Deep Sea Mining - Richard Charter, Sr. Fellow of the Ocean Foundation, about their documentary DEFEND THE DEEP with Dr. Sylvia Earle

In Episode 2, we talk with Richard Charter about the Ocean Foundation documentary DEFEND THE DEEP about the pending perils of deep sea mining.

Deep seabed mining (DSM) is a potential commercial industry attempting to mine mineral deposits from the seafloor, in the hopes of extracting commercially valuable minerals such as manganese, copper, cobalt, and nickel. However, this mining is posed to destroy a thriving and interconnected ecosystem that hosts a staggering array of biodiversity: the deep ocean. Questions also remain if the global economy needs these minerals at all: increasing innovation in battery technology and investment in the circular economy are suggesting alternatives to new mineral extraction.

This film was developed by Richard Charter a Senior Fellow at The Ocean Foundation, and produced by ‪@Ecodeo‬.

As the only community foundation for the ocean, The Ocean Foundation’s mission is to improve global ocean health, climate resilience, and the blue economy. We create partnerships to connect all peoples in the communities in which we work to the informational, technical, and financial resources they need to achieve their ocean stewardship goals.

For more information, check out The Ocean Foundation's Deep Seabed Mining resource page (

KGUA Public Radio Sonoma & Mendocino CA
KGUA 88.3FM is an independent public media station located in Gualala, CA on the Northern CA coast.

Planet Centric Media (non-profit)
Media production company promoting and creating community unity and environmental issues and action.

Mendonoma Whale & Seal Study
Founded by Scott & Tree Mercer to document the occurrence, diversity, & behavior of marine mammals.

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Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;43;09
Unknown
Welcome to Resilient Earth Radio, where we host speakers from the United States and around the world to talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. I'm Leann Lindsey, producer and host, along with my co-producers and co-hosts Scott and Tre Mercer of the Mindanao Whale and Seals study. We talk about nature based economies that help rebalance Earth and raise awareness about the value of whales, elephants, mangroves, seagrass, the deep seas, waterways and forests.

00;00;43;11 - 00;01;35;11
Unknown
This awareness could lead to new laws, policies and procedures to help protect these valuable resources and encourage economies around them to replace the existing exploitation of oceans, forests and animals. Used in association with Planet centric Media System Studios and Kgou 88.3 FM, a public radio station on the Northern California coast. The music for this show is castles by the sea, from international composer Erik Allman of the Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, California.

00;01;35;13 - 00;02;00;17
Unknown
Welcome to Resilient Earth Radio, which showcases the positive actions being taken around the world to help our planet to help rebalance the climate and how you can get involved. I'm Leann Lindsey, host and GM of Kaga at 88.3 FM. This is an independent public radio station. Joining me are my co-producers and co-hosts, Scott and Tre Mercer of Menino, My Whale and Seals study.

00;02;00;20 - 00;02;28;17
Unknown
Good morning, you two. Good morning. And today we have as a guest Richard Charter, senior fellow of the Ocean Foundation. Our topic is deep sea mining. And we will be discussing the Ocean Foundation's documentary, Defend the Deep. We are going to play the trailer and we'll be right back after this.

00;02;28;19 - 00;02;42;13
Unknown
The deep sea. This is a world of unique lifeforms that we have yet to understand.

00;02;42;16 - 00;03;06;27
Unknown
At these depths. There's a whole constellation of life. We know more about outer space than we know about life in the deep sea. Right now we have lawlessness. We have companies and countries wanting to go ahead and profit from taking what they can from the ocean. This is about politics, and it's about money. Nobody will notice because it's way offshore.

00;03;06;28 - 00;03;37;17
Unknown
But the scale at which industry wants to proceed in the deep ocean is truly staggering. There are no walls in the ocean that can prevent silt and pollution from entering a protected area at any depth. It's simply impossible to restore millions of years of creation. The deep sea is bursting with life, extraordinary life forms. There are others that are also incredibly graceful and elegant and lit up from the inside by bio reminiscence.

00;03;37;19 - 00;04;09;09
Unknown
Indigenous voices remind us to respect and live in harmony with the ocean. The ocean sequesters 25% of the entire planet's carbon emissions. Deep seabed mining would irreparably damaged our ocean supports. A moratorium. And that is the trailer for Defend the Deep by the Ocean Foundation. And Richard Charter, who's joining us right now. Good morning, Richard. How are you doing?

