SAN FRANCISCO, October 11 — The health and wellbeing of the oceans are the mainstay of earthly life. The world’s leaders are hell-bent to annihilate the oceans for the almighty dollar.
Ocean mining is the finishing blow. It will bankrupt irreplaceable biodiverse oases along seamounts, deep ocean floors and vents, and the abyssal plain.
There are trillions of deep ocean polymetallic nodules containing cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese (and other rare earths) used in the batteries of electric cars and other machines as we transition to renewable energies.
Those nodules resemble dug-up potatoes in a field. They took millions of years to reach their present size. Presently, 11 countries (Chile, Brazil, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, American Samoa, Saudi Arabia, India, Namibia, Sweden, Japan, China, Norway, Cook Islands) are actively exploring or issuing mining licences within their respective maritime areas.
Never to be out-plundered, Donald Trump, issued an executive order to commence the exploration of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, spanning international waters of 4.5 million square kilometres between Hawaii and Mexico. It’s home to the exquisite 4000-metre-deep Ghost Octopuses, rare Beaked Whales (Cuvier’s, Blainville’s, Pygmy, Gingko-toothed), Leatherback Sea Turtles, and Sperm Whales and Colossal Squids (the largest predator/prey planetary animals) and countless others.
Polymetallic nodules are scattered across muddy grounds at immense depths. They will be collected by underwater bulldozers, stirring up the mud they rest in. When brought to the surface the ore-bearing nodules must be separated from the sediment stuck to them. Many millions of metric tons of sediment will slowly sink around the vessels collecting the nodules, gigantic areas of the ocean will become turbid, resembling the lower reaches of rivers.
The ocean floor is Earth’s greatest and most important carbon storehouse. Giant tubeworms live on hydrothermal vents and polychaete worms occupy the abyssal plain, fifty per cent of the planet’s surface. Amphipods, gastropods and microbial mats also reside in these extreme pitch-dark environments. They slowly digest carbon (from faeces, dead fauna and flora) and lock it into the ocean floor for thousands or millions of years.
Already, six-month long de-oxygenating marine bottom heatwaves are killing ocean floor animals and microbes, and preventing carbon from going to bed.
Sediment from nodule mining is deadly to fish. The delicate structure of fish gills, and the thin lamellae that allows oxygen to diffuse from water to their blood, can easily be clogged. Consequently, fish species that live in turbid environments, such as muddy estuaries, shallow seashores and sediment-filled rivers, have evolved the ability to cough to stop their gills from clogging by fine particles of silt and other suspended solids.
Deep ocean fishes and other life-forms have evolved in ecosystems without turbidity, without gill-clogging particles. Deep ocean fish do not have the ability to cough. Coughing requires specialised muscles and nerves that are unnecessary for the unturbid jet-black abyss.
Fish are Mother’s alkalisers. They excrete calcite crystals that counteract the ever-rising carbonic acid from burning fossil fuels, wood pellets and palm oil. Fish are indispensable ocean acidity combatants and carbon keepers.
Deep ocean fish and many other marine creatures will choke from ocean mining.
That cacophonous mining will inflict agony and death of Porpoises, Dolphins, Whales, Sea Turtles, Octopuses and other earthly brethren and sistren, the marine animals.
The destruction of the ocean is ecocide. That the world’s leaders know this and nevertheless are proceeding, is evilness. According to one ocean plunderer, Gerard Barron, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone alone could be worth $20tn. Should this vast region of the Pacific enter its mining development phase, the ocean funeral toll will follow soon thereafter. Unspeakable.
The oceans are the cradle of life and master of Earth’s climate. It is obligatory that marine life be protected. Understandably, this means banning polymetallic nodule mining, worldwide.
Australian Resistance leader, Dr Bob Brown, told me that: ‘Showing humility to hubris, decency to demagoguery and reason to arrogance is a losing strategy.’ Intellect and confrontational action are required – globally – as is peace, universal understanding and a democratic world government.
Bob Brown’s new book, Defiance.
Nil desperandum
Despite incarcerating Mother Earth activists with draconian laws by governments doing the bidding of corporate lobbyists and oligarchs, the planetary emergency is too great and the public is too alarmed. ‘Many people are willing to go to jail rather than do nothing,’ said Dr Brown. A universal shift is underway!
Unity. Loyalty. Camaraderie. All for one and one for all.
Action is the Antidote!
Reese Halter is a bees/trees/seas defender.
Unearthly Wails is a special edition, a collection of poetry
illustrated by renowned Ojibwa artist Terry McCue.
Email: HalterBooks@gmail.com to order
