Arcus cloud in Normandy in Trouville sur Mer (Thursday 24th 07:30 am)
view in panoramic
source @guybirebaum
same arcus cloud viewed from Le Havre
(photo Alban Lh)
and another arcus in Berck sur Mer
source @MeteoExpress
Saturday, August 26, 2023
French cruise ship makes rendezvous with Russian nuclear icebreaker near North Pole
In thick Arctic sea-ice, 150 meter long icebreaking cruise vessel Le Commandant Charcot makes acquaintance with Russia's 50 Let Pobedy.
Le 'Commandant Charcot' equipped with advanced technology, had embarked on an expedition to the Arctic.
The ShipXplorer technicians on board aimed to install the first AIS and ADS-B receiver at the North Pole, and enhance maritime safety and communication in this remote region.
From The BarentsObserver by Atle Staalesen
French cruise ship makes rendezvous with Russian nuclear icebreaker near North Pole
In thick Arctic sea-ice, 150 meter long icebreaking cruise vessel Le Commandant Charcot makes acquaintance with Russia's 50 Let Pobedy.
The meeting between the two vessels took place in remote Arctic waters not far from the North Pole.
Video made by passengers onboard the 50 Let Pobedy and shared on social media shows the two vessels trading greetings and sailing side by side through thick sea-ice.
Video made by passengers onboard the 50 Let Pobedy and shared on social media shows the two vessels trading greetings and sailing side by side through thick sea-ice.
Le Commandant Charcot meets 50 Let Pobedy in Arctic waters in middle of August 2023.
On board the brand new French cruise vessel are up to 450 people, of them 270 passengers, and the tourists are seen waving to the Russian ship as they break through the ice.
The distance between the two powerful ships is only a few dozen meters.
The Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker is on the way to the North Pole as part of an expedition for students.
Shortly after its meeting with the tourist ship, it encountered also two other ships currently sailing in the area.
According to ship operator Rosatom, the 50 Let Pobedy met with Arctic research station Severny
The latter ship had sailed all the way from St.Petersburg with new crew and equipment for the drifting station that is on a two-year expedition across the ice.
The latter ship had sailed all the way from St.Petersburg with new crew and equipment for the drifting station that is on a two-year expedition across the ice.
The Le Commandant Charcot is the first vessel of its kind that has made it to the North Pole.
Screenshot from video
The Le Commandant Charcot is the new vessel built for cruise ship operator Ponant.
It is classified as icebreaker and can make independent voyages to the North Pole.
In 2021, it was first hybrid-electric luxury cruise ship to make it to the North Pole.
The ship set out on a 16-days expedition from Reykjavik in early August. It sails to the geographic North Pole and ends up in Longyearbyen, Svalbard.
It is not a voyage for the regular man and woman. The starting price per person is €31,485.
According to Ponant, the Le Commandant Charcot can offer the “cruise voyage of tomorrow.”
On board, are luxury services never before offered in the farthest reaches of the northern hemisphere.
Each of the ship’s common areas are designed to convey French-style discreet luxury and arouse wonder and amazement, the company informs.
The cruise ship has hybrid engines powered partly by liquified natural gas and electric batteries that allows it to briefly sail silently without engines running.
Each of the ship’s common areas are designed to convey French-style discreet luxury and arouse wonder and amazement, the company informs.
The cruise ship has hybrid engines powered partly by liquified natural gas and electric batteries that allows it to briefly sail silently without engines running.
Links :
Friday, August 25, 2023
Pioneering wind-powered cargo ship sets sail
The ship at sea trying out its sails
A Cargill chartered dry bulk ship has launched on its first voyage since being fitted with special sails, aiming to study how harnessing wind power can cut emissions and energy usage in the shipping sector
image source : Cargill
From BBC by Tom Singleton
A cargo ship fitted with giant, rigid British-designed sails has set out on its maiden voyage.
Shipping firm Cargill, which has chartered the vessel, hopes the technology will help the industry chart a course towards a greener future.
The WindWings sails are designed to cut fuel consumption and therefore shipping's carbon footprint.
It is estimated the industry is responsible for about 2.1% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
The Pyxis Ocean's maiden journey, from China to Brazil, will provide the first real-world test of the WindWings - and an opportunity to assess whether a return to the traditional way of propelling ships could be the way forward for moving cargo at sea.
Folded down when the ship is in port, the wings are opened out when it is in open water. They stand 123ft (37.5m) tall and are built of the same material as wind turbines, to make them durable.
Enabling a vessel to be blown along by the wind, rather than rely solely on its engine, could hopefully eventually reduce a cargo ship's lifetime emissions by 30%.
Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill Ocean Transportation, said the industry was on a "journey to decarbonise".
He admitted there was "no silver bullet" - but said this technology demonstrated how fast things were changing.
