How humans are exploiting the oceans | DW Documentary

Abroad, an ambitious expedition has set out to explore the depths of the sea, going to places where no human has gone before, where enormous deposits of minerals lie dormant. Can humanity benefit from this untapped source of wealth? The technology to collect it already exists. First prototype of a deep-sea collector. The precious stones are called patanya and are being tested at a depth of several thousand meters. Scientists are monitoring its deployment because what is technically feasible may actually destroy a delicate underwater world. Is it worth taking the risk? They are basically rock-shaped batteries. This is exactly what you need to build a battery there is manganese nickel cobalt and copper to conduct electricity Environmental protection organizations like Greenpeace want to avoid deep sea mining at all costs it is the last part of the planet that

humans

have yet to exploit to obtaining resources are the

oceans

in danger thanks making peace with nature is a defining task of this century preserving and restoring the ocean's ability to nourish humanity and regretting our climate will be the defining challenges of these packages 71 of the earth's surface It is covered by

oceans

, the largest habitat on the planet.

The exterior serves as an important heat buffer and carbon sink. They absorb approximately a quarter of man-made CO2 emissions and therefore mitigate the effects of climate change. Planet Earth needs the oceans to survive. They regulate the climate. They provide food. They provide the oxygen we breathe. By the way, there are more than 50, but the world's oceans are suffering, they are being fished mercilessly and stripped naked. The waste produced by an increasingly wealthy society is becoming more prevalent in the water. Virtually indestructible plastic waste endangers animals and their habitat. The so-called dead zones of the ocean. are increasing climate change is also causing sea levels to rise, however, their exploitation continues sand and gravel are being dredged for use as construction materials at this point where we have lost 50 percent of our ocean 50 of the whales and fish that lived in the ocean when my grandfather started diving after the end of World War II we are now exploring barely investigated places that are still quite inaccessible we know almost nothing about the species of plants and animals that live there Yes, we are aware that there are resource-rich nodules on the seafloor made of cobalt, nickel, manganese and copper – just the materials needed to meet the growing demand for batteries as the world moves away from fossil fuels.

Getting medals from our planet can't be done without any environmental impact, so what we need to think about is how do we make decisions that cause the least harm to the planet we are trying to protect. In June 2021, the United Nations in New York focused its attention on the highly threatened marine habitat that the UN proclaimed the ocean. decade to advance the protection and sustainable development of the world's oceans these challenges must be top priorities for everyone everywhere welcome to the united decade of ocean sciences together let's discover the science we need for the ocean we want thank you in March 2021 in the middle In the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic, a special ship docked at the US Pacific Fleet naval base in San Diego.

The ship the island Pride was preparing to go out to sea, its crew and the European scientists accompanying it were leaving on a special mission within the framework of the IMPACT mining program. Researchers were headed to examine what happens on the seafloor during the world's first tests of a 35-tonne underwater harvesting machine called a polymetallic, or manganese, nodule harvester. It's a great project. We want to analyze the environmental impact of the operation of a manganese nodule collector. In the depths of the sea we have quite a few scientific groups on board. This is the first test of its kind and we are very close to the conditions that would be expected from a deep sea mining operation.

It is very important for the parameters and standards of environmental analysis. that needs to be developed, that is what we are doing together with so many large scientific groups here, a concentration of scientific talent from Europe, in fact, we have all the technologies that marine research institutes offer, we have all kinds of equipment here, all very high technology. Yes, I'm really looking forward to it now that it's finally underway. All kinds of measuring and testing equipment were used during this expedition, including this giant Bobo Lander that has already been in service for 25 years. The landing gear, yes, but then no. for the moon but to land on the bottom of the sea, it's very much like we'll drop it from the ship and mount it with some different type of sensors and then it'll triple down to four kilometers deep and then we'll make a silent landing on the bottom from sea.

If you want to know what the impact of deep sea mining is, which is a concern for many people and also for me, I think we need good observations there close to where this mining will take place, so that we know better than we can. better predict what the impact will be researchers want to investigate first as industry ready to dig in this ad from Canadian mining company metals company promises simple solution energy from the sun and wind are replacing fossil fuels to drive the transition towards a sustainable future We need batteries to store this energy.

Batteries are made of metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese. Until now we have been mining the Earth to dig deeper and deeper for lower quality paddles. Nature disappears. Humans suffer. The Earth suffers, but there is another way. Modern robots are needed, but is it that simple? Samantha Smith lives in the Canadian city of Toronto. She is the head of sustainability at the Belgian mining company GSR. Her manganese nodule harvester is undergoing a series of tests in the Pacific. We are together globally. We face. a climate crisis and I think you know there is a growing recognition around the world that we have to do something and we have to do something now, that a big part of that is moving towards clean energy, that is, moving away from the fossil fuels and what it means is that we are moving away from a planet fueled by fossil fuels to one that is based on metals and minerals because clean metals technology is very metal intensive.