00;04;09;12 - 00;04;32;14
Unknown
Good morning, and thank you for having me. And along with us again are Scott and Tre Mercer of Mendham, a whale in Seal City. They have spent their life dedicated to studying the oceans and the inhabitants within them. Richard, you are someone, as a senior fellow of the Ocean Foundation. You've spent decades of your life defending our coastlines and our oceans.

00;04;32;19 - 00;04;55;27
Unknown
I'd like for you to give us a little background about yourself and describe some of the things that we were just listening to. Well, about myself, the only thing you really need to know is that I had the privilege of growing up in the tide pools of the North Coast, here in Sonoma and Mendocino County as a small child, and I saw all these little critters that you could poke and they squirt or run away.

00;04;55;29 - 00;05;19;29
Unknown
And I fell in love with the place. I fell in love with the intertidal, and particularly the edge of the ocean, where life is so rich and so beautiful. And because I was growing up in an agricultural setting in Contra Costa County, coming to the ocean was a real reward. But we did it frequently because my father was absolutely crazy for abalone.

00;05;20;01 - 00;05;45;00
Unknown
Back when you're just wait it out with Levi's and all, you know, tennis shoes and a part of a leaf spring from an automobile and popped abalone off the rocks. They were everywhere here. But as I grew up, I evolved into a place where I thought I might be able to make a difference for the ocean. And with the help of literally millions of people.

00;05;45;03 - 00;06;11;05
Unknown
I can't take credit myself. But with the help of millions of people, we have all collectively made a difference here. And we enjoy it every day because we we see it right where we've done. We've protected it from offshore oil drilling and numerous other threats. And there's one more threat that has been here before, actually. And it's back, and that is subsea mining, mining of the seabed for minerals.

00;06;11;07 - 00;06;41;01
Unknown
And yet hardly anybody knows about this. If you were here in the early 1980s, you may recall a gentleman named James Watt, who was the secretary of interior for Ronald Reagan when he was president. And James Watt decided that a structure off the north coast of California, called the Gorda Ridge, was going to be leased for hard mineral leasing fairly close to shore.

00;06;41;03 - 00;07;09;08
Unknown
And so this is one type of the three types of deep sea mining. It's called polymetallic sulfides or, it's a strip mining of these towers that exist around undersea hot springs. And you're just grind them up and take them away. And the minerals for copper lead and sink. And those weren't particularly economically, recoverable in the early 1980s.

00;07;09;08 - 00;07;32;29
Unknown
And there was a huge outcry at the local level, the same people who had been fighting offshore drilling, and both California and Oregon stopped it. And James Watt, of course, rode off into the sunset on his horse. And the last we saw there was this southbound number, northbound horse as he resigned. But, the technology includes two other kinds of subsea mining.

00;07;33;02 - 00;08;03;11
Unknown
One is the stripping of a cobalt crust from undersea volcanoes. Like what we off the island of Hawaii. And the third one, which is very active right now. The third type of subsea mining is as these polymetallic nodules, these rocks that are spread all over the seafloor, in an area between Hawaii and, the U.S. mainland that's actually broader than the entire continental United States.

00;08;03;11 - 00;08;33;24
Unknown
And it's called the Clarion Clipperton Zone. And so that's what we focused on in our documentary, because the strip mining the Quarry and Clipperton Zone, there's an eminent distinction. It's it's being made right now and hardly anybody knows about it because it's three miles underwater. But it will have impacts on the entire ocean ecosystem and destroy ecological features that have taken millions of years to create and would take millions of years, if ever, to recover millions of years.

00;08;33;26 - 00;09;13;14
Unknown
That's millions of years. That is absolutely the case. Billions of years. And the dust cloud that erupts from this deep sea mining as well travels for miles and miles. And it you can't contain that. Well, this is one of those things where human technology, the machinery of extraction, has gotten number one, so large. I mean, you're talking about subsea bulldozers the size of your cart or Safeway in some cases, that are operated and guided by artificial intelligence and operated remotely from the sea surface on a ship.

00;09;13;16 - 00;09;38;02
Unknown
And so it pumps these nodules to the surface. And they are then cleaned of the silt that's on them. So there's a big silt cloud where you dig them up, there's a waste stream, if you will, of silt after you clean them off. And that's discharged about mid-water depths. And these silt plumes could travel hundreds of miles. So there is no way to do this without impact.