"Five, six years ago, if you would ask people in shipping about decarbonisng, they would say 'well, it's going to be very difficult, I don't see this happening any time soon'," he told the BBC.
"Five years later, I think the narrative has changed completely and everybody is really convinced that they need to do their part - everybody is just struggling a little on how we're going to do this.
"That's why we've taken the role as one of the larger players to underwrite some of the risk, and try things, and take the industry forward."
"Five, six years ago, if you would ask people in shipping about decarbonisng, they would say 'well, it's going to be very difficult, I don't see this happening any time soon'," he told the BBC.
"Five years later, I think the narrative has changed completely and everybody is really convinced that they need to do their part - everybody is just struggling a little on how we're going to do this.
"That's why we've taken the role as one of the larger players to underwrite some of the risk, and try things, and take the industry forward."
The sails being fitted in a dockyard in China
The Pyxis Ocean will take an estimated six weeks to reach its destination - but the technology it is using has its origins in something much faster.
It was developed by UK firm BAR Technologies, which was spun out of Sir Ben Ainslie's 2017 America's Cup team, a competition sometimes called the 'Formula One of the seas'.
"This is one of the most slow-moving projects we've done, but without doubt with the biggest impact for the planet," its head John Cooper - who used to work for Formula One team McLaren - told the BBC.
He thinks this voyage will be a turning point for the maritime industry.
"I do predict by 2025 half the new-build ships will be ordered with wind propulsion," he said.
"The reason I'm so confident is our savings - one-and-a-half tonnes of fuel per day. Get four wings on a vessel, that's six tonnes of fuel saved, that's 20 tonnes of CO2 saved - per day. The numbers are massive."
The innovation has come from the UK but the wings themselves are manufactured in China. Mr Cooper says a lack of government support in reducing the cost of imported steel prevents the company from making them here.
"It's a shame, I'd love to build in the UK," he told the BBC.
'Throw everything at it'
Experts say wind power is a promising area to explore, as the shipping industry tries to reduce the estimated 837 million tonnes of CO2 it produces each year.
In July it agreed to reduce planet-warming gases to net-zero "by or around 2050" - a pledge critics said was toothless.
"Wind power can make a big difference," says Dr Simon Bullock, shipping researcher at the Tyndall Centre, at the University of Manchester.
He said new cleaner fuels will take time to emerge "so we have to throw everything at operational measures on existing ships - like retrofitting vessels with sails, kites and rotors".
"Ultimately we do need zero-carbon fuels on all ships, but in the meantime, it is imperative to make every journey as efficient as possible. Slower speeds are also a critical part of the solution," he told the BBC.
Stephen Gordon, managing director, at the maritime data firm Clarksons Research, agreed that wind-related technologies were "gaining some traction".
"We have the number of ships using this technology doubling over the past 12 months," he explained.
"This is from a low base, however. In the international shipping fleet and new-build order book of over 110,000 vessels, we have records for under 100 having wind-assisted technology today."
Even if that number dramatically increases, wind technology may not be suitable for all vessels, for example, where the sails interfere with the unloading of containers.
"The shipping industry does not yet have a clear decarbonisation pathway and, given the scale the challenge and the diversity of the world shipping fleet, there is unlikely to be a single solution for the industry in the short or medium term," Mr Gordon predicted.
John Cooper, of BAR Technologies, is more bullish though, saying the future for wind wings is "very rosy."
He also admits he takes a certain satisfaction in the idea of the industry returning to its origins.
"The engineers always hate it, but I always say it's back to the future," he said.
"The invention of big combustion engines destroyed the trade routes and the sailing routes and now we're going to try to reverse that trend, just a bit."
Experts say wind power is a promising area to explore, as the shipping industry tries to reduce the estimated 837 million tonnes of CO2 it produces each year.
In July it agreed to reduce planet-warming gases to net-zero "by or around 2050" - a pledge critics said was toothless.
"Wind power can make a big difference," says Dr Simon Bullock, shipping researcher at the Tyndall Centre, at the University of Manchester.
He said new cleaner fuels will take time to emerge "so we have to throw everything at operational measures on existing ships - like retrofitting vessels with sails, kites and rotors".
"Ultimately we do need zero-carbon fuels on all ships, but in the meantime, it is imperative to make every journey as efficient as possible. Slower speeds are also a critical part of the solution," he told the BBC.
Stephen Gordon, managing director, at the maritime data firm Clarksons Research, agreed that wind-related technologies were "gaining some traction".
"We have the number of ships using this technology doubling over the past 12 months," he explained.
"This is from a low base, however. In the international shipping fleet and new-build order book of over 110,000 vessels, we have records for under 100 having wind-assisted technology today."