Until now, these raw materials come from mines on lands located mainly in Asia and Africa. The work is often destructive and harmful to nature The mines are often located in politically unstable countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo where there is not much respect for human rights The workers often suffer horrendous working conditions risking their lives excavating metals that fetch prices much higher than the wages earned by the industry says that obtaining resources from the seabed will be much easier. We have options on where those metals can come from and we are exploring one that will go to the seabed for them and there are many reasons to go to the sea.

The floor intuitively seems to make some sense and one is that we don't need to remove forests and in some cases tropical forests are being removed to get to the nickel. We don't need to remove forests or a single tree to get to the metal above. We don't need to move mountains to get to the seabed and we don't need to relocate people, so immediately those reasons make a lot of sense. Of course, that doesn't mean we can just dive to the bottom of the sea. in deep water and not do it thoughtfully, we also need to conduct research so that we understand how to proceed while minimizing our environmental footprint.

Can resources be harvested in deep water without causing new environmental problems? Pride Island set out from San Diego for a six-week expedition to discover that expectations were high. Our mission is to investigate the environmental impact of all this. We know a lot about this marine habitat, its ecology, the animals that live there, but not necessarily what the impact will be when large equipment and machines are installed. Driving through Seabad, our goal is simply to observe, analyze and take action in a neutral manner so that we can present these findings to the public in a scientifically balanced manner.

Industry and policymakers watched the expedition closely. The findings could have far-reaching consequences for

humans

. Moving into the era of green technology overseas, the crew and researchers waved goodbye as the San Diego skyline receded. The ship headed into the night towards where some countries and companies would like to develop new sources of raw materials as quickly as possible to make the The ocean is a source of mineral resources The 10 islands of Cape Verde are located about 600 kilometers from the coast from West Africa. The country has half a million inhabitants, most of them descendants of former African slaves that were once a colony of Portugal and gained independence in 1975.

Although Cape Verde is considered one of the most prosperous countries in Africa there is still a lot of poverty to many the sea is the source of life but a look at the coast in some places indicates that something is wrong here where there used to be sandy beaches and now only stones lantuna organization she also takes people on tours the chair has been exploited mercilessly here the women see a truck passing by loaded with sand from the shore well this truck has just bought sand and will resell it to someone else so they come here they take the sand and then sell it to the market it is like a small business it is not a very company big so there are several trucks it is not just one truck and as you can see the beach no longer has much sand so the little that remains will be sold it is against the law it is prohibited to remove the sand but the surveillance is very weak that is the big problem it is not there allowed to remove their sand although there is no surveillance here but it could be controlled on the road but no one does it very well two conservationists look astonished as these people illegally remove the sand from their feet another truck loaded this time with sand extracted from the bottom of the sea days ago sand has been sold as raw material for the construction industry for years this exhausting work has been the only way for people like Maria to earn a little money it is very exhausting and exhausting sometimes there is even a danger of drowning we are standing in the water like this is dangerous but if we don't do this there is no other way for us to make money abroad conservationists seek dialogue it was a sandy beach covered in dunes none of that remains today Anna says that the people who dig the sand know that what they are doing here is not right I asked them how much they earn for doing this type of work and I was surprised because each truck costs around 30 to 40 euros and if they are desperate to sell even 25 euros, they sell and the driver will sell it for around 120 euros.

I even asked them if they would like to change jobs. to do something else they said yes, if there is an opportunity, sand has been removed from the seas for years, the beaches are disappearing and not only in Cape Verde, the sand accumulates in small attacks or with huge industrial ships from many oceans, the Impacts are devastating for scientists and conservationists. We have long warned about the degradation of habitats where we directly or indirectly consume sound or gravel coming from the oceans. This is also a very big problem in the construction industry around the world because a lot of sand and gravel is being extracted from beaches, even off coasts.

Entire ecosystems are changing now biodiversity is suffering and entire structures are being eroded and last but not least organized mafia-like groups work behind the scenes, people are forced to transport sand illegally, entire islands are now almost free of sand to be necessary. It is said to allow a construction boom in the globalized and prosperous West, which in reality has no future today, so this is an issue that is causing major problems in our seas at this time. moment, but almost no one knows that it is in India, Africa and All over the world, even in the North Sea, sand is extracted from the seabed.

Descriptions of sandy shores no longer sound. Sand usually makes up about a third of the concrete. The gigantic buildings in desert countries are also made of sea sand, because desert sand is not suitable. to build even the sand for prestigious projects like Dubai's artificial islands comes from the sea. Overexploitation has fatal consequences for coastal areas, microorganisms and habitats around the world, meanwhile, island pride has turned to an area of the ocean known as ClarionClipperton. In the area between Mexico and Hawaii, enormous quantities of polymetallic nodules are heard; it is estimated that there are 30 billion tons at the bottom of the sea.

