in deep-sea sediments the amount of organic resources is extremely low, and mostly composed of refractory compounds. Therefore, cell contents released after viral lysis can be seen as nutrient-rich food ready to be assimilated by non-infected cells (a process termed “viral shunt”). In other words, by killing their hosts viruses provide a delicious Italian lasagna for the starving microorganisms inhabiting the deep-sea sediments: so let’s see them as the Robin Hood of the deep sea, yet without that sweetened and romantic veneer!

Many cells are on their consciences. Viruses are responsible for the abatement of 80% of prokaryotic cells produced in deep-sea sediments (I told you, they are perfect “gentlemen” killers), releasing on global scale from 0.37 to 0.63 Gt of carbon per year. This process can contribute to around 35% of the total benthic prokaryotic metabolism in deep-sea sediments. I would say viruses are not only cool, but also important for deep-sea ecosystems. In fact, viral infections can control both microbial abundance (by killing them) and metabolism (by stimulating microbial growth with delicious free food).

As Batu has already mentioned, one day, we might really need deep-sea metal resources; as bad as it sounds, this could be the future. However, exploiting those resources in a responsible way is mandatory, and to know how to do that we need a scientific approach. This is the moment of “never before”, this is the cruise which allows us for the first time to study the consequences of a deep-sea mining impact on the seafloor before it will take place. As research team, at the Polytechnic University of Marche, in Ancona, we study deep-sea sediment worldwide to investigate virus-host interactions, the role viruses play in ecosystem functioning and human-induced impacts of this extreme ecosystem. The questions we would like to answer here are simple but tricky: how will viruses cope with disturbed seafloor? Moreover, if viruses are important in the functioning of deep-sea ecosystems, what will be the consequences on the deep-sea if virus-host dynamics are altered after mining impact? As of yet, we have no answers for that. My aim onboard is to preserve and process the samples collected here to respond to these questions. How do I do that? I have been trained to collect sediment samples from the multicorer and to slice them in layers of different thickness to estimate viral abundance in each layer of the core. However, measuring viral abundance alone is not useful for inferring viral dynamics into the sediments. Therefore, to assess viral impact on their hosts, and to understand the role of viral shunt in benthic food webs and carbon cycle, I also perform analyses of viral production (meaning how many viruses are produced for each gram of sediment per hour). Taken all together, these results will investigate how deep-sea mining can modify virus-prokaryotic interactions and which will be the downstream effects on ecosystem functioning.

Our microbiology group on board. From left to right: Massimiliano Molari, Batuhan Yapan, Felix Janßen, Dyugu Sevilgen, Jakob Barz, Gabriella Luongo Source: Nils Maschmann

MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, April 30, 2021

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.

Control panels and screens in the ROV operation room Source: Sven Rossel

The ROV is put into the water from the MV ISLAND PRIDE Source: Nils Maschmann

During this research cruise, we want to investigate how these different animals are effected by the sediment plume that Patania II creates while it collects the nodules. Our colleagues at home in Portugal and in Belgium focus on specific animals for their investigations and therefore they gave us lists of which animals they would like to study. Hence, during the ROV dives we try to collect brittle stars, sea cucumbers, sea anemones, and soft corals.

Picture of the seafloor in the Belgian license area taken with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The letters belong to the following animals: A) fish, B) sea cucumber of the family Mesothuriidae, C) squat lobster, D) brittle star, E) sea anemone Source: GSR

Today, we are hunting sea cucumbers. Sea cucumbers can swim, so that we use the “suction pump” or “slurp gun”. This tool works similar to a vacuum cleaner. You can suck up the whole sea cucumber like you would suck up a large spider at home, in case you are afraid of spiders. The sea cucumber is subsequently stored in a chamber in the ROV and you can retrieve it when the ROV is back on deck. That is how it should work, but today the sea cucumber is really fat. It just does not fit through the opening of the slurp gun (around 5 cm diameter). The ROV pilots carefully turn the opening of the slurp gun over the biobox, i.e., a large box inside the drawer of the ROV where biological samples can be stored. When the pilots turn off the slurp gun, the sea cucumber slowly sinks downwards into the biobox. Successful catch! But for a valid scientific study we need more specimens; so, the hunt continues.

Sea cucumber of the species Deima sp. Source: Nils Maschmann

Here in the Belgian license area of the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, most of the invertebrate megafauna consists of sea anemones and sea cucumbers, but we also already observed sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins, soft corals, and sponges. Most of these animals have different life styles. Sea stars are often predators and chase other animals. In comparison, brittle stars and sea cucumbers are deposit feeders, i.e., they feed on sediment and on the organic matter in this sediment, and sea urchins feed more or less on everything they find. All these animals are mobile, hence they can move. However, there are also animals that are sessile, i.e., they sit attached to polymetallic nodules. These animals include sea anemones and soft corals, but also sponges.