Even if that number dramatically increases, wind technology may not be suitable for all vessels, for example, where the sails interfere with the unloading of containers.
"The shipping industry does not yet have a clear decarbonisation pathway and, given the scale the challenge and the diversity of the world shipping fleet, there is unlikely to be a single solution for the industry in the short or medium term," Mr Gordon predicted.
John Cooper, of BAR Technologies, is more bullish though, saying the future for wind wings is "very rosy."
He also admits he takes a certain satisfaction in the idea of the industry returning to its origins.
"The engineers always hate it, but I always say it's back to the future," he said.
"The invention of big combustion engines destroyed the trade routes and the sailing routes and now we're going to try to reverse that trend, just a bit."
Canopee another project :
Ro-Ro Cargo Ship for European Space Agency “Unfurls” its Sails (see links below)
TomVanOossanen photo courtesy of Zéphyr & Borée
Links :
- Reuters : Cargill chartered ship sets sail to test wind power at sea
- Marine Insight : Pioneering Wind-Powered Cargo Ship Sets Sail On Maiden Voyage
- EU : New wind powered cargo ship sets sail
- Splash247 : More amazing images of wind-assisted ships emerge (Canopee)
- Maritime Executive : Ro-Ro Cargo Ship for European Space Agency “Unfurls” its Sails
Thursday, August 24, 2023
The strange tale of SS Warrimoo, the ship that existed in two centuries at once
SS Warrimoo plied a trans-Pacific route from Canada to Australia, which means it crossed both the equator and the international date line on every trip.
On New Year’s Eve 1899, the captain of this Pacific liner steamed into history.
Or did he?
“BE GOOD AND YOU WILL be lonesome,” Mark Twain wrote under a photograph of himself.
The author sits on a folding chair, his feet on a ship’s railing.
Wearing a peaked cap and a grumpy face, he stares listlessly out to sea.
The picture was likely taken in 1895 on board SS Warrimoo, as Twain was crossing the Pacific from Canada to Australia.
It’s used as the frontispiece for Following the Equator (1897), a travelogue of his year-long round-the-world lecture tour.
The tour and his bad mood had a common cause: Twain was bankrupt.
A World Tour to Pay Off Creditors
In previous years, the former printer had sunk $300,000 of his (and his wife’s) money into an invention he thought would revolutionize printing, until then very much a manual, labor-intensive industry.
But the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter, was a disaster.
Twain’s investment—about $9 million in 2022 money—was a total loss.
He embarked on his world tour to pay off his various creditors.
But the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter, was a disaster.
Twain’s investment—about $9 million in 2022 money—was a total loss.
He embarked on his world tour to pay off his various creditors.
Twain, likely on the deck of SS Warrimoo, wasn’t exactly relishing the trip around the world.
While on board SS Warrimoo, Twain crossed the equator and the international date line, two events he noted in his book:
A sailor explained to a young girl that the ship’s speed is poor because we are climbing up the bulge toward the center of the globe; but that when we should once get over, at the equator, and start down-hill, we should fly.And a few days later:
Afternoon.
Crossed the equator.
In the distance, it looked like a blue ribbon stretched across the ocean.
Several passengers kodak’d it.
While we were crossing the 180th meridian it was Sunday in the stern of the ship where my family were, and Tuesday in the bow where I was.
They were there eating the half of a fresh apple on the 8th, and I was at the same time eating the other half of it on the 10th—and I could notice how stale it was, already.
The family were the same age that they were when I had left them five minutes before, but I was a day older now than I was then.
The day they were living in stretched behind them half way round the globe, across the Pacific Ocean and America and Europe; the day I was living in stretched in front of me around the other half to meet it.
Along about the moment that we were crossing the Great Meridian a child was born in the steerage, and now there is no way to tell which day it was born on.
The nurse thinks it was Sunday, the surgeon thinks it was Tuesday.
The child will never know its own birthday.
It will always be choosing first one and then the other, and will never be able to make up its mind permanently.
This will breed vacillation and uncertainty in its opinions about religion, and politics, and business, and sweethearts, and everything, and will undermine its principles, and rot them away, and make the poor thing characterless, and its success in life impossible.
Crossing the equator and the date line may have been memorable for Twain and other occasional passengers, but for the crew of SS Warrimoo, a steamliner plying a regular connection hauling mail, cargo, and passengers between Canada and Australia, it was just another day at the office.
The American satirist’s passage could have been the high-water mark (so to speak) of the ship’s wider notoriety, had it not been for an even more fateful encounter with both lines, a few years later.
A Prank of Historical Proportions
This happened on the evening of December 30, 1899, as SS Warrimoowas once more making the crossing from Vancouver to Sydney.
By chance, the ship was just a few nautical miles from the intersection of the equator and the date line.
