A recent scientific discovery of polymetallic nodules producing “dark oxygen” at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean provides another reason why deep sea mining shouldn’t be allowed
This July, a scientific paper in Nature announced an extraordinary discovery. On the sea-bed of the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone, 13,000 feet below the sea’s surface, far beyond the reaches of sunlight, said the paper, metallic lumps have been splitting seawater to produce oxygen.
The paper hit headlines in no time. Until now, it has been assumed that photosynthesis — first by tiny microorganisms known as the archaeans and then by plants and trees — produced the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere. Some of this oxygen, it was also thought, diffuses into oceans’ surface waters. And that, a part of it sinks down, all the way to the sea-bed, supporting life there.
The paper in Nature, titled “Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor”, challenged each of these notions. Its authors had found higher oxygen levels — not lower — as they got closer to the seabed. Lab tests revealed micro-organisms were not at play, nor were geological or environmental factors. Instead, they found, oxygen is being produced by the lumps — or, as they are more formally known — polymetallic nodules.
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