It takes almost six days for Pride Island to reach its destination. These devices were the keys to the success of the expedition. Everything had to work. The tension was. palpable, the researchers played music to relax. This is what's called a deep-sea lander and inside there's a module like this. Optical measurement devices or mini electrodes are connected. It's these rods that we see here. There is a very small tip that measures optically. the oxygen content in the sediment, so everything is lowered to the bottom of the sea and then there is a motor that is programmed in advance and then we use it to put these rods into the sediment and measure how much oxygen there is, really high technology, TRUE?

Yes, yes, it is definitely a challenge for any device. The conditions are extreme kilometers below the surface. Yeah, it just turned out that what we want to measure oxygen levels on the sea floor and its distribution produces different results when you bring them up on deck and the oxygen is something. As we know ourselves, that is essential, many organisms use oxygen and we see that as an indicator of how much the system is disturbed, if you disturb the substrate a lot or remove it completely, you are removing a layer that has been deposited for many thousands of years. where active processes are carried out, you have shaken it or disposed of it, so you already have the opportunity to see from the measurements whether that has any effect or whether it looks exactly the same as before the pride of the island made its appearance.

On the way to the Belgian license area this is where I was supposed to join the ship of the Belgian mining company GSR the ship was there to test patania the world's first prototype machine for collecting manganese nodules there are many manganese nodules here you can see On the map where the license areas marked by the International Seabed Authority for manganese nodules are currently located, these are all exploration license areas where the license companies or countries acquired and are looking to see how many manganese nodules will be are there and in what parts of the area can be mined now we are going to the Belgian license area whose license is held by the GSR company and then in two weeks we will go to the German license area which is a little southwest of there.

The gsr contact person for suash Ali was also on board and was responsible for communication between the industrial vessel and the scientists when testing began in the Belgian license area. It is a bit as if the areas of the wild west are marked on the seabed and that certain nations or companies can explore, such as the Belgian company GSR here they were already in the work zone this meeting was taking place on the high seas in The Normand Energy's loading platform was capable of diving to a depth of several thousand meters. The technical team was preparing for its first dive.

The challenge was formidable, the device had to manage the extreme pressure and maneuver the programmed routes connected independently. to the ship via a supply line as thick as a human arm. GSR had been developing petania for many years. This smaller model was built a few years ago. Now Patania 2 would face its first real test if it passed it with flying colors. The Vessel could possibly become a method for commercial seafloor mining in the future, so Britannia 2 is a seafloor nodule collector and I think the easiest way to imagine it is to think. of a vacuum cleaner, so the vehicle has been designed to pick up nodules and leave as much sediment as possible and then bring them in, basically pick them up and finally that vehicle will be picked up in an elevator that will take the nodules to the surface, but Britannia 2 was designed to collect the nodules and they were initially collected in a container at the rear of the vehicle and then those nodules were deposited away from the vehicle tracks at other points in the test.

The Britannia was submerged several times in the depths of the sea to test this new technology. It seems like something out of a sci-fi movie, meanwhile, on the island, Pride Francois kept in touch with his GSR colleagues on the industrial ship and they informed him how to use the manganese nodule collector for the next dive, so the survey is quite surprised. Pass this information to scientists so that their sensitive underwater measuring instruments do not collide with Patanya Now with Patanya the extraction of manganese nodules in the deep sea is technically feasible, but questions still remain about how great the environmental risks are and whether it is worth worth picking up in Cape Verde, on the largest island of Santiago, some of the old sandy beaches are now just barren stones, all the sand has been collected and sold.

Stones mixed with garbage dominate the bays, this idyllic marine setting has been seriously damaged. The third largest population in the world. Loggerhead sea turtles live in Cape Verde today. The animal is on the red list of endangered species. It is strictly protected, but the removal of sand alters the habitat vital for its reproduction. Ana Vega and her conservation organization are committed to protecting turtles for Anna. It is shocking to see a female struggling on hot stones and not finding a place to lay her eggs. Yes, it used to be a sandy beach, but she didn't know this place before.

I just heard old people and locals describe the place as a sandy beach before the turtles returned to the beach where they were born to lay their eggs. It typically takes animals 20 years to reach sexual maturity, but a lot has changed in two decades. Yes, we are a very sad story because the city tried to nest here, but there. There is no sand, so he went out, but unfortunately he has to return to the sea. He arrived this morning, obviously, yes, at seven in the morning. PS: It's really very sad because an animal that was born around here maybe spent 20 more years trying to nest and when it came out let's say its house was completely destroyed by humans so this is really sad so I think we have the duty to try to restore this place to promote the conservation of sea turtles.

Anna has a degree in marine biology, she spent time abroad and realized that something urgently needed to be done in her home country to protect the oceans and nature. In 2013 she founded the Lantuna nature conservation organization here, but now dozens of helpers are working on projects on the beaches. Things are really taking off if we want conservation. To be successful we need to involve the locals, so we try to involve them to create a passion for nature and species, and their concern at the beginning was more difficult, but now it is easier and getting easier because we started to have trusts of the community they participate in and we also try to improve their livelihoods.