Seeing a chance to pull a prank of historical proportions—big enough to be written about more than a century hence—Captain John Duthie Sydney Phillips ordered his crew to steer the ship toward the meeting point of both lines.
Five experienced navigators checked the position of the sun and, after sunset, the stars.
The ship’s position was checked every three hours.
Helped by smooth seas and open skies, SS Warrimooat the stroke of midnight found itself right across the aforementioned intersection, its bow pointing south and its stern facing north.
This happened on the evening of December 30, 1899, as SS Warrimoowas once more making the crossing from Vancouver to Sydney.
By chance, the ship was just a few nautical miles from the intersection of the equator and the date line.
Seeing a chance to pull a prank of historical proportions—big enough to be written about more than a century hence—Captain John Duthie Sydney Phillips ordered his crew to steer the ship toward the meeting point of both lines.
Five experienced navigators checked the position of the sun and, after sunset, the stars.
The ship’s position was checked every three hours.
Helped by smooth seas and open skies, SS Warrimooat the stroke of midnight found itself right across the aforementioned intersection, its bow pointing south and its stern facing north.
A lot comes together at the point where the international date line and the equator cross, about 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaiʻi and 2,500 miles north of New Zealand.
This chart shows the route across that point that SS Warrimoo attempted to take.
This had some positively mind-boggling consequences.
The forward part of the ship was in the Southern Hemisphere, where it was summer, and already January 1, 1900.
The aft part of the ship was in the Northern Hemisphere, where it was winter, and still December 31, 1899.
It could be said, therefore, that the same ship was, for a brief moment:in two different days (on its forward half, it was already Monday, while on its aft part, it was still Sunday);
- in two different months (forward in January, aft in December);
- in two different seasons (summer and winter);
- in two different years (1900 and 1899);
- in two different centuries (the 20th and the 19th); and
- in all four hemispheres at once (the southern and the northern on either side of the equator, and the eastern and western on either side of the 180th meridian).
Did This Really Happen?
However, like many stories that sound too good to be true, this one is as well.
It’s not that the story is entirely made up.
In 1942, the Ottawa Journalreported that Captain Phillips, now retired, was able to verify the whole thing from his logbooks.
And it’s not unheard-of for ships in the neighborhood to go out of their way to cross the equator on the date line.
In nautical lore, this makes you a “golden shellback.”
It’s doubtful that they would have been able to achieve and maintain a position that precise at the appropriate time.And in theory, it’s certainly possible for a ship on that specific point at a specific time to be in different days, months, seasons, years, centuries, and hemispheres.
However, even though the captain and his crew may have believed they were at exactly the intersection of the Great Meridian (180° E/W) and the equinoctial circle (0° N/S), it’s doubtful that with the navigational methods and instruments of that time that they would have been able to achieve and maintain a position that precise at the appropriate time.
And then, of course, there’s the matter of the new century.
As some may remember from the whole Y2K hullaballoo, centuries (and millennia) only end when the year ending in zero is over, not when it starts.
So, just like the 21st century and the third millennium started on January 1, 2001, the 20th century began on January 1, 1901, not 1900.
(Not that this chronological truth got in the way of popular opinion.)
Apart from that mention in the captain’s log, there is no record of that remarkable evening on board SS Warrimoo.
Mark Twain, had he been on board, probably would have had a witty thing or two to say about it.
However, being the unreliable narrator that he was, we still wouldn’t have known what actually happened.
Links :
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Deep-sea mining could begin soon, regulated or not
Polymetallic nodules from the deep ocean floor are rich in valuable minerals such as cobalt and nickel.Credit: Vincent Fournier
From Scientific America by Olive Heffernan
Mining the seafloor could boost global production of clean energy technology—and destroy the ocean in the process
Editor’s Note (8/15/23): In late July the International Seabed Authority announced it will not issue any extraction permits for deep-sea mining until it finalizes its mining regulations, and it indicated they might not be completed until 2025.
Bizarre creatures from the black ocean abyss, preserved in glass jars, line stacks of shelves in deep-sea biologist Adrian Glover's laboratory at London's Natural History Museum.
Among them is a ghostly white animal, oddly elegant and shaped like an ornamental flower with a glass stalk, retrieved from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, five kilometers down.
Ninety percent of the species Glover has assembled had never before been seen by humans.
Glover is part of an international effort to discover what lives on a remote part of the Pacific Ocean seafloor called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
The CCZ is a vast abyssal plain slightly larger than the European Union, situated between Mexico and Hawaii, dotted with rocky outcrops and seamounts.
It is one of the most pristine and least explored parts of our planet—and it may soon endure the world's first deep-sea mining operation.
Trillions of black, potato-size rocks known as polymetallic nodules are strewn across the CCZ seafloor.