00;09;38;02 - 00;10;32;28
Unknown
Think very broad areas of the ocean it has. It is what you call ecosystem wide or ecocide as we call it ecocide. It's that's the killing of an ecosystem. Yes. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yes. Yes. And of what value are these minerals to us. It's being falsely portrayed as a battery and a rock. And gentlemen from the Metals Company, the mining company that wants to do this, Hera, hold up one of these rocks and he calls it a battery in a rock because the the thing that he's trying to latch on to in order to destroy the substrate ecosystem is the idea that as we transition away from carbon based fuels for transportation and switch

00;10;32;28 - 00;11;05;14
Unknown
to electricity, we're going to need a whole different kind of raw material. And because we are very good and Western countries are throwing away used technology rather than recycling it, we've not been very good. He used bad, pretty good at recycling some of these same materials. Here. We just toss them. So the theory is that if you can go get new ones and build, cars, batteries, wind turbines, you name it, you will have, a new industry.

00;11;05;16 - 00;11;30;05
Unknown
And so some of the companies that have gotten it on the ground floor of that new industry are trying to portray it as necessary for the postcard transition. But that's not true. I mean, basically, you're looking at the sacrifice of an entire, like I say, an area in the quarry it fractures out in which, separated fracture zone.

00;11;30;08 - 00;12;01;27
Unknown
The lasers have already been left on the seabed. The leases are there. They've not been commercially developed, but they extend from Hawaii all the way to Mexico, practically. And they're two, three miles under water. So nobody knows they're there except for the people who administer that. And the idea is now. Absolutely. Right now, this company, the metals Company, is trying to push for commercial extraction, even though we have no idea how will we mitigate the impacts or if we could ever put things back.

00;12;01;27 - 00;12;33;00
Unknown
We don't even know what lives there. That's a very good point. So the leases are there, and we don't even know what's going to be the fallout from this to when that ocean floor has been sequestering carbon for millions of years as well. So what happens when you disturb that? Well, it is portrayed as only disturbing the small areas where you extract the nodules, but the nodules are the habitat.

00;12;33;03 - 00;12;55;15
Unknown
In other words, the life at that depth. Because of these events pressures three miles underwater. Humans can't grow, humans cannot live there. But there are life forms that we're just learning about. Literally hundreds of life. Or some of them don't even have names yet. And if you think about it, 90% of Earth's livable ecosystems are in the ocean.

00;12;55;15 - 00;13;21;11
Unknown
90% nine because of the depth, the depth factor. If you look at the Earth, it looks like, you know, well, maybe two thirds of the Earth is ocean. But if you factor in these steps, 90% of the livable ecosystems on planet Earth are in the ocean. So we're starting to now get into a technological ability to go destroy the base of that food chain in the ocean.

00;13;21;14 - 00;13;46;04
Unknown
And it's a little scary because, number one, we don't need it. There are other sources of these same materials. The most attractive one is recycling the materials we have. But that doesn't make profits for people. But yeah, and also battery technology is already evolving away from the use of these types of minerals and things like car batteries.

00;13;46;09 - 00;14;09;26
Unknown
There are other things that are better and cheaper and easier to get. So we're watching, basically an obsolete technology applied to the most sensitive ecosystem on Earth to get minerals. We don't even need. And so we thought it would be a good idea to make a film about this. Yes. And everybody, you can watch that on YouTube and just,

00;14;09;29 - 00;14;32;07
Unknown
Yeah. Just search in the search bar for Defend the Deep and then you'll see. Yeah. Well, actually the easiest way to find it is a URL. It just says the movie, dawg. There you go. The people we org and it's streaming. They're free and it's about 20 minutes. And I guarantee it will open your mind to things you had not really thought about.

00;14;32;10 - 00;15;00;16
Unknown
You're listening to the voice of Richard Charter. He's a senior fellow with the Ocean Foundation. He happens to live right here on our coast, even though that's a Washington, DC based organization. He's down in bodega Bay. I'm Liane Lindsey, your host today, along with my co-host and co-producers of this new radio show and podcast called Resilient Earth. I have with me, Scott and Terry Mercer of Mendham, a whale in seal study.

00;15;00;19 - 00;15;24;10
Unknown
And they have a huge background. All their life of working in different capacities, teaching, guiding whale tours and so much more, studying the oceans for most of their lives. So they too are joining me on this effort to bring to light some of the topics around our planet, what is at stake, and also what can we do about it?

00;15;24;10 - 00;15;54;11
Unknown
What? How can people really get involved? So, Richard, if you could talk about that a little bit about what their leases that are active, as you were saying, what can people do to become aware of this situation and what action could they take, the way that citizens on the North coast are protected today? Here, right locally where we live, has generally been first, an annual year to year moratorium in Congress, which we did for 27 years.