Lantuna's approach is simple, funded by donations. Anna tries to raise awareness by adding a little color, for example, it is the name of this fishing village in the Bay of Hells. Fishing boats are stranded on stones, the sand was shipped long ago. Foreign awareness activities about fishing and seabirds and the locals like it and we saw that it has a positive way of making people aware of nature conservation, so we started making the paintings. about the local biodiversity and we didn't stop yet, so we plan to make more paintings to go around the village with beautiful paintings to attract more people and so that the locals can associate this visit with ecotourism activities.

Now the flora and fauna of the ocean decorating the facades of the houses are a constant reminder of the importance of preservation and this famous marine explorer played an important role in 1948 with two other colleagues, Theodore and August Pika, so they came here to try a team that wanted the team to make some engravings in a very deep notion so we decided to bring back this memory that was almost lost because most of the locals didn't even know who Jack Stone was and if he was around Jacques Cousteau was a legendary ocean explorer, French diving pioneer and

documentary

filmmaker.

He introduced people to the underwater world like no other brought images of the depths never before seen in the living rooms of the world. Cousteau wanted to explore the unknown underwater world and asked for the oceans to be protected overseas, this is the French Atlantic coast, not far from the mouth of the Loire River Jacques Cousteau's granddaughter and her family live nearby after the early death of Her father Alexandra Cousteau spent almost all of her childhood with her grandfather who left his mark. She is very concerned about the state of the oceans. I think that if we continue.

If everything remains the same, we overfish, we pollute, we advance with ideas such as deep sea mining, we will see our oceans disappear and we will continue to see a decline and at a certain point you reach tipping points where you have an exponential loss and it's hard to recover from that, you can't really recover from an exponential loss like we can't put it back Covid in a bottle. You know the damage is done once we hit those tipping points with the ocean as damage. it will be done we will not be able to reverse it Alexandra says her grandfather taught her to dive before she could walk her love for the oceans is her legacy like him she makes documentaries advocates for the preservation of marine environments and looks for ways to save the oceans she wishes she still had to her grandfather by her side as well as her husband who is there now my grandfather passed away 20 years ago and left a big void in the world not only for me and my family, but I think it felt like he was there.

It was this huge Jacques Cousteau-shaped hole in the universe after he died that no one can fill, but what I realized is that every time someone says to me I grew up watching your grandfather, he really inspired me. Now I love the ocean and I want to do something. to help protect him we are finally at a time where we can maybe 10 years ago 20 years ago we didn't have the technologies we didn't have the solutions we didn't have the urgency that we have today and so my hope is that for everyone who loved him and They loved his movies and they loved exploring the oceans with him and that discovery and sense of wonder and awe that he brought.

My hope is that they take advantage of that and use it to create change because that is the best legacy that could have been left to us on the Cape Verde Islands. Anna and her group of helpers have built a protection area for turtle nests in one of the sandy beaches that remain. Educational posters show stories about the importance of oceans and life. in them this is where the turtles lay their eggs for weeks lantuna monitors the clutches of eggs that have been collected here the organization makes sure that the baby turtles can be born safely we are verifying which nests hatch because this is a hatchery where we put the nest, they are already at risk, we have nest 1047 here, so the team was checking to see if they are about to hatch.

Through conservation, we create opportunities for people to have a job so they can earn some money for their families and also have a go. create them have this passion for nature conservation small steps but they make a difference Jacques Cousteau would probably be happy to see these efforts to conserve marine fauna abroad beyond the island Pride's helicopter platform here were two lonely boats in the Belgian license area in the Clarion Clipperton area in the Pacific Ocean from the deck some European scientists watched how the Belgian company GSR piloted its high-tech deep diving machine from its ship Normand Energy now the research has many measuring instruments , sensors and robots known as rovs.

They were coming into play, lowered to four and a half kilometers deep. They were located around the deployment area on the seabed where Patania was making its way. The scientists wanted to know the impact that Britannia would have on nature. The control room is located in one. lower decks of Pride Island, here the pilots sat staring at their monitors for hours as they controlled the robots on the bottom of the deep sea. Overwhelming feeling of having been a different world, of course, in reality it is a corner of the world that I barely know and everything we are seeing here no one else has seen before.

Naturally, that's always exciting. Okay, yes, scientific history was being made at that time, fifteen thousand feet below the ship, extremely important research was being carried out in extreme conditions. We are now in the process of deploying many sensors, oceanographic sensors, turbidity sensors and current sensors on the seabed. These were lowered last night in the enormous underwater basket and are now with the two vehiclesremotely operated vessels that move along the seafloor. The sensors are now being taken out and placed along the seabed in various locations. Hopefully, when Patania gets to work, they will measure the sediment as well.