The nodules contain valuable metals, including cobalt, copper and nickel needed for electric vehicles; rare earth elements crucial for clean energy technologies; and smaller amounts of lithium, in high demand for batteries.
Surveyors expect the overall tonnage across the CCZ to be substantial, in some cases higher than the sources now mined on land.
Glover hands me a nodule, which looks and feels like a small lump of coal, cold and lifeless.
On closer inspection I can see faint traces of foraminifera, single-cell organisms fundamental to the marine food web, which once covered its surface.
Each nodule starts as a little fragment, perhaps a shark's tooth or a piece of seashell.
Over a long time, metals slowly gather and form an expanding crust around this node, growing just one to 10 centimeters every million years.
The specimen in my hand would have taken about 10 million years to form.
Out on the soft CCZ seafloor, nodules offer a hard surface for tiny creatures, from microbes to sponges, to cling to—a life-giving substrate in a severe habitat.
Water temperatures can reach zero degrees Celsius, there is virtually no light, and pressures can exceed 1,000 bars, equivalent to having a couple of elephants standing on your big toe.
The minuscule life attracts other animals; octopuses, for example, lay eggs in the sponges.
Over time, unique communities form across seafloors strewn with nodules.
Life in the CCZ doesn't exist in great abundance, but it does exist in great diversity.
The nodules “are home to hundreds, maybe thousands, of species that we know little about,” Glover says.
“Whether they would provide food on a plate or stop climate change or become the next cure for cancer, we can't say yet.
Though we could do the research to find out.”
An animal called a crinoid, or sea lily, inhabits the seafloor 4,800 meters deep, in the central Pacific Ocean’s Clarion- Clipperton Zone, targeted for mining.
Credit: Vincent Fournier
Credit: Vincent Fournier
Not everyone wants to wait for more discovery.
A Vancouver-based start-up called The Metals Company (TMC) is pushing to start mining the CCZ in 2024, in partnership with the Pacific Island nation Nauru.
Big machines would scrape the seafloor, scooping up nodules while kicking up clouds of sediment, potentially damaging the deep sea on a vast scale by removing habitat and species and altering ecosystems.
Whether TMC goes ahead with its plans is up to the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a United Nations–affiliated agency responsible for promoting deep-sea mining in international waters while also protecting the deep sea from harm.
ISA has not finalized its mining code, so deep-sea miners such as TMC have no guidelines about how they should operate.
There are significant unknowns about potential environmental damage, as well as about what lives in this remote part of the Pacific and how the region may contribute to ocean health.
Given ISA's conflicting mandate, many experts are concerned that it will prematurely green-light commercial extraction because of industry pressure.
It's not just environmentalists who are concerned; governments and even corporations that want the minerals in the nodules have taken a stand against mining in international waters, at least until the potential impacts of deep-sea mining can be fully assessed.
The growing chorus of voices includes France, Germany and Chile; BMW and Google; and more than 700 experts.
Scientists such as Glover are scrambling to collect data, in many instances funded by contractors, including TMC, which need it to obtain mining approval.
“The rush to understand this place has been related to the fact that we may lose it,” says Diva Amon, a deep-sea biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Credit: Jo Hannah Asetre; Source: “Estimates of Metals Contained in Abyssal Manganese Nodules and Ferromanganese Crusts in the Global Ocean Based on Regional Variations and Genetic Types of Nodules,” by Kira Mizell, James R.Hein, Manda Au and Amy Gartman, in Perspectives on Deep-Sea Mining, edited by Rahul Sharma.
Springer, 2022 (reference)
Sunken treasure
Gerard Barron, CEO of TMC, describes a polymetallic nodule as a “battery in a rock.” The self-assured prospector says deep-sea mining is a rare opportunity to transition the world off fossil fuels.
His company has secured the rights to explore for minerals across several large tracts of the CCZ—enough metals, he claims, to power 280 million electric vehicles, equivalent to the entire U.S.
car fleet.
Prospectors note that deep-sea mining could be the start of ethical mineral extraction: doing away with child labor linked to terrestrial mines in some countries, providing revenue to developing nations through deep-sea profit sharing and leaving a better environmental legacy than mining has on land.
No one has yet scoured the deep sea commercially, but exploration is happening in national and international waters.
Norway, for example, has recently proposed opening its continental shelf to mining.
ISA, which presides over the international seabed, has granted 30 exploration contracts covering 1.4 million square kilometers of the seafloor to prospective miners.
Of those, 17 are for sites in the CCZ; each plot measures around 75,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of Ireland.
The other contracts cover nodules in the Western Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean, as well as massive sulfide deposits at hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and cobalt crusts that line the flanks and summits of seamounts at various Pacific sites.