00;15;54;12 - 00;16;22;24
Unknown
We renewed it for 27 years. People who are they there with you today? And people on the air today know what this is because they worked on it for decades. And then we were able to extend a national marine sanctuary as far north as Point Arena. That comes under the federal government, under NOAA. And that means no offshore drilling or no technology of any kind would disturb the seabed within that particular boundary.

00;16;22;27 - 00;16;59;23
Unknown
The problem with the, deep sea that mining as it's occurring out in the middle of the ocean at locations that are, beyond federal control. In other words, there's an overarching entity called the International Seabed Authority, which is, sanctioned by the United Nations. This is a coalition of 168 nations plus the EU. The United States is not part of the International Seabed Authority directly because it never ratified the law of the sea.

00;16;59;25 - 00;17;24;04
Unknown
So without ratifying the law of the sea, the U.S. doesn't have a direct vote. And what happens to these deep seabed mining operations, whether they go commercial or not? But we have ways of lobbying that entity. We have leadership in that room which meets four times a year at Kingston, Jamaica, which some of the committees were meeting there.

00;17;24;04 - 00;18;06;10
Unknown
Now, when the hurricane ball hit in Jamaica, it's not clear whether the meeting itself will continue or not. But, Kingston, Jamaica main site, who's in that room decides whether these go commercial these leases in 24 countries so far and growing. I've got 168 nations have called for a moratorium on deep sea mining based on the fact that we don't have enough baseline information, we don't know what the impacts are going to do to these fragile ecosystems, and there is no way to mitigate or recover, to restore ecosystems and chuck millions of years to build.

00;18;06;10 - 00;18;47;25
Unknown
It will take millions of years to come back. If ever there's a debate going on within the ISI, the International Seabed Authority, about whether commercial production of these minerals will happen or not, they've built in the Metals Company and other miners have built into that a catch 22. And the catch 22 is if after two years you've held the lease and the International Seabed Authority has not figured out how to mitigate the impact or how to restore the ecosystem, and there's still insufficient information after two years, you get to go ahead to commercially buy.

00;18;47;28 - 00;19;14;19
Unknown
It's like a failsafe for the miners that built into the process. So that's what's being pushed right now is the two year rule to kick in and allow, the mining to go ahead, even though we have no way to fix the damage. And so that's why this is this film comes at such a critical, important time. Because by doing nothing, we lose.

00;19;14;21 - 00;19;58;18
Unknown
And as the film points out, the ocean belongs to all of us, all around the planet and all the indigenous people that live along the coastline, some of whom their livelihoods depend on the ocean. Any of these actions affects everyone. There is a term within the International Seabed Authority charter that basically means collective human and heritage. Yes, it's the common heritage of mankind and these living systems and the minerals that might be found there are considered to be the property of everybody on the planet because they're not in any national waters.

00;19;58;21 - 00;20;31;26
Unknown
And so the collective human inherent is really the focus of our film, because what we did is using, AI technology that involves the ability to interview distant individuals over the internet. We assembled all of the indigenous leaders around the Pacific Rim who are working on this issue, and captured their thoughts for our film. We didn't have to fly and get a big carbon footprint to go see them.

00;20;31;29 - 00;20;58;25
Unknown
We actually, through our producer, Echo Dell, was able to use the Technol she list Rubin to interview them over the air. And so that's what you will find in our film as what people think from, almost a spiritual point of view, because to many cultures, the ocean is not only the source of their life as a culture, it's what keeps all of us alive today.

00;20;58;27 - 00;21;34;08
Unknown
We all know that's true, but they actually it's it's part of their ingrained belief system. And so, they articulate it much better than I could, and they articulate it in our film. We'll be right back, right after this special message. If you like our podcast, please consider contributing to our Patreon account. Planet Centric Media is the producer, and they are A501 C3 nonprofit, which makes your contribution tax deductible.

00;21;34;10 - 00;22;03;00
Unknown
Welcome back to Resilient Earth Radio. You also have a Knowledge Hub, a website that discusses some of these things, like the ACA and what's happening in Jamaica. Well, on the Ocean Foundation website, you will find a whole report on deep ocean mining. Both the technology as well as the regulatory framework. And in that is what's called the Knowledge Hub.

00;22;03;07 - 00;22;42;01
Unknown
This is one of those things where the urge to develop the economic pressure to go tear this seabed up is ahead of that technology to understand what the average we might do, or even how we might fix the damage we do. And so what we're worried about is we're going to wreck things we don't understand. We know, for instance, that certain of the testing, the protocols for Covid come from biomaterials adjacent to these hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean.