The cloud it creates too. Oh, Greenpeace's foreign Rainbow Warrior was approaching Norman energy. The scientists were a little nervous. Everyone was wondering what. would happen, we have information on this, not much except to say mechanical action, so I hope it is peaceful, thank you, maybe from the next one, the only thing that Greenpeace has emphasized is that it is peaceful, a peaceful protest, we can only hope That's what's happening. um we're obviously not the target that's for sure as soon as we got a little further away they ran away we don't know what they're doing something is happening on the starboard side and unfortunately we can't see it outside peace the activists filmed and documented their actions themselves approached the industrial ship and painted the risk on its side it was a protest operation on the high seas the Environmental Protection Organization relies on eye-catching images and messages in many languages ​​to galvanize support Greenpeace considers commercial exploitation of the The depths of the sea are a fatal misstep.

Is there an absolute vibration? It would be an absolute crime to assume that the deep sea is an arid desert where you can do a little digging from manganese nodules and other oars without having any impact on this planet. What people would like to tell you and I don't think the general public is aware that the deep sea is teeming with life. Companies involved in deep sea mining are not necessarily interested in disclosing the damage that is occurring there, even in the long term. in the long term and which animals and, ultimately, plants such as plankton are affected, it has already been shown that CO2 has been found for thousands of years in sediments deposited in the depths of the sea, that is, carbon that originally was coming from the atmosphere if we disturb it and stir up these sediments, then there is definitely a risk that this CO2, this carbon that is currently sequestered down there, could also be released back into the water and ultimately into the atmosphere.

Strange Pieces Rainbow Warrior followed the Norman energy for weeks with the aim of producing images to generate support, let's make the point clear now, we want to make sure that the oceans continue to have the possibility in the coming years, the next millennia, to be climate resilient , something that they cannot be if we start digging and destroying the depths of the sea.floor not only removing rocks, oars and metals but also the biology of life forms and destroying their habitat because all this is involved in the climatic stability of our oceans and our planet a meeting was held in the conference room on Pride Island the occasion Greenpeace had sent an invitation to a worldwide international video conference.

I use social networks. The NGO's goal was to prevent possible deep-sea mining. He reported their concerns and explained why the Depths' disruption must be stopped at all costs before it actually begins to happen before they Arguably also attacked the scientists who were then researching the effects such an intervention would have. Greenpeace said it was not genuine science. Correct science is being done. That outraged scientists. They said they would continue to carry out neutral investigations. research to ultimately provide data and findings that are also used by environmental protection organizations. Some of the researchers showed understanding for the offshore protest and the concerns of the environmental protection organization.

This is a very sensitive issue and everyone has the right to be concerned and also protest, of course we all try to be very neutral in our analysis and that is certainly correct, but there is always the question of what science is used to decide that it is not It is our job to be done by those responsible for policy. We have to develop the regulations, what we are trying to do here is record what could happen if a device like that circulated on the seabed located in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, the island country of Jamaica is home to the institution that decide whether deep sea mining is allowed, the International Seabed Authority or Isa for short is based here, founded in 1994 by the United Nations, it is the overarching body that decides what happens beneath the waves, so that all ISA contractors, which are a combination of different entities and governments, some from the private sector, some are state research organizations, all of them aim, ultimately, at the sustainable exploitation of the mineral resources of the funds marine.

Isa must proceed on the basis of two fundamental conditions: one is that we act on the basis of the best scientific advice available through broad consultation and the second is that we act on the basis of consensus among the decision-making member states, currently 167 Countries, including Germany, developed guidelines known as the mining code under which deep-sea mining would be possible. We have a very unique opportunity situation here that has actually never been done before, which is that we have a completely new industry that will continue only when regulations have been implemented, usually it is the other way around, the industry starts and then people start to react trying to find a way. to regulate it or to prevent bad things from happening or to ensure that good things happen here, it's completely the other way around, we will have the opportunity to get it right before we even start, which is actually unprecedented and really cool. opportunity, so it really is a very transparent organization where everyone has the opportunity to express their opinion and contribute information about this new emerging industry, so this is where the decision must be made taking into account the interests of the industry, the findings of science and the concerns of environmental protection organizations nature conservation versus a billion dollar business who will win in the end Pride Island was sent to work in the Clarion area Clipperton is an area the size of Europe it is said that there are more than 30 billion tons of manganese nodules lying here at the bottom of the ocean it is an enormous treasure and there is no way to recover it without disturbing the bottom of the deep sea these are the results of patania's work the heavy machine has lifted large columns of sediment what does this mean for the environment? yes, what we see here is the habitat of the manganese nodules next to the patania footprints where the disturbed sediment has already settled, it has completely covered the manganese nodules and the fauna and uh, and what we want to know now is How thick is the negative sediment? permanent damage and the thickness that the fauna can tolerate seems as if a blizzard had passed over the landscape and covered everything in its path, the measuring devices had to be taken on deck for evaluation, a process that took many hours and The researchers were eager to see what had been proposed, although the results of the analyzes would probably remain unknown for months until they were fully evaluated in the laboratories of the institutes in Europe, we first have to rinse them because salt water is very corrosive to the electricity. components, then we will download the data and take a look.