TMC has contracts to explore three CCZ plots for nodules, in partnership with sponsoring states Nauru, Tonga and Kiribati.
In June 2021 TMC and Nauru, through a venture called Nauru Ocean Resources, Inc.
(NORI), invoked an arcane ISA statute known as the two-year rule, which obligates ISA to allow mining to proceed within two years, regardless of whether a mining code is in place.
In theory, TMC could have begun commercial extraction in July.
In November 2022 the company completed its first trial; onboard the 228-meter-long mining vessel Hidden Gem, Barron's team hauled up more than 3,000 metric tons of nodules from 4.3 kilometers underneath the ocean's surface, proving that it is ready, and equipped, to start commercial work.
TMC is the likely frontrunner in the race to mine the deep sea because it is the only contractor to have invoked the two-year rule.
Barron plans to start in 2024.
The company rose from the ashes of Nautilus Minerals, a Canadian start-up headed by a geologist and friend of Barron's named David Heydon, who subsequently founded DeepGreen, later rebranded as TMC.
Barron was one of the early Nautilus investors.
Nautilus intended to excavate minerals from hydrothermal vents, often teeming with exotic life, in Papua New Guinea's territorial waters.
The start-up developed and tested three big mining machines, each the size of a combine harvester and weighing about six metric tons, which quickly came to symbolize the damage industry could impose on the ocean floor.
Faced with issues related to securing a vessel, as well as lack of investment, in 2019 the company liquidated.
Barron, who got out before Nautilus went bust, has cast himself as a green miner.
The 56-year-old Australian exhibits the casual ease of a Silicon Valley tech mogul: tight beard, shaggy hair, jeans and white T-shirt.
He also wears a combat-style jacket, inside which he carries a softball-size polymetallic nodule—a portable prop for his pitches.
When he talks about his company's plans, Barron exudes confidence and calm optimism.
“I think it's important to remember that we're doing this because the world agrees that we should move away from fossil fuels,” he told me when we met recently at a café in west London.
“That transition is going to be very, very metal-intensive.”
Prospectors contend that without deep-sea mining the world will run out of valuable metals for green technologies.
According to the World Bank, we'll need more than three billion (nonmetric) tons of minerals and metals to deploy the wind, solar and geothermal power required to avoid two degrees C of global warming.
Some estimates predict that the reserves of cobalt, used widely in rechargeable batteries, and of nickel, used in electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy storage, in the CCZ are significantly larger than the remaining reserves on land, although it's hard to gauge the real extent of resources in the abyss, especially those that are easily recoverable.
Not everyone is convinced of an impending shortage—or that, in the event of one, deep-sea mining is the only solution.
The Institute of Sustainable Futures says a global transition toward 100 percent renewable energy could be met with land-based reserves.
“Urban mining”—recovering metals from our discarded computers, mobile phones, tablets and other electronics—could also be greatly scaled up.
The world recycles less than 20 percent of its electronic waste, and safe disposal is a rapidly growing problem.
Also, future demand for certain metals, such as cobalt and lithium, may not be as high as once anticipated; Tesla now uses cobalt-free batteries in half of its new cars.
Manufacturers are exploring alternatives to lithium-based batteries, too.
Smothered by sediment
If the 17 CCZ exploration contracts all progress to exploitation, it's possible that within a decade, multiple operators will be dredging the seafloor for nodules.
Most operators, including TMC, would use harvesters to mine the dark seafloor.
A typical harvester is fitted with twin caterpillar tracks like those on an army tank so it can crawl across the seabed sediment.
The harvester sucks up nodules, whipping up a cloud of fine silt as it travels along, and sends them to a surface vessel through a pipe called a vertical riser.
An average harvester would gather about 400 metric tons of nodules per hour from the CCZ floor; that's 67,000 metric tons per week.
One machine, over a 30-year contract, the standard duration, could strip 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 square miles) of seabed.
Some upset is certain.
Given the incredibly long time it takes nodules to grow and their role as a substrate for marine life, “it's very clear that if you take the nodules away, the ecosystem would move to a different state for millions of years,” says Sabine Gollner, a research scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.
As the big machines crawl along, they will suspend large amounts of fine sediment in the water, which could settle as much as tens of kilometers away.
Scientists have little evidence for what the effects might be, but it is plausible the plume could smother sedentary creatures such as sea anemones and sponges.
Barron cites a 2022 study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that found that the sediment plume kicked up by mining vehicles didn't disperse as widely as people thought it would.
But that was from an experimental trial with a prototype collector about one-third the size of an actual machine.
Sediment stuck to the nodules is sucked up along with them to the surface vessel.
Onboard, the nodules would be cleaned before being transported to a shore-based facility for processing, and the waste sediment would be pumped back into the ocean through another long pipe.