00;22;42;03 - 00;23;10;21
Unknown
We know that there are cancer treatments under development. Some are already being tested. Treatments for cancer for humans. If there's anything that we really need, that's it. And it's coming from deep sea biota. But we're going to destroy the source material. You don't need to destroy the source material to create the pharmaceuticals, because what you don't, you understand the pharmaceuticals use, then and replicate it in the lab.

00;23;10;23 - 00;23;40;24
Unknown
But the problem is, if we destroy the source pharmaceuticals before we know how to get and how to use these pharmaceuticals, we may miss the cure for cancer. Literally. That is profound and very important for people to grasp and understand. You mentioned, too, that these huge bulldozers use and they're like robots using AI technology. So it's not even driven by humans on the ocean floor.

00;23;40;27 - 00;24;07;00
Unknown
It's remote, so that distances people even further. I want you to talk a little bit about that. Well, you will not have human eyes watching the damage as it's being done. You have to rip up the surface of the seafloor to capture the nodules and you pump them to the surface. And all of this may be viewed by a few video cameras, but there's nobody there to tell you what you're doing.

00;24;07;03 - 00;24;34;25
Unknown
And there are places where tests have been done of these machines. And years later, you know, observers have come back. The damage is still visible on the seafloor. It's just not something that OSHA can heal. The technology is so big. And once you let a remote technology loose in the ocean, there's not really any way to, fix it.

00;24;34;28 - 00;25;23;17
Unknown
And the ocean doesn't fix itself very rapidly. It's a very slow everything moves very slowly down there. There's no light. There's immense pressures. Life, you know, develops infinitesimally, slowly. And yet this is a huge geographic area of the planet. And you just touched on another thing, too, that we need to also consider it is the impact and effect of light and sound in the ocean, as most people who have studied and worked around the ocean, no sound could travel very long distances and water and the ocean, and we don't actually know even whales that live closer to the surface.

00;25;23;19 - 00;25;58;28
Unknown
But we can communicate with each other over distances that are almost unbelievable, because the water is such an incredibly good conductor of sound. And so the problem is, at the deep ocean, we don't know exactly how far the sound of these machines will carry, but we know it will be a long distance. And what that will do in terms of confusing the various mating and feeding behaviors of marine mammals closer to the surface.

00;25;59;00 - 00;26;24;17
Unknown
It hasn't even been studied. They haven't even started to look at it. And then when you look at a cross-section of the ocean ecosystem, you see that there are actually impacts at every level from the surface to the seafloor to the mid-water levels, sediment plumes coming out. This is not something that's going to suddenly just go away.

00;26;24;19 - 00;26;51;03
Unknown
It is an impact on the entire ocean. Top to bottom. We're looking forward to having Michael Stocker on here to to talk about sounds in the ocean. He's been a frequent guest on the Ocean Lives symposium that we do along you as well. Come on as a guest on that annual event. That's his focus, his study sounds on the oceans and what they the effect they have on the inhabitants there.

00;26;51;06 - 00;27;18;07
Unknown
The other part, too, is light. Light, these creatures and that live so deep in our oceans. They're used to the dark. It's kind of like maybe the opposite happening to us, where the lights are turned off. If that were to affect us, how would we feel if our lights were turned off? And yet we're turning the lights on in their environment that they're not used to have fear of the deep sea lifeforms actually have lights on them.

00;27;18;08 - 00;27;42;21
Unknown
And we show some of those in our film. They have almost magical rainbow lights that flicker along the surface of their fin. Or they some of them have a light that hangs out in front of their head that it's not on all the time, but it's bioluminescence that powers it. And it's used as part of the, feeding strategy and probably part of the mating strategy.

00;27;42;21 - 00;28;09;18
Unknown
We don't know exactly what everything is using this for, but there are artificial light sources. They're tiny compared to some immense ball. Those are driving through with big lights on it, the big lights on the pole. Those are so the cameras can steer it to the desired target that it's going to strip mine. But yeah, you're right, we would be blinded by darkness.

00;28;09;21 - 00;28;32;12
Unknown
Denizens of the darkness would be blinded by the light right before they were chewed up. Right. It kind of reminds me of the movie avatar. You know how they went to a distant planet and were destroying it with all these huge machines? And these are remotely controlled here on our deep ocean, which is like another planet to us.

