Philippa Kaur

Researchers have discovered a treasure trove of arthropods such as these on the sea floor in the Clarion–Clipperton Zone, located in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.Credit: SMARTEX Project, Natural Environment Research Council, UK (smartexccz.org)

A company is expected to request authorization in July, for the first time ever, to mine the ocean floor for metals such as cobalt and nickel. At the same time, researchers warn that a crucial database that maps deep-sea biodiversity and that could factor into the decision to approve such a licence contains errors and data gaps.
Seabed mining is coming — bringing mineral riches and fears of epic extinctions
The International Seabed Authority (ISA), a body associated with the United Nations that oversees deep-sea mining in international waters, currently allows only mining exploration. According to its website, it has approved 17 companies and government entities to study the mining potential of the Clarion–Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a region of the sea floor that spans up to 6 million square kilometres of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean and that holds metal-rich clumps of sediment. Nauru Ocean Resources, a subsidiary of The Metals Company, based in Vancouver, Canada, has been exploring the sea bed, with an eye towards gathering metals needed for electric-vehicle batteries and other electronics. It plans to apply for a commercial mining licence in a month or so. If approved, operations could begin in 2024.Scientists worry about allowing companies to start mining the sea bed because little is known about deep-sea habitats and biodiversity, so its environmental effects are unpredictable.The ISA runs a database called DeepData, which is meant to tackle some of these concerns, as well as to enable research projects. The database contains information that the ISA requires contractors to collect during their deep-sea exploration missions. These biological, geochemical and physical data include, for example, the species that they encounter, and the chemicals present in the water.But the analysis of DeepData, published in the journal Database on 30 March1, revealed flaws that worry the researchers who conducted the study.

Contractors would like to mine the sea bed for metal-rich clumps of sediment called polymetallic nodules.Credit: Courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2019 Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration.

“It strikes me as irresponsible to be relying on the database in its current form” to assess the impact of mining on the sea-floor environment, says Muriel Rabone, a data scientist at the Natural History Museum in London, who led the analysis. Rabone told Nature that the analysis was performed independently of the ISA, but that the agency cooperated to enable data access. It was also consulted on the scope of the study and an early draft of the manuscript.The ISA protests some of the findings, however, saying that the report is out of date. The researchers downloaded data collected in the CCZ on 12 July 2021 to run their analysis. Since then, the ISA has made “significant improvements” to address quality assurance and control issues with DeepData, it says.Responding to this criticism, Rabone maintains that the database still contains flaws. Even with its faults, it’s helping to point to thousands of species on the sea floor that had never been seen before — results published just this week. “There is work to do yet,” she says.Data gapsOf the 40,518 records that the researchers analysed for the Database study, about one-quarter were duplicates, which could lead to an underestimation of species richness in the deep sea, they say. The scientists think duplicates can arise partially because the database lacks unique codes to identify individual records.The ISA says that, like any other database, DeepData’s “features and the quality of its data are improving with the years due to technological advances”. It adds that it has identified and corrected duplicate records. Also, it is collaborating with the World Register of Marine Species, which catalogues and classifies marine organisms, and is sharing data with the Ocean Biodiversity Information System — a data hub that has helped to clean up the data and make it more widely available.

Brisingid sea stars like this one also live on the sea floor in areas rich with metals.Credit: Courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2019 Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration

Looking at the database today, however, Rabone says that some duplicate data still exist, and that many records still do not have a unique identifier.The team also found that DeepData contained inconsistent information — for instance, records that catalogued two species under the same name. And a lot of environmental data were missing. When contractors submit their data, they use a form with fields such as species name and fauna class size. The researchers found that 90% of the total data in various fields were missing.The ISA says it has already updated its forms to address some of these issues and is designing workshops and training for contractors to ensure that data quality and control are improved.
Scientists track damage from controversial deep-sea mining method
Rabone would like the workshops to be open to the scientific community, which she says can provide feedback on the database. Stefanie Kaiser, a deep-sea ecologist at Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, who was not involved with the study, agrees, and says that if the database were improved, it could be useful for researchers, giving them access to all the information collected by the contractors.But the ISA says workshops are for contractors only, because they provide the data, although it acknowledges that the academic community has assisted contractors with presentations and preparing annual reports.Despite the disagreements over DeepData, researchers are already learning from the database. Rabone formed an official partnership with the ISA to lead the first census of metazoan biodiversity on the CCZ’s sea floor. The endeavour found more than 5,500 species in the region, of which 92% are new to science, including many worms and arthropods. The findings were published on 25 May in the journal Current Biology2. More