These are the manganese nodules and you can see that they were actually covered with deposited sediment, but because the water is now sloshing back and forth here, the sediment just washes away, but it doesn't matter because we have to free the nodules of the sediment anyway in order to collect the animals that live in them. When the manganese nodule is cut, there is a core material around which it forms. The nodule is made up of metal oxides, manganese oxides, and then there's copper, nickel, and cobalt, as well as traces of other metals, and that slowly builds up around the core material.

A nodule with a radius of around four centimeters would be about 2 million years old, so the nodules are pre-historic stones and much of the deep marine fauna in the Clarion Clipperton area is still unknown. Yes, having a large sample of a marine ocean is the first time we delivered the wagon here, so it is nice and in good condition. shape, so it's taste, let's have a good analysis with which biologists and geologists meticulously examined their soil sample from the deep sea for them, it is a real treasure that is not only modern, it is made as you can imagine because it is a very large view of our heritage, so it is incredible and there is a lot of life inside that you cannot see.

Only the eyes need a microscope. The French scientist loves to observe the microfauna of the depths of the sea. In fact, she found several tiny animals and she was delighted with each one. In the laboratories, single reading tests or winter storms were carried out, just as here in the cold room, everything that had come from the depths was analyzed in detail, the study of the structure and activity of microbial communities in the samples of sediments is the work of The Turkish researcher batuhan yapan without them, unfortunately, they are generally bad for nature and, in the end, for us, but this time we are very excited because we need those resources, it seems that it is because we consume a lot and this time we will see impacts and maybe this time.

We can limit our impact on nature and use those resources in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way. Personally, I prefer to consume less and I don't buy phones every two years, for example, so I would prefer to reduce if possible, reuse and recycle last. and not touch the bottom of the sea as much as possible, but yes, we will need it, it seems so. Tanya Stratman took a seat in the control room as a biologist and was having the opportunity to search the depths of the sea for larger animals that would work with the robot Pilot a shrimp Drifting by did not arouse much interest at first we have a specific list of animals which we need to gather first we still have about an hour to hopefully find some more starfish and some sea anemones which we'll take they too suck them like a vacuum something's going on there this is a sponge I think I don't think we'll just trust she if we try try to vacuum it up yes you can I mean it's a perfect idea we can try I have it in a net Tanya had her eye on the sea anemone the robot found other animals on the flatter seabed they looked strange it's surprising that the Animals can live here where the pressure is hundreds of times greater than on the Earth's surface.

A large sea cucumber was cited, the robot took samples and vacuum packed it outside and then the robot found an unusually starfish. big. It also landed on the sample cube destined to find its way onto the deck. Hours later, the robot had finished its search of the seabed and was returned. along with it came the collection of animals the biologist was very excited this is really beautiful this is daima I am happy with the sea cucumber although I am probably the only one now the sea cucumber goes into the cold room so my colleague can dissect it tomorrow morning is he still alive?

No, I don't think they can withstand the pressure difference and especially the temperature difference of more than 20 degrees. They die on the way. It was a special moment for the other scientists too. They were delighted to be able to do it. keeping these deep life forms so close to them I like it it's beautiful it's yes it's strange it's strange it's a world bigger than other worlds Tanya Stratman knows that humanity has little idea of ​​what lives in the depths of the waves All they knew at the time of their mission was that biodiversity is high deep in the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

Some experts suspect that despite the adverse conditions far below the surface there could be a greater diversity of species than even in mainland; it is possible that Tanya Stratman had brought an Unknown species on deck Honestly, I'm not sure if this is a new species, which is why we are freezing it right now at -80 degrees so that my colleagues at the Senkenberg Institute can determine if it is a species new one we just discovered. or if it is just one that I am not yet familiar with, it is possible that this one only lives in the depths of the sea or I just don't know yet it was a Time of Wonder and joy aboard Pride Island far away in the Cape Verde Islands in In the Atlantic, Lantuna conservationists celebrated their small summer success during the night when sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs and typically begin breeding at age 20.

It is then that the females find their way back to the beaches where they were born. to lay their own eggs if they are luckyThey will find sand to dig a hole for their nest The lantuna team will spend every night there for three weeks They find the nests They dig them up and take them to their protected nursery there There are too many nest predators, both humans and animals, to let nature run its course without the help of conservationists. Turtles would have an even greater fight to survive given the shrinking size of their habitat. There are moments of wonder every night now in the small nursery where the baby turtles are kept.