Sea urchin in a sample vial Source: Nils Maschmann

The next animals we see through the camera in the deep blue are a brittle star and a sea anemone. Those are also high on our priority list! For brittle stars, however, slurping is not the best option. Instead, the ROV pilot uses the manipulator arm of the ROV and takes the animal very carefully in the claw of the robot.

Brittle star in a box core Source: Nils Maschmann

Sea anemones and soft corals can best be scraped off nodules and be transferred into the biobox. Thus, we try to carefully collect the sea anemone. It does not want to go off, just retracts to a small, white ball, and sticks to its nodule. Our attempt to sample the animal creates a plume of soft sediment, hiding the sea anemone, the nodule, and the seafloor. Usually, when scraping the animals off their hard substrate does not work, you can also collect the whole nodule to which the sea anemone or the soft coral is attached and store it in the biobox. However, we decide to leave the sea anemone and continue to hunt another animal, instead of waiting until our sediment cloud has settled. Lucky sea anemone!

Greetings from ISLAND PRIDE,

Tanja Stratmann (Utrecht University, NL/ Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, D)

MiningImpact-Expedition Logbook, April 29, 2021

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.

In doing so, they rely on research that is being carried out worldwide; including the findings of scientists working here on board the ISLAND PRIDE. They often emphasise that almost nothing is known about the impacts. The conclusion is therefore, that stronger efforts are required to understand what happens when manganese nodules are mined. This is particularly important, because the International Seabed Authority is tasked with drafting the regulations for the exploitation of seabed mineral resources, which should contain the highest possible environmental standards.

Independent scientific research accompanying industrial mining tests is an adequate and transparent way to gather the needed information on the impacts. It is somewhat surprising that Greenpeace fails to acknowledge our presence on site in their media campaign. Instead, they themselves presented evidence of a "significant disturbance" to the seabed ecosystem to the outside world last Thursday. The organisation had indeed announced in advance that they would analyse the impacts themselves. We had already wondered how they intend to manage this, as the technology for measurement and observation in the deep sea is expensive and complex and takes up an enormous amount of space on a ship, not to mention the heavy winches needed to lower the equipment to the seabed and bring it back on board.

The NORMAND ENERGY, launching the Patania II manganese nodule collector, is observed by Greenpeace activists onboard the RAINBOW WARRIOR in the background (left) Source: Mirja Bardenhagen

Photos of the seafloor taken just outside of the test area with the ROV HD14 before (left) and after (right) the collector test. A sedimentary cover is clearly visible on the previously uncovered nodules Source: BGR

We want to understand the impacts of possible future mining on the environment. Previous attempts to carry out disturbance tests have been too small-scale in terms of affecting a contiguous seabed area. For the first time, GSR's test offers us the opportunity to study these effects under sub-industrial conditions. Patania II, with a size of 1:4 compared to the envisioned industrial-scale mining robot, collected the nodules together with the surface sediment and its inhabiting fauna in a field of about 200 x 300 square-metres. The sediment was released through a type of exhaust into the bottom water and created a sediment plume that we are monitoring and tracking in great detail. Read the plume sensor team's post "Groping around in murky water" in our blog. Our preliminary observations show that the sediment plume generated by Patania II seems actually confined to the bottom water near the seafloor, roughly the lower 30 metres. We will be able to determine the exact height and particle concentrations as well as its spatial and temporal dispersion pattern once we have retrieved all our measuring instruments from the seafloor and analysed the data.

Jolien Goossens of Ghent University and Massimiliano Molari of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen take samples from the Rosette water sampler. With this device, we obtain samples from a water depth of 4500 metres for geochemical and microbiological investigations. In addition to the grey water bottles, a variety of different sensors is attached to determine the chemical and physical properties of the water and to measure turbidity and current speed Source: Carsten Rühlemann

We work according to best scientific practice and will publish all data and scientific findings in databases and scientific journals after peer review. This will also include the images from the seabed that Greenpeace is demanding from GSR in its press release. However, the images alone do not tell us much. We can see that the nodules are gone, recognise the tracks of the collector and estimate how far the bottom currents have carried suspended sediments away and then redeposited them on the surrounding nodule habitat. On the long term, however, it is essential to analyse how ecosystem functions and structure, biodiversity, and species connectivity are affected and whether the fauna can inhabit those disturbed areas again. This requires sampling, combined with complex laboratory analyses and a subsequent evaluation of the geochemical and (micro)biological data. This takes many months or even years. And it is not sufficient to sample only once directly after the impact. Instead, we will return several times in the coming years and repeat the sampling to understand the response of the abyssal ecosystem to this impact. We already know from previous small-scale experiments that disturbances in the deep-sea are long-lasting. But which threshold values for industrial large-scale mining need to be defined to avoid significant harm to the environment? What are indicators of good ecosystem health in the abyss and what are the criteria for the designation of appropriate marine protected areas? We are of the view that scientific findings should guide the debate on these questions. And that takes time…

