SCIENTISTS DISCOVERS NEW DEEP SEA SPECIES NOW BEING NAMED THE BARBIE PIG
The most recent deep-sea expedition funded by the Seabed Mining and Resiliency Experimental Impact (SMARTEX) project concluded on March 20, 2024. Several new species were found by the James Cook research vessel's crew. Among their discoveries, the "Barbie pig," a sultry pink sea pig, is one of the most notable. After the group watched the Barbie movie together, Bethany Fleming, a PhD candidate at the University of Southhampton, thought of the name. The sea pig, which is a kind of sea cucumber, had the perfect Barbie pink hue. Even though the Barbie pig is adorable, the research it stands for is essential to preventing deep-sea mining from endangering thousands of species.
The expedition, a collaborative effort between the National Oceanography Center, British Geological Survey, and Natural History Museum, aimed to record life at 4,000 meters (or 13,123 feet) below the surface of the ocean. They investigated the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a region of the eastern Pacific. The estimated 2.1 billion dry tons of polymetallic nodules in the CCZ make it a prime location for deep-sea mining. Because these nodules resemble potatoes, they are called potatoes. They do, however, contain metals essential to the development of technologies such as electric car batteries and solar panels, unlike their Idaho counterparts. In actuality, the CCZ probably possesses greater metal reserves than all land-based reserves put together, including manganese, nickel, and cobalt.
By 2065, it's predicted that deep-sea mining will provide more than a third of these metals. Scientists, however, are urging safeguards. There are potentially up to 8,000 species that have not yet been found, including the Barbie pig. If mining destroys this species' habitat, the sea floor of the CCZ could become home to rare and endangered species. The noise that mining would produce would even disturb near-surface marine life, like dolphins and whales.
Scientists are also worried that toxic compounds from the seabed may be released by deep sea mining, and that this would release carbon and worsen the climate problem.