00;28;32;15 - 00;28;57;29
Unknown
But you will see in our movie creatures that look quite a bit like avatar, all they are creatures are not animated and they are not created. They are real. And we got video material from laboratories like Woods Hole and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Institute. The information from all over the world to help us show people what lives down there.

00;28;57;29 - 00;29;22;06
Unknown
And when you look at it, you can hardly believe it's real, right? Hi Richard Scott, yes, I was watching your film, and I thought it was interesting this morning that you started talking about your time growing up on the tide pools on the West Coast. I grew up on the tide pools on the East coast in New Hampshire, and in fact, some tide pool activity in New Hampshire.

00;29;22;06 - 00;29;42;13
Unknown
That led to my first employment at the University of New Hampshire. So there's a lot to be done there. About five years into my, well, career, I had positions down in the galley to rid ourselves of James Watt, which didn't happen for a couple more years. But we were happy to see him right off on a force into the distance.

00;29;42;15 - 00;30;18;26
Unknown
One thing that Michael Stocker did show us some graphic similar to what you have there behind you right now, which is a frightening looking monster. It's like something out of the Terminator. Michael showed what it looked like industrial parks on the bottom of the ocean. And you show some heavy equipment here. And Michael had also shown us all the results of measurement of sound underwater and the impact that it had on invertebrates, tiny invertebrates, obviously, at these depths on those animals and the upsetting of the food chain down there, which is very delicate anyway to begin with.

00;30;18;29 - 00;30;41;09
Unknown
But it was shocking to a number of the people here who are working in the station who are listening to Michael's talk. Yeah. And the impact, the vibrations in the sound had on the invertebrates in that area, which were part of that going back to Symposium one, actually, that was the first one that we did up at Mendocino High School that you wisely waited to join us for another time.

00;30;41;15 - 00;31;04;27
Unknown
That creature behind you there is one of the, machinery I wanted to talk about. Is it? Siltation rises of life is very fragile down there, especially in any filter feeders down there are going to be impacted heavily by this added siltation. There isn't a lot of material down there to feed on. There's a lot of, I assume, rely on the organics.

00;31;04;27 - 00;31;27;14
Unknown
Now you know what I'm talking about. The constant flow of organic material that comes down most of it bits of mucus and protein. And you mix that in with tons of siltation. It's going to be rising. It's going to create more, more impact on the bottom of the ocean and on those creatures. I hadn't thought about it from that direction, however, and the sound we were talking about, some of the great distances.

00;31;27;14 - 00;31;48;08
Unknown
I remember several years ago there was a sound of a blue whale that was picked up in Boston Harbor. You know, it began in Spain. That whale was first recorded off of Spain and then recorded and then people, with hydrophones out in Massachusetts Bay, actually in Boston Harbor, picked up the same whale over a fairly short amount of time.

00;31;48;10 - 00;32;20;25
Unknown
So these whales are, we all know and documented whales are losing their abilities. And it's also usually impacting the culture of many of these whales too. And mother and calf staying together and just getting together for procreation. I have some friends actually, some long term mentors of mine on the East Coast who at one time a few years ago, we're talking about the technology of going to the sea bottom and picking up just plucking nodules off the bottom, which would have very little impact on the ocean floor.

00;32;20;28 - 00;32;42;19
Unknown
And that's they were going to invest in this and they were actually marine biologists. They sound like a safe investment. And as they learned a little bit more, I haven't heard them mention it since, not in terms of investments. We're talking about a lot more research necessary and a lot more caution than they first thought. They thought it was going to be a noninvasive passive, at least as far as the bottom of the ocean goes.

00;32;42;19 - 00;33;05;14
Unknown
It would be invasive on the water column. But as far as the impact on the ocean floor, that this is going to be a fairly benign and, and, noninvasive way of working with that, because that really wasn't pursued through that was still require robots or subs. It was just small subs that was just off the bottom and not impact in consultation.

00;33;05;16 - 00;33;37;13
Unknown
That whole idea has since been pretty well dropped. I think you probably know a lot more about that. I'm sure you do. You introduce two very, very important aspects of this, and that is the ocean is a dynamic process, not a static environment. And the siltation of stirring up the seabed with the turbulence of harvesting the minerals from the seabed and then dumping the leachate, the leftover silt halfway down the water column.

00;33;37;15 - 00;34;09;18
Unknown
Richard. Things that travel hundreds of miles and the ocean as a silt plume. You mentioned organic snow, which is the detritus of the waste of life at the surface of the ocean. Filter it down and accumulate on the seabed, which happens all the time, and including a very fascinating, process called a whale fall, where a whale dying in the ocean will wind up in the deep ocean and be visible there for a very long time as it deteriorates.