Emerging and digging their way out of their sand nests is a moment of joy and satisfaction for Anna and her team. Well, it's happening so you can see baby turtles, so now we're going to do tests to see how strong they are born overseas, accurately measured and counted. Records are kept and then given a bit of a head start. The hatchlings are carefully carried close to the sea so that they do not fall prey to anything or anyone on the beach. Thank you and now we release them. Yes, we are going to visit them. good luck without the dedication of conservationists like Anna and her team things would be much worse for the turtles in the Atlantic Ocean around Cape Verde um very happy, it is always an emotional moment and also a moment of hope, we hope that in 15 or 20 In years those little turtles will come back to lay their eggs, so this gives us strength and hope to continue with this conservation award, but Anna says there is much more to do to improve the condition of the oceans, removing sand from so many beaches has also affected the marine life just off the coast, food sources for fish have decreased and there are fewer opportunities to spawn, fish catch less and less and need to go further and further, but Anna is proud of the fact that Whether fishing here is sustainable, it all depends on people's individual needs.

Instead of industrial bottom trawling and hook lines that stretch for miles, there is no bycatch either, this boat catches its catch of the day. A tuna of this size is enough to feed several families. Fishing like this does not harm the biodiversity of the ocean, but that is not the case everywhere. On the high seas, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a third of all fish stocks are overexploited. Large, technically sophisticated fishing fleets are roaming the ocean. Catch quotas set by politicians often fall short of their target. A huge fleet of Chinese industrial fishing vessels work around the world around the clock at sea for months, loading their catch directly onto cargo ships.

Many billions of dollars in subsidies fuel this harmful plundering of the oceans. Chinese vessels like this one they are specially designed to capture squid the animals are attracted to powerful lights at night these ships supply waters mainly in the Indian Ocean or work off South America these images taken from space show light sources off the coast of the Patagonia evidence of Chinese ships hunting squid the authorities are practically powerless there are some ways to monitor the waters and Even if there are countries that have no authority outside their own territorial waters, Greenpeace was monitoring the Indian Ocean for months in the summer of 2021, They were there to document overfishing and illegal fishing, meanwhile they have returned to using driftnets.

Banned 30 years ago by the UN, but just a few months ago in the Indian Ocean we were able to document the deployment of kilometer-long nets, known as walls of death, very thin, barely perceptible filaments, often made of nylon, that hang kilometers deep in the ocean. They leave them for a long time and take everything that floats in the water. Not only do they capture their target species, such as tuna or swordfish, they stare at turtles, dolphins, whales, sharks, rays and many other animals that are not. their lists and are ultimately only overstocked as unwanted bycatch the campaign was evaluated at Greenpeace headquarters activists have long known that life on the high seas is like life in the Wild West illegal fishing overfishing and destructive fishing practices continue to threaten life in the oceans, the latest figures from the United Nations food and agriculture organizations clearly say that around 60 of the world's food fish stocks are exploited and depleted to their biological limit and around 30 or 32 are severely depleted, meaning more fish are being removed from ecosystems.

They are fished in oceans that cannot be replenished biologically and naturally, too many fish are caught and stocks cannot be renewed. This also affects fish, as here in the western Baltic Sea. A former father-and-son fishing company north of Keel is looking for ways to secure the future of Germany's artisanal fish study shows cod has almost disappeared and herring is threatened Baltic staple catches have been overexploited for years , so the EU has almost completely banned the capture of both species of fish Padre and Son Maya can continue because they have switched to different species and fish sustainably.

We have always been fishermen, you could almost say since time immemorial, it is the passion of our life and the best job there is, look around you, Freedom, beautiful weather today, wonderful, no stress, no. annoying people there really isn't much to laugh about small scale fish in the Baltic are becoming a rare species the Myers want to continue working but in their own way with gillnets I am one of the fishermen who has been here the longest board and as As long as I am allowed to pilot a boat with permission from the Fishermen's Association I will also be in the Myers' hull, but in the last 20 years they have noticed that the stocks are declining.

The number of people covered in the western Baltic is so low that some scientists doubt they will ever recover, which is why years ago the Mayans switched to fishing only for fish that are still relatively abundant. This is a place where everyone knows it. It has a white side and is irritatingly slippery. As smooth as an eel. The fist should be there. By the way, we also use a beeping device to scare away the porpoises. Now it's pretty smooth. Yes, there is one here and one at the end. They work with each other. There has to be one every 200 meters and they scare away the porpoises.

They don't swim in nets The Myers have committed to fishing sustainably and catching only what they need to make a living, yet they still struggle with EU regulations It's too thin, it has no meat, what are we going to do with her? Why should we take it with us? I just don't understand it and we have gloves on the fish. It has nothing. This law applies to fishing with trawlers. It says we have to take everything we catch, so it counts towards the quota because they are supposedly dead anyway and that is the basis of this law, we are supposed to accept it, but we won't because, why should I? kill him honestly?

