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April 16, 2025—A deep-sea mining project has seemingly begun, but nobody's heard of it. Plus, Alan Turing's work on patterns in nature; and how to combat vaccine hesitancy. --Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Sumatran Tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae). Juniors Bildarchiv GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo | | Murky Deep Sea Mining For a recent investigation, journalist Willem Marx went onboard the Danish MV Coco, which had spent several weeks in a part of Papua New Guinea's territorial waters called the Bismarck Sea. The ship was operating under a 2011 license issued by the Papua New Guinea (PNG) mining regulator to gather data about the effects of deep sea mining, partly by digging chunks of metal-rich deposits out of the ocean floor with a 12-ton hydraulic claw. But, as Marx observed, the Coco was exceeding its prescribed materials haul and seemed to be stockpiling mounds of excavated rock from the seafloor—in other words, it looked like a full-blown mining operation, rather than just a testing mission. Why this is happening: Polymetallic nodules–small rocks containing valuable minerals–can be found in abundance on various regions of the deep sea floor. The nodules contain the valuable metals necessary for batteries, electric cars, electronics and many other products, especially those for electronic components that go into renewable energy technologies like solar panels or electric vehicles. The U.S.G.S. has identified four zones where prospects for polymetallic nodules are high, extrapolated from samples and seafloor characteristics. | | Jo Hannah Asetre; Source: "Estimates of Metals Contained in Abyssal Manganese Nodules and Ferromanganese Crusts in the Global Ocean Based on Regional Variations and Genetic Types of Nodules," by Kira Mizell, James R. Hein, Manda Au and Amy Gartman, in Perspectives on Deep-Sea Mining, edited by Rahul Sharma. Springer, 2022 (reference) | | What the reporter found: When Marx started asking around, PNG representatives were surprised to learn that the ship was there at all. The ship's operating company has yet to release any current permitting information that might indicate its true remit. Local PNG residents took particular issue with the news of the mining operation 20 miles offshore; local communities rely on subsistence fishing and see underwater mining operations as a threat to the health of the sea that sustains them. The impact: As a result of Marx's reporting, in late February the PNG government introduced new mining legislation that, for the first time, includes specific rules for deep-sea mining. The country's Marine Scientific Research Committee, which comprises almost two dozen government entities, passed guidelines that will require future deep-sea-mining licenses to have committee approval. | | | | |
A colossal squid was filmed for the first time in its natural habitat near the South Sandwich Islands during a recent expedition. It turned out to be a baby! "This is one of the planet's true giants, living in one of our most pristine marine ecosystems," says Kat Bolstad, an associate professor at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, who helped independently identify the creature from the footage. "It's a source of fascination and wonder, and it also plays a huge role in Antarctic food webs." Read more. | | DOGE and the Trump administration want to replace, in one official's words, "the human workforce with machines." This would be a disaster, "with automated systems that can't even perform basic speech-to-text transcription without making up large swaths of text," write Asmelash Teka Hadgu and Timnit Gebru, both from the Distributed AI Research Institute. "Automated systems cannot be trusted to make decisions the way that federal workers—actual people—can," they say. | 5 min read | | - The Oregon Trail video game is 50 years old and set the stage for the future gaming world. | BBC
| | - Fearing retribution from the government, two researchers decided not to publish their paper on evolution. | The Washington Post
| | - Elephants at the San Diego Zoo clustered up to protect each other from a 5.2 magnitude earthquake, captured in this video. | CNN
| | I've written before that the deep ocean, the ocean in general really, represents something of an undiscovered country for scientists. It seems amateur naturalists and marine biologists alike steadily discover new creatures the more they look into the depths. And even less is known about the habitats and ecosystems that have evolved to flourish in the blackest places on Earth. Research has just begun on how deep-sea mining might disrupt the health of marine environments and creatures. | | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | | |
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