Sven Rossel from the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research in Wilhelmshaven samples seafloor sediments obtained with a multicorer from a water depth of 4,500 metres (left). The samples are used to study the meiofauna, tiny animals with a size up to about 0.3 millimetres. In addition, the sediment samples are used for geochemical studies. Alizé Bouriat from the French Institute Ifremer in Brest collects meiofauna (animals with a size between 0.03 and 0.3 millimetres) and macrofauna (0.3 mm to 1 cm) for later DNA analyses (right) Source: Carsten Rühlemann

MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, April 19, 2021

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.

Our work programme on Wednesday afternoon started with the calibration of the ships dynamic positioning system (DP2), required for accurate position-keeping of the vessel during sampling and measuring stations. After that, the NIOZ free-fall lander “Bottom Boundary” (BoBo), carrying current and turbidity sensors as well as a hydrophone and a sediment trap for the measurement of total sediment particle flux, was deployed at a distance of 1500 meters away from the trial area in order to measure potential effects of the suspended sediment plume produced by the collector there. A further 20 tripods with a total of about 50 inter-calibrated hydro-acoustic and optical sensors for measuring the sediment concentrations in the plume to be created by the collector trial were brought down to the approximately 4500-m-deep seafloor in a large sub-sea basket in two deployments on Thursday and Friday night, respectively. The instruments were taken out of the basket by two remotely operated vehicles (ROV) that can be deployed simultaneously from the vessel, and were placed on the seafloor at different locations between 200 and 1000 metres downstream of the trial area, i.e. in the direction of expected plume dispersal, as well as in a circle around the trial area. We expect that with these sensors, we can measure gradients of change in plume concentrations at different distances from the trial area over time.

BoBo lander on deck shortly before deployment Source: Mirja Bardenhagen

One of the six autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) on board of the ISLAND PRIDE was prepared for a survey mission to photographically map the trial area (0.1 km²) and parts of its surroundings before the test, and a complementary survey will be carried out after the test. This is important to compare the pristine condition of the seafloor with the post-impacted condition in which nodules, sediment and fauna have been removed from the seafloor in the directly affected area, and sediments have drifted and settled down in the surroundings by very slow near-bottom currents. Such mapping should give us an indication of the depth of the sediment layer that has been removed and the extent of redeposition on the nodule habitat in the surroundings. On Thursday, a highly complex 60-hour mission of the AUV was meticulously planned and the AUV sent off to a depth of 4500 metres. More than 200 000 overlapping high-resolution photos of the seafloor were obtained that will be stitched together for a detailed photomosaic of the test area. Early on Sunday, the AUV was sent on a new 40-hour mission to map the extent of the sediment plume produced by the collector using the multibeam echosounder and turbidity sensors attached to the AUV.

MV ISLAND PRIDE in the front and MV NORMAND ENERGY behind, both ships placing the last oceanographic sensors on the seafloor before the start of the Patania II test Source: Franky Peeters

MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, April 15, 2021

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.

Figure 1: Map of the manganese nodule belt between the Clarion and Clipperton fracture zones in the East Pacific. The two parts W1 and E1 of the German contract area are highlighted in red. The yellow areas are exploration areas of other contractors, blue-grey areas indicate "reserved areas", for which developing countries can obtain exploration contracts, and the green squares indicate Areas of Particular Environmental Interest (APEI), a kind of marine protected area. APEIs form a network of large no-mining zones that are intended to cover the full range of habitats, biodiversity and ecosystem functions Source: BGR

Figure 2: Manganese nodule (12 cm, cut in the middle) from 4400 metres water depth originating from the German license area in the Pacific Ocean Source: BGR

An increasing demand for the above-mentioned metals due to continued global population and economic growth, as well as the technological transition from fossil to renewable energy sources and e-mobility, have brought potential mining of raw materials in the deep sea back into focus. Today, these metal raw materials are mined exclusively on land. There, they are associated with a number of environmental impacts and social problems, for example the clearing of rainforests, destruction of agricultural land, the consumption of large amounts of water, the input of pollutants and heavy metals from mining, as well as the forced relocation of indigenous peoples into surrounding areas. In addition, for some metals the majority of production comes from only one country. Often this supply derives from states with increased geo-political instability, e.g. cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Recycling can also only partially meet future supply needs, even if its efficiency is significantly increased. In order to meet the growing global demand, secure the supply for countries without raw materials and reduce the dependencies of such countries on monopolists for certain metals, state-owned contractors have been exploring mineral deposits in the deep sea for 20 years and private companies for about 10 years.