To save on expenses, most contractors plan to release this “dewatering plume” at around 1,000 meters above the ocean floor.
This rain of sediment is likely to cause problems for midwater swimmers, such as jellyfish, by interfering with their visual communication cues or their ability to filter food from the water.
It could also clog the gills of commercial species that forage there, such as fish and shrimp, which are eaten by larger species like tuna and billfish.
Barron's response to environmental concerns is that land mining creates extensive ecological damage and in some places involves human labor abuses.
He points to the growth in nickel mining in the world's equatorial rain forests, notably Indonesia and the Philippines, which studies have shown seriously harms ecosystems there.
“You can't look at one [environmental] situation without having an eye on the other,” he contends.
Under ISA rules, contractors have up to 15 years to explore their claim areas.
They must conduct a “baseline survey” of the nodules and the environment—including details of the habitat and what lives there—and submit it to the ISA's Legal and Technical Commission as part of their exploitation application.
The type and amount of data included in the survey, however, are left up to the contractors, based on ISA guidelines, and the commission is still discussing what data might be acceptable.
Credit: Jen Christiansen; Source: “Estimates of Metals Contained in Abyssal Manganese Nodules and Ferromanganese Crusts in the Global Ocean Based on Regional Variations and Genetic Types of Nodules,” by Kira Mizell, James R.
Hein, Manda Au and Amy Gartman, in Perspectives on Deep-Sea Mining, edited by Rahul Sharma.
Springer, 2022 (nodule data); “2022 Final List of Critical Minerals,” by U.S. Geological Survey (reference)
Springer, 2022 (nodule data); “2022 Final List of Critical Minerals,” by U.S. Geological Survey (reference)
Some mistrust stems from the fact that ISA has never refused an application for exploration, even in regions recommended as marine-protected areas by international conservation organizations.
One especially contentious case is a 2018 contract awarded to Poland to explore a vast site in the mid-Atlantic, next to and partly in the site of the Lost City hydrothermal field—one of the most extreme environments ever discovered on Earth, which scientists hope will be considered for World Heritage status.
Diva Amon, a biologist from Trinidad, is one of ISA's most vocal critics.
She says the agency's requirements for contractors are far too weak.
Amon's first postdoctoral research position, at the University of Hawaii, took her to the CCZ, where—like Glover—she was collecting biological data from a site targeted for mining, in her case by UK Seabed Resources, then a subsidiary of the arms giant Lockheed Martin.
In 2017 Amon founded SpeSeas—a nonprofit dedicated to raising ocean awareness—and in 2020 she was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer.
She starred alongside Will Smith in the actor's documentary series Welcome to Earth.
Now at U.C.
Santa Barbara, Amon focuses on understanding the deep sea, including the CCZ; she is no longer collecting data for contractors.
Amon says “there's a fundamental difference between science to understand and science to exploit”—something she has learned from working in both situations.
She says science to exploit often becomes “a tick box exercise”—doing only what's needed to satisfy a checklist.
The problem with that, Amon says, is “not all contractors are doing high-quality science.
Not all contractors are doing a lot of science.
And not all contractors are making their science accessible.” Malcolm Clark, a biologist who has served as an adviser on the ISA's Legal and Technical Commission for the past seven years, agrees.
TMC has conducted several baseline surveys of one of its three CCZ sites, called NORI-D, collecting data on the density and location of the nodules, and the area's habitat and biology.
In March 2023 it submitted the first tranche of these data to ISA, saying it intended to submit the remaining data before August 2023.
Amon claims the information is insufficient.
“A big part of understanding a place—especially a place that you've never been to—is understanding the variation over a [long] period of time,” she says.
Renee Grogan shares some of Amon's frustrations with the ISA.
She is co-founder and chief sustainability officer of Impossible Metals, a start-up that is promoting what it calls a less intrusive extraction method—using a fleet of autonomous robots to pick up nodules individually from the seafloor rather than sucking up everything in a machine's path.
ISA should force transparency from contractors, says Grogan, who previously worked on sustainability for Nautilus Minerals.
“Regulators with backbones” are needed for that to happen, she says.
Another concern about ISA's conflicting mandate to regulate and promote mining is that ISA recommends, but does not require, that contractors conduct small-scale tests of their operation's potentially harmful impacts.
Clark says few contractors could afford the financial risk without any surety they would be licensed.
“Going into test mining is a huge increase in the complexity and the expense of what a contractor might need to do,” he says.
He acknowledges that very little is known about the impacts mining could create.
“That's obviously a very big question, as you start to move from a few hundreds of [metric] tons of resource extraction into thousands and millions of tons over much larger areas.”
Barron claims that nodule mining could have a regenerative effect on marine life.
“What we're finding now is that actually, when you do disturb an area, it creates much more attraction … for organisms to come back,” he says.
