{"id":172,"date":"2025-06-03T03:19:36","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T18:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/s4q7jq2n.top\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/in-canada-lake-robot-learns-to-mine-without-disrupting-marine-life\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T03:19:36","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T18:19:36","slug":"in-canada-lake-robot-learns-to-mine-without-disrupting-marine-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/in-canada-lake-robot-learns-to-mine-without-disrupting-marine-life\/","title":{"rendered":"In Canada lake, robot learns to mine without disrupting marine life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Competitors, like The Metals Company, use giant machines that roll along the seabed and suck up the nodules, a highly controversial technique.<\/p>\n

Douglas McCauley, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told AFP this method scoops up ocean floor using collectors or excavators, “a bit like bulldozers,” he explained.<\/p>\n

Everything is then brought up to ships, where the nodules are separated from waste, which is tossed back into the ocean. <\/p>\n

This creates large plumes of sediment and toxins with a multitude of potential impacts, he said.<\/p>\n

A less invasive approach, like that advocated by Impossible Metals, would reduce the risk of environmental damage, McCauley explained. <\/p>\n

But he noted lighter-touch harvesting is not without risk. <\/p>\n

The nodules themselves also harbor living organisms, and removing them even with a selective technique, involves destroying the habitat, he said.<\/p>\n

Impossible Metals admits its technology cannot detect microscopic life, but the company claims to have a policy of leaving 60 percent of the nodules untouched.<\/p>\n

McCauley is unconvinced, explaining “ecosystems in the deep ocean are especially fragile and sensitive.” <\/p>\n

“Life down there moves very slowly, so they reproduce very slowly, they grow very slowly.”<\/p>\n

Duncan Currie of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition said it was impossible to assess the impact of any deep sea harvesting. <\/p>\n

“We don’t know enough yet either in terms of the biodiversity and the ecosystem down there,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n

According to the international scientific initiative Ocean Census, only 250,000 species are known, out of the two million that are estimated to populate the oceans.<\/p>\n

High demand<\/p>\n

Mining is “always going to have some impact,” said Impossible Metals chief executive and co-founder Oliver Gunasekara, who has spent most of his career in the semiconductor field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Collingwood (Canada) (AFP) \u2013 <\/span> Three robotic arms extended under the water in a Canadian lake, delicately selecting pebbles from the bed, before storing them back inside the machine. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Issued on: 03\/06\/2025 – 05:19<\/span>Modified: 03\/06\/2025 – 05:53<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span> 3 min Reading time<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-db"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudfclub.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}