Figure 3: Shark tooth from the Tertiary period. The tooth of a megalodon giant shark, extinct for about 2 million years, is overgrown by a manganese nodule Source: BGR

BGR holds an exploration contract for manganese nodule deposits in an area of 75,000 square kilometres in the eastern Pacific on behalf of the German federal government. BGR investigates the economic potential of extensive manganese nodule fields and carries out comprehensive environmental studies. Deep-sea mining could make Germany less dependent on resource-rich countries like Russia, China or the DR Congo.

However, deep-sea mining is the subject of controversial public debate. From a political point of view, securing unrestricted access to metal raw materials in the long term is of great importance for the production of various industrial products that we use every day. Critics, on the other hand, point above all to the vulnerability of a largely pristine ecosystem that should be protected from any form of interference. They are concerned about potential large-scale impacts of underwater mining. In addition to the removal of the upper centimetres of the seabed along with the nodules and the animals living in them, these include in particular the development of suspension clouds and adverse effects on the food chain.

Ultimately, a decision is required as to whether the metals for the human hunger for raw materials should continue to be extracted exclusively from conventional sources on land or, in the future, partly from the deep sea. Both mining operations will always be associated with environmental impacts - either on land, in our habitat, or at 4000 metres water depth, in the deep sea. To which extent industrial mining on the ocean floor would affect the deep-sea ecosystem in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is a question we seek to answer with our MANGAN 2021 expedition.

With best regards from aboard the ISLAND PRIDE
Carsten Rühlemann

MiningImpact Expedition Logbook, April 11, 2021

Blog #1: 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.

BGR’s expedition MANGAN 2021 with the Norwegian multi-purpose vessel ISLAND PRIDE aims at independently monitoring and assessing the environmental impacts of in situ technical tests of a pre-prototype polymetallic nodule collector vehicle (Patania II) at a sub-industrial scale 1:4 that has been developed by the Belgian company Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR). The environmental monitoring will be carried out in close collaboration with European research institutes from the JPI-O MiningImpact Consortium, who have been invited to join this campaign in a joint effort to obtain a sound scientific basis for the analysis and modelling of mining-related impacts. GSR has agreed to its activities being independently investigated and has worked closely with us to synchronise cruise schedules. These tests were planned to occur two years ago with a simultaneous monitoring from the German Research Vessel SONNE, but a technical failure of the power and communication cable to Patania II meant that the trials had to be called off. It was a blow to the project, which is only set to run until the end of February 2022. It was clear that, if we want to keep this cumulative European competence together and use it wisely, we would not have much time to loose. Even during COVID times… as long as feasible precautionary measures and risk mitigation strategies were in place.

MV ISLAND PRIDE during mobilisation in the port of San Diego Source: Thomas Aigner

Deck of MV ISLAND PRIDE with stacked laboratory containers and scientific sampling equipment (boxcorer, multicorer, CTD-rosette, BoBo lander). Within the A-frame is a large sub-sea basket that will transport our hydro-acoustic and optical sensor platforms to the seafloor Source: Thomas Aigner

During this six-week cruise, we intend to intensively monitor two collector tests that will take place in the Belgian and German contract areas of the CCZ, respectively. This is the first sub-industrial scale mining vehicle ever to be tested. For the monitoring of environmental change on and around the seafloor, state-of-the-art tools such as two remotely-operated vehicles (ROV), an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), in situ oxygen profilers and experiment chambers, in situ pumps and fifty inter-calibrated hydro-acoustic and optical sensors for measuring the suspended sediment concentrations in the sediment plume will be deployed. 23 scientists from 8 institutes in Europe are on board to analyse the distribution and settling behaviour of the sediment plume whirled up by the collector, faunal changes across different size classes, biogeochemical fluxes, changes in microbial turnover rates and functions, in-situ ecotoxicology, release of trace metals from the suspended sediment plume and noise emissions by the collector vehicle. We hope that the results of this campaign will greatly contribute to the development of robust environmental standards that are required by the International Seabed Authority as an essential component of its future exploitation regulations, also known as the Mining Code.

A typical polymetallic nodule field in the German contract area at 4100 m water depth Source: BGR

The MV NORMAND ENERGY with the Patania II collector on board is already in the Belgian contract area with technicians and scientists from GSR and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on board. Due to the container delays, our departure from the port of San Diego was delayed by 5.5 days. We are now sailing into the horizon in a south-southwest direction to meet up with them and start our work as soon as we can. In the next few weeks, you will get to know us all better and understand what we are doing on board, how and why we do it and why research and monitoring in the deep sea is so challenging and exciting.

So watch this space!

Greetings from ISLAND PRIDE
Annemiek Vink, Matthias Haeckel