“Once we start to collect nodules, the area starts to rehabilitate pretty well straight away.” Without mining having been done, it is hard to substantiate such a claim.
A 2022 project Barron referred to, which involved a few mining study sites, looked only at foraminifera and found no statistical difference between sites, whether mined or untouched.
When queried, TMC responded in writing that “further study of the impacts of actual collection system tests, such as those NORI is undertaking, [is] essential.”
Missing data
In March 2022 Amon led a review, with 30 other scientists, to identify categories of information needed to manage a mining operation, including how animals that live there vary over time and space and their relationships to one another, as well as noise and light pollution, sediment plumes and the release of toxic metals.
One issue was whether a contractor or the regulator has an effective management plan in place: If there is an adverse impact, whose job is it to mitigate the consequences? The study concluded that, for the CCZ, sufficient data to sustainably manage a mining operation exist for only 15 percent of the categories.
Filling in the knowledge gaps would be a “monumental task” that could take a decade or more, the experts wrote.
Ten of the 30 authors support a moratorium.
One unanswered question is how mining will impact life in the water column.
Jeff Drazen, a biologist at the University of Hawaii whom TMC has contracted to collect biological data in the CCZ, worries that this issue is being ignored.
“Despite a lot of scientists wanting to monitor [midwater] biology, we were not asked to do that.
So that has still not happened,” he says, noting that contractors have not required it.
Drazen says that when TMC tested its mining equipment in NORI-D there was no capability on the ship to look at impacts on midwater life.
Credit: Violet Isabelle Frances for Bryan Christie Design; Source: “Towards Deep Sea Mining—Impact of Mining Activities on Benthic Pelagic Coupling in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone,” by Benjamin Gillard. Ph.D. thesis, Jacob’s University; November 2019 (reference)
Another open question is whether mining will impact the survival of isolated populations.
For example, one strategy to maintain deep-sea diversity might be to rake long strips of seafloor that are separated by intact strips.
But would the newly isolated populations be able to survive?
Barron says Amon's review is flawed, claiming it includes only the views and data of select experts and excludes contractor data, which he says show that mining impacts are likely far less than once feared.
In reply, Amon says contractor data were mostly missing from DeepData, the platform ISA uses to house information.
“It may be true that there are more data out there.
But they are not accessible to any stakeholders in a meaningful way,” says Beth Orcutt, a marine biologist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine.
According to ISA more than 100 CCZ surveys have been done.
Data from just 24 of them reside on DeepData.
A recent study led by Muriel Rabone, a data curator at London's Natural History Museum, unearthed problems with the biological information stored on the platform, including duplication of records and misidentification of species.
Rabone has communicated her concerns to ISA and says the regulator is working hard to fix the problems.
Rabone says that until corrections are made, experts analyzing the data could reach false conclusions.
Trust
Barron remains outwardly optimistic that mining will start soon, even though the past few months have been tough for TMC.
In March the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, with 160 member countries, urged ISA members to back a moratorium on deep-sea mining.
In May the shipping company Maersk, an investor in TMC since Barron became CEO in 2017, announced that it was divesting, without detailing reasons why.
TMC's share price has been volatile in recent months.
Still, now that the two-year rule's embargo date has passed, TMC could just begin mining, without ISA having finalized its regulations, as long as there is no veto from ISA member nations indicating a need to wait for those guidelines.
Barron remains outwardly optimistic that mining will start soon, even though the past few months have been tough for TMC.
In March the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, with 160 member countries, urged ISA members to back a moratorium on deep-sea mining.
In May the shipping company Maersk, an investor in TMC since Barron became CEO in 2017, announced that it was divesting, without detailing reasons why.
TMC's share price has been volatile in recent months.
Still, now that the two-year rule's embargo date has passed, TMC could just begin mining, without ISA having finalized its regulations, as long as there is no veto from ISA member nations indicating a need to wait for those guidelines.
Creatures from the Clarion-Clipperton seabed include (left to right) a sea cucumber (purple), a different sea cucumber (white), a glass sponge, a sea star and a sea anemone.Credit: Vincent Fournier
Scientists hope the effort being made to understand the ocean's abyss will lead to an informed decision.
“There has to be a level of trust that [contractors] are doing it correctly and reporting it correctly,” Orcutt says.
“So much of deep-sea mining is going to rely on trust because no one can go out there and watch what they're doing.” A crucial consideration for ISA will be deciding how much evidence about harm is enough.
“This is essentially a decision as to what level of risk people are prepared to accept,” Glover says.
“We're never going to answer every question.”
Mining's larger future will rest largely on how ISA finalizes its rule book amid the rush to scour the seafloor.
ISA has a rare chance to regulate an industry before the industry has begun.
Links :
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)