00;34;09;21 - 00;34;44;28
Unknown
But the one that is very important to the carbon cycle and life on Earth is as as we face global climate change, it's life forms that migrate up and down every day and every night, microscopic and, small, not always microscopic life forms that migrate vertically in the ocean. And they are very important to the ocean as a sequestration mechanism for excess carbon, even manmade carbon, you know, human and human increase in carbon in the atmosphere.

00;34;44;28 - 00;35;10;29
Unknown
The ocean is a great sponge for soaking it up, almost too good. So the verticality issue is also something we touched on in the, in the film, because what we're doing is, as in the name of decarbonizing transportation on land, we are messing up the biggest natural mechanism for helping us deal with excess carbon, which is the ocean.

00;35;11;01 - 00;35;37;24
Unknown
We're interfering directly in the the carbon transfer ability of the ocean. It's just not to get lithium. Let's be clear. Lithium comes from geothermal brine or lake beds. On land, you can extract it from seawater with a very inefficient process. It's probably too expensive to do this is not to get lithium for batteries. This is to get, you know, cobalt, manganese, nickel.

00;35;37;24 - 00;36;08;15
Unknown
And also, a rare earth called beryllium is highly sought from the deep ocean, which is used as a reflector for building nuclear weapons as we really design and renew our nuclear weapons supply so we can kill each other better. We are looking for minerals from the seabed to actually build more powerful nuclear weapons. I mean, this whole thing, it's or I think it was Eisenhower that called it the military industrial complex.

00;36;08;17 - 00;36;36;10
Unknown
Well, the military industrial complex has now come home to the ocean. This is the military industrial complex wore on on the base of the food chain in the ocean. And, and we just worried us, frankly, that not very many people even knew this was coming because it's invisible. We look at the ocean from the shore, and it's all shiny and a big mirror, and it looks great.

00;36;36;10 - 00;36;58;25
Unknown
And your guys are counting whales every day, and you can see the whales go by. But the fact is that in the heart of the ocean and the three miles down is where the damage is, is about to be done. It hasn't started yet. As a as a commercial, but as an excuse for using the decarbonization of transportation.

00;36;58;27 - 00;37;25;15
Unknown
So don't think that you know every wind turbine and every, you know, shoreline, you know, substation for electricity. Those are things that are not going to come with no cost. They're going to come at a cost of the deep ocean being sacrificed. Right. And that's an important part to think about. Three dimensions. Think of it in a three dimensional view.

00;37;25;17 - 00;38;00;16
Unknown
I agree that it's almost the out of sight, out of mind mentality. And that is why this film that you made, I think it's so critical that people have a chance to see it, the film, it's magnificent and it will make an impression. It really will. It's so many people are not aware of those life forms and the base of the food chain, if that's ever destroyed or harmed in any way that ripple effect is devastating.

00;38;00;18 - 00;38;26;14
Unknown
And where can they watch this film again? Defend the deep. If you're just go to the deep movie.org and the deep movie.org, there's a streaming version there. We have a broadcast high res version that we're entering at various film festivals. We just barely miss the San Francisco International Film Festival and just barely missed it. We were still in production, but we'll hit it next year.

00;38;26;17 - 00;38;54;10
Unknown
We're entering and film festivals throughout the world right now, not because we want to win an awards or anything, but our film and the first three days has had 10,000 hits. That's how hot this issue is and there's not really another film about it. I'm really glad to hear about the high res version too, and I just went to the International Ocean Film Festival that was in San Francisco and saw one that Sylvia Earle, and with Yo-Yo Ma.

00;38;54;10 - 00;39;23;16
Unknown
That was the very first one that came off. And she's in your film, too? Yes. She's had our film. She generously contributed in her presence, her deepness, we call her and write her. She's very she's a she understands this issue because she's one of the few people who's been there. She's been to the deep ocean and various machines when she was a younger woman and she was doing this, I thought, oh my God, look what she's doing.

00;39;23;18 - 00;39;49;10
Unknown
She's been there. So she gets it. She does. And I had not even heard about her for some reason, and ended up meeting a woman that works with her car driver, and she is going to help arrange for Doctor Sylvia Earle to come on to this show. Resilient Earth to along with her daughter. I believe she's been doing this for decades studying the ocean floors.

