Recently, a joint study conducted by multiple European research institutions confirmed that deep-sea mining activities will lead to a significant decline in the abundance and diversity of seabed organisms. The study, led by the Natural History Museum, the University of Gothenburg, and the National Oceanography Centre, conducted a five-year monitoring program in a polymetallic nodule mining area at a depth of 4,280 meters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, collecting 3,000 mt of sample data, making it the largest ecological impact assessment of deep-sea mining to date.
The results show that within the mining area, the density of large benthic organisms decreased by 37%, and species richness was reduced by 32%. The study was commissioned by an enterprise, targeting the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the deep sea, which holds over 21 billion mt of polymetallic nodules rich in critical minerals such as cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements. Environmental protection organizations pointed out that the experimental results confirm that deep-sea mining could cause irreversible ecological damage and called for a careful assessment of the necessity of mining. The research paper has been published in the journal *Nature Ecology & Evolution*, providing important scientific basis for global policies on deep-sea resource development.