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In this episode:00:45 Tree islands bring biodiversity benefits for oil-palm plantationGlobal demand for palm oil has resulted in huge expansion of the palm plantations needed to produce it, causing widespread tropical deforestation and species loss. To address this, researchers planted islands of native trees among the palms in a large plantation, and showed that this approach increases ecosystem health, without affecting crop yields. The team say that while protecting existing tropical rainforests should remain a priority, tree islands represent a promising way to restore ecosystems.Research article: Zemp et al.09:42 Research HighlightsThe oldest identified ‘blueprints’ depict vast hunting traps with extraordinary precision, and fossil evidence that pliosaurs swimming the Jurassic seas may have been as big as whales.Research Highlight: Oldest known ‘blueprints’ aided human hunters 9,000 years agoResearch Highlight: This gigantic toothy reptile terrorized the Jurassic oceans12:08 Briefing ChatWe discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, how shredded nappies could partially replace sand in construction, and how CRISPR helped crack the mystery of the death cap mushrooms’s deadly toxin.Nature News: World’s first house made with nappy-blended concreteNature News: Deadly mushroom poison might now have an antidote — with help from CRISPRSubscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app. An RSS feed for the Nature Podcast is available too. More

This stunning creature is a new species of parachute gecko discovered in India1. Parachute geckos use flaps of skin along their bodies, limbs and tails to glide from tree to tree. Biologists identified the species, Gekko mizoramensis, while surveying gecko populations in northeastern India. The discovery shows that animal and plant life in the region is poorly documented, they say. More

Some 0.5 million hectares of offshore wind farms are leased along the US east coast, with more to come. A federal permit from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and state agencies is required to install turbines in leased areas and for selling leases. In my view, the effects on ocean life and fisheries of large offshore wind developments, and of adding yet more turbines, should be evaluated independently and incorporated into decisions over where the turbines can be sited.
Competing Interests
T.G. has acted as a consultant to fishery organizations for mitigation of offshore wind development and has advised the Rhode Island Fishery Advisory Board and Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council. More

I study sea cucumbers, an economically important species in China that is valued for its nutritional and medicinal properties, and is important for the health of the ocean. It cleans the sea floor by feeding on detritus. Thanks to climate change and overfishing, sea-cucumber numbers are falling.At the Engineering Laboratory for Marine Ranching (ELMR), we study the animals to maximize their contributions to marine ranching — a form of sustainable aquaculture that restocks valuable species, such as the sea cucumber and the Sebastes schlegelii rockfish. First we transplant seagrass, and then we release sea cucumbers to clean degraded habitats. Next, we release fish, clams and other creatures to build a balanced ecosystem. The productivity is much higher than what would result from restoring one species.In this picture, taken in the ELMR, which is in the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao, I am looking at Apostichopus japonicus, the most important sea cucumber in northern China. In our tanks, we control temperature and pH to mimic ocean conditions. We study how sea cucumbers move, eat, interact and reproduce, which has helped us to design artificial reefs for the sea cucumbers we release.A. japonicus has some powers that are almost magical. When the water rises above 23 °C in early June, this species begins aestivation, a summer hibernation. It loses its intestine, and regenerates the entire organ when it wakes up in October.Sometimes, we find white or purple examples of A. japonicus, although it is usually green. The purple one is beautiful and contains beneficial compounds similar to those found in red wine, including astaxanthin, which has potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.I hope that sea cucumbers can help to repair the ocean, and to repair the body. More

Temperatures soared in India in April: heatwaves becomes more likely as the planet heats up. Credit: Sudipta Das/NurPhoto via Getty