It's nonsense, at least for us, the problem with this law is that fishing with a trawler is equated with Fishing with gillnets, that is complete idiocy in my opinion, for the few fish we catch that are too small like this , here we just don't catch them, we refuse to, so we are trying to avoid catching smaller fish by using larger nets. The size is 10 times larger than required, so we bring good quality and significantly larger fish. Our profession is really gaining a criminal reputation that cannot be right. He can't eat anything. That's good news. Now things are about to get damned.

Industrial trawling led to this. Large international fishing vessels have plied the Baltic for years taking advantage of what the sea had to offer. Sustainable fishing and selling close to the consumer became the motto of the Mayans on the Quarter fish website. Now I travel with fish from Qatar that we want to sell. fish right now what do we have we have mackerel we have turbot and we have place we will no longer arrive at 10 o'clock so we have to change the first eleven for one that only takes a few seconds and then it will be at the The Kota site of the fish farm right now is is reloading and there is a new address, that's where we are about to go to sell turbot with mackerel until 1 p.m. m. and there it says yes, doing the right thing is easy, buy what you can get where you live, that leaves us with potatoes and cabbage, but that's how we save the world, that's the point, we don't need huge container ships, do we have one now ?, there is one who comes after us, they distribute all the garbage from around the world, but we only eat what is here. and it is a wonderful product sincerely foreign, we are saving the world if everyone behaved like this the oceans would not be in crisis and the fishing profession would not be either after the second world war there were 3,000 fishing companies on the Baltic coast of Schlesby Holstein now only a There are a few dozen small fishermen left trying to survive through sustainable gillnet fishing.

Large industrial fishing boats with huge nets continue fishing as if there were no problem. The Myers have been fishermen for eight generations. They don't know if it will continue like this. but if so, then we need one mackerel and two spots, yes that's very nice and two spots, yes, medium size and that would be all for us, so it's 13 euros. Sometimes it happens that we don't have fish for three or four days when the wind blows across the Baltic and we can't go out, you just have to accept it, we are not a supermarket, we can only deliver when we catch something, if the fish are threatened, so is the health of the oceans, but overfishing is just one of the reasons why the oceans are in crisis rampant overexploitation threatens the seas Alexandra Cousteau regrets that in the end we will harm ourselves and our environment the granddaughter of the Ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau knows that the oceans cover 71% of the planet we produce half of our oxygen and absorb huge amounts of CO2 right now we still have the opportunity to change the way we fish to put a moratorium on deep sea mining We have the opportunity to expand ocean agriculture in a way that is regenerative with kelp forests growing around the world and the restoration of seagrasses, mangroves and salt marshes, we still have the opportunity to do it in a way that truly rebuilds our oceans and get that life back.

Alexander Cousteau has created a foundation called Ocean's 2050 and its goal is to restore ocean habitats, she and other ocean conservation advocates believe that the thoughtless and disrespectful exploitation of marine life must end, we must make a clear change of course towards marine protection and moving away from exploitation, it goes without saying that we use resources from the sea, we need them, but it has to be at an environmentally sustainable and regulated level we must avoid all the damage we can, in reality it is already too late in some cases we are five minutes before doomsday and in another five minutes after arrival we can only hope that our oceans also have a future because our future as human beings depends directly on it we are not yet familiar with the depths we are just beginning to understand What happens below the surface and the meaning these processes have for life on Earth The energy transition must take place Climate change must be stopped, but is commercial mining in the deep sea worth the risk?

You know we need a colossal amount of metal to achieve this and that metal has to come from somewhere and of course recycling is very important and can play a role but it's not enough to get us there in the next few decades so New sources of metal will be needed and, for GSR, we know we are targeting 2028 as the earliest date for commercial production after a six-week expedition exploring the deep sea. The island's pride journey has slowly come to an end. Scientists did a lot of testing, measuring, observing and thinking, although many final test results can only be revealed after evaluation in home laboratories.

Researchers already knew that seabed harvesting was almost unstoppable, I think it will come at some point, we want development, we want growth, we want a high standard of living and I think that should be the case for the entire world population, that's why we will need metals from that perspective, the companies here. I will always continue to research and try to take advantage of this treasure here. If we Europeans don't do it, maybe then people in Asia will, but I think at some point there will come a time when this mining will take place. trade-offs we really have to make as a society.

Is it worth it for us to destroy our great sustainable system to allow ourselves this ongoing long-term damage that goes far beyondof our generation? Is it worth it for us to ruin that? We are talking about huge areas of seabed, if we continue our consumption of these metals and do not achieve a sustainable cyclical economy, we will have completely destroyed deep water areas like the entire Clarion Clipperton Zone within 50 to 100 years. over an area of ​​three thousand by a thousand kilometers, a gigantic area the size of Europe that we have destroyed and you must keep that in mind, thank you foreigner.