Featured Image Credit: The Nippon Foundation
Topics: Environment, Science, Technology, Japan
Callum Jones
Topics: Environment, Science, Technology, Japan
An expert has revealed the devastating environmental impact Japan's $26,290,780,000 deep sea discovery could have.
A recent survey done by The Nippon Foundation and the University of Tokyo found a field of dense manganese nodules on the seabed of Minami-Tori-shima island - some 1,200 miles from Tokyo.
Found some 5,700 meters below sea level, the nodules contain millions of metric tons of cobalt and nickel.
The south-after materials are two of the crucial components needed to create electric vehicle (EV) batteries, which is the equivalent to 11 years of domestic consumption.
Advert
The ground-breaking survey found around 610,000 metric tons of cobalt and 740,000 metric tons of nickel, which equates to a staggering amount of money.
One metric ton of cobalt is worth $24,300 while nickel sees a value of $15,497, according to market figures from Trading Economics.
As for what has been found, Japan has amassed $14,823,000,000 worth of cobalt while the 740,000 tones of nickel comes in at $11,467,780,000.
That amounts to an eye-watering total of $26,290,780,000, at the time of writing.
While the deep-sea mining may be making massive money for Japan, a study has issued a stern warning that deep-sea mining is actually killing ocean life.
The study conducted by Travis Washburn, a researcher at the Geological Survey of Japan, found ocean creatures vanish from areas within and even outside deep-sea mining operations.
"These results suggest the impact of deep-sea mining could be even bigger than we think," Washburn said.
One year after the test was conducted, those working on the study found a massive 43 percent drop in fish and shrimp populations around the site.
"I had assumed we wouldn’t see any changes because the mining test was so small. They drove the machine for two hours, and the sediment plume only travelled a few hundred meters," Washburn added.
"But it was actually enough to shift things."
Meanwhile, Colin Hamilton spoke about the complexity mining at such depths provides.
"Extraction will not be simple, and we see this as a potential test case for the benefits versus disadvantages of deep-sea mining of materials relating to the global fuel to materials transition," he noted in a recent brief.
Sophie Benbow, director of a marine programme at a conservation charity, told the BBC: "There is so much we could learn from ocean biodiversity.
"Medical advances and new technologies could be deciphered from the study of deep-sea species, but they could be wiped out before we even know they exist if deep-seabed mining is to go ahead prematurely."