Deep-sea mining is once again in the news. As Kevin Zelnio
frustratingly points out on twitter, news articles often fail to
mention the primary research that has been conducted at these
sites or make more than a cursory statement concerning their
ecology. This has the effect of marginalizing an entire
ecosystem and makes it difficult for the public to grasp the
richness and diversity of deep-sea hydrothermal vent
communities, some of which may face commercial exploitation.
Here is a selection of recent primary literature, with
abstracts, on the ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents at the
center of the mining debate, Manus Basin (you may recognize some
of the authors). Strategies for mitigation of seafloor massive
sulphide (SMS) extraction in the deep sea include establishment
of suitable reference sites that allow for studies of natural
environmental variability and that can serve as sources of
larvae for re-colonisation of extracted hydrothermal fields. In
this study, we characterize deep-sea vent communit