New Report Exposes Impossible Metals’ Claims As Scientifically Baseless

A new report launched today reveals that the deep sea mining plans of California-based company Impossible Metals pose serious environmental risks, despite the company’s claims of “sustainable” and “selective” operations.

Timed to coincide with World Oceans Day, the report “Impossible Metals = Impossible Promises” critically analyses Impossible Metals’ proposed technologies, and public claims. Contrasting them with independent scientific research. The findings are stark.

“The deep sea is one of the last truly undisturbed places on Earth. Impossible Metals claims to protect it while simultaneously planning to remove 70% of the nodule mass from the seafloor targeting the largest, most life-sustaining nodules. The science simply doesn’t support their marketing,” said Jack Payette, MIT Earth & Planetary Sciences Researcher.

Among the report’s key findings:

• The company’s own modelling shows their small prototype machine would smother the seafloor with sediment at up to 23,000 times the natural rate - choking the unique lifeforms evolved over millennia to the clear waters of the deep Pacific Ocean
• It would take 125 years for natural processes to deposit the layer of sediment that Impossible Metals’ prototype will produce in just 2 days - 4 tonnes over an area as small as 1/20th of a km2
• Impossible Metals plans to mine nearly all of the large nodules on the seabed. The small nodules left behind would take many thousands, if not millions of years to support the biological diversity and abundance removed by mining.
• Deep sea ecosystems may never recover. Even minor disturbance trials have shown impacts more than 40 years later. But nodules take millions of years to form. Once removed they are effectively gone forever.
• Microbes living on and around the nodules play important roles in regulating ocean pH and chemistry and in storing carbon - tempering the effects of climate change and moderating global temperatures. Disruption could have global consequences.
• The proposed mining system is unrealistically complex for the extreme operating conditions of the deep sea and likely to malfunction, resulting in even greater environmental degradation
• The “machine vision” system to avoid collecting nodules with visible life is untested, unverified, and implausible at the rapid rate of mining aimed for by Impossible Metals.
• In the absence of scientific research to support their claims, the report concludes that Impossible Metals’ nodule mining proposition is neither sustainable nor selective

“While Impossible Metals markets itself as the responsible miner compared to other companies, the impacts of its operations would be catastrophic for deep sea ecosystems that are adapted to an extremely still and quiet environment” said Dr Helen Rosenbaum, Research Coordinator, Deep Sea Mining Campaign.

The report is being launched at a time when companies are attempting to accelerate deep sea mining ahead of robust science, regulation, and Indigenous and societal consent. The Deep Sea Mining Campaign calls for a precautionary approach to prevail over the financial agendas of the handful of companies driving this industry.

“This is not a credible path forward, it's a dangerous experiment in one of Earth’s most sensitive ecological frontiers. A moratorium on DSM is the only responsible path forward until rigorous independent science can inform decisions about whether DSM is in the best interests of humankind as a whole.” said Dr. Rosenbaum.

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