There’s a 66% chance that the annual global average temperature will hit 1.5 ºC above pre-industrial temperatures at some time in the next five years, according to a World Meteorological Organization report released on 17 May. Reaching 1.5 ºC of warming in a single year will be a landmark moment for the planet, which in 2022 was about 1.15 ºC warmer than in pre-industrial times. But it’s not quite the milestone most people mean when they talk about 1.5 ºC of warming — for that, we probably have about a decade to go.The famous 1.5 ºC figure, widely quoted as the desired ‘maximum’ for planetary warming, stems from the 2015 United Nations Paris agreement on climate change. This treaty declared the goal of keeping the global average temperature well below 2 ºC above pre-industrial levels, with a preferred limit of 1.5 ºC.The Paris agreement, however, refers to a sustained planetary average of 1.5 ºC warming — not just the average for a single year, which alone could be anomalously hotter or cooler than the longer-term average. The Paris agreement didn’t specify exactly what was meant by 1.5 ºC of warming, but the most recent report of the first working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2021, clarifies that it means the midpoint of the first 20-year period when the average global surface air temperature is 1.5 ºC warmer than the 1850–1900 average.In 2018, an IPCC special report on 1.5 ºC of warming estimated that the world would probably hit the 1.5 ºC threshold at some stage between 2030 and 2052. By 2021, using a different methodology, that had been pinned down to the early 2030s. “The time frame is getting closer and closer,” says geographer William Solecki at City University of New York, an author on the IPCC special report.A massive, two-year ‘global stocktake’ of progress on the Paris agreement’s goals is winding up now, and will be presented at the next UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting (COP28), which will start on 30 November. So far, the stocktake has found that things aren’t going well. For a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 ºC, a stocktake meeting report notes, global greenhouse-gas emissions need to peak before 2025; this hasn’t happened yet, and national emissions commitments aren’t sufficient to keep the planet within the target.The lower the betterThe 1.5 ºC number was chosen in an attempt to limit the severity of the impacts of warming, taking into account factors such as food security and extreme weather events. However, IPCC experts stressed that 1.5 ºC shouldn’t be seen as a “guardrail” below which everything would be fine, and noted that whatever temperature the world’s warming peaks at, the lower it is, the better. “Obviously there’s a continuum,” says Solecki. “The higher the temperature, the worse the outcome.”The 2018 IPCC report on 1.5 ºC of warming notes that effects of reaching this threshold could include: extreme hot days in mid-latitudes that are 3 ºC warmer than in pre-industrial times; sea-level rise of up to three-quarters of a metre by 2100; the loss of more than half of the viable habitat for 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates; and a decrease in annual global fisheries catches of 1.5 million tonnes.The report also notes that because global warming is uneven, more than one-fifth of the world’s population currently live in regions that have already exceeded 1.5 ºC of warming in at least one season.More important than when Earth will hit 1.5 ºC of warming is what amount of warming the planet will peak at, and when that will happen. “With every tenth of a degree above 2 ºC, you’re looking at more-sustained, more-systemic impacts,” says Solecki.Those numbers won’t be apparent for decades. According to the IPCC’s 2021 projections of global temperature under different emissions scenarios, peak temperature could be anything from 1.6 ºC in around 2050 (if the globe hits net zero emissions by then), dropping to 1.4 ºC by 2100; to, with emissions still climbing, 4.4 ºC at 2100, with the peak still to come.The next few years could bring an anomalously high blip in annual temperatures compared with the longer-term average thanks to an expected El Niño event — a natural climate pattern that brings warmer temperatures to the eastern Pacific Ocean and that tends to warm the planet as a whole. In April, Carbon Brief, a website that reports on climate matters, estimated that 2023 was shaping up to be one of the six hottest years on record, most likely the fourth hottest. And in April, the global ocean spiked at the hottest temperature since records began. More

Credit: Denis Riek, The Global Ocean Surface Ecosystem Alliance (GO-SEA) Field Guide (CC-BY 4.0)

This amazing picture shows the violet sea snail Janthina sp., which builds rafts by trapping air bubbles and encasing them in mucus. Scientists discovered that oceanic gyres concentrate the floating snails in the North Pacific ‘garbage patch’, more famous for accumulating discarded plastic. By bringing them together, the currents could help these and other floating creatures to feed and reproduce. More