00;39;49;12 - 00;40;19;04
Unknown
And like you said, her title by a lot of people is Her Deepness, also known as like the Jane Goodall of the oceans. We're listening right now to Richard Charter, who's a senior fellow with the Ocean Foundation. He for decades has been working with this organization to help protect our oceans and our coast. I'm Leann Lindsey, along with my co-producers and co-hosts, Scott and Terry Mercer here at Kaikoura in Molalla, 88.3 of them.

00;40;19;07 - 00;40;25;11
Unknown
And we're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.

00;40;25;14 - 00;40;55;25
Unknown
Thank you for supporting our efforts to connect with great guests who talk about these critical issues facing our planet and the positive things people are doing about them. Your contribution is tax deductible because we are produced by a 501 C3 nonprofit, planet centric media. Thanks for listening to Resilient Earth Radio. Welcome back to Resilient Earth Radio. We want to get back to you, Richard.

00;40;55;25 - 00;41;27;28
Unknown
And there are so many points that you have brought up about this deep sea mining. And that's why you created this film with the Ocean Foundation, Defend the Deep. You have raised issues regarding silt clouds, silt blooms, the siltation, being disturbed to thinking about it in a three dimensional way that we see that this is not just on the surface of the land, but think about the ocean being volumes vertically of life forms.

00;41;28;05 - 00;42;01;06
Unknown
Why are they going in mining in the first place? I'd like to go back to that one thing you were talking about these hot springs with these mineral towers. Describe a little bit more about that. Okay, now that is a different technology from the deep sea nodules that is called the poly metallic sulfide mining, usually spreading center or some volcanic feature under the ocean, like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge has a number of them.

00;42;01;08 - 00;42;28;08
Unknown
And here on the Pacific current ecosystem at the juncture between Oregon and California, northern California and Oregon border, not too far off shore, there is a place where hot springs emit hot water from the seabed laden with minerals that have been gathered as it comes up through the seabed. And these are called black smokers because you're they're actually visible there.

00;42;28;08 - 00;43;02;21
Unknown
There are minerals in the water coming, and around them are life forms that are unique to that site. There are unique crabs and tube worms about the size of your arm that flap around, and each hot spring has its own kind of life form. They're usually unique to that site biologically, and they are beautiful ecosystems. To harvest those, it isn't a matter of just scooping out minerals off the seabed like nodules with a bulldozer.

00;43;02;21 - 00;43;30;29
Unknown
These are actually, using explosives and undersea excavators. These are demolished. These are torn up and pumped to the surface. There's actually on Tiburon and San Francisco Bay, there's a device about two stories tall, very rusty right now that was built to assay the minerals from the Gorda Ridge lease sale that James Watt, when he was secretary of Interior, was going to hold off for Northern California.

00;43;30;29 - 00;43;58;29
Unknown
Oregon. They built a machine and timber out at the lab down there to see the contact, the mineral content of the polymetallic sulfide minerals. James Watt did not get a chance to do that, fortunately. But you can bet that the next Secretary of interior, is going to be under pressure. Whichever administration we have to go back and revisit places like the Garden Ridge right here.

00;43;59;01 - 00;44;28;01
Unknown
And if the Garden Ridge were developed, for example, Humboldt Bay would be the port where everything came ashore. And Humboldt Bay, as you know, is being, proposed and funded for major port improvement. I mean, major port alterations, in preparation for, what a lot of people think is going to be the, offshore floating wind industry.

00;44;28;02 - 00;45;01;02
Unknown
Right. And so the question becomes, if we don't limit the use of Humboldt Bay to strictly floating wind, will it also become the mineral depot for strip mining, the guano rich for probably metallic sulfides. And the probability is, yes. Well, and as floating offshore wind, as there's about to be, there's an announcement coming very, very soon that the entire Mendocino coast is now going to be open for floating offshore wind.

00;45;01;02 - 00;45;27;05
Unknown
Heard about that? Good idea or bad idea? That's a different 3 or 4 shows, right? Right. As Eureka and Humboldt County become the target for, the bringing ashore and working on the turbines, the question becomes, does that mean that Humboldt Bay will also be the port for mineral processing and the answer is yes, it will.

00;45;27;07 - 00;45;53;26
Unknown
Are leases necessary for this type of activity as well? Well, the, polymetallic sulfides, if they're in the US exclusive economic zone, you know, within a couple of miles of the coast, which they are at Garden Ridge, that would be, typical lease would be granted by the Department of Interior. That's a federal decision by the white House.

00;45;53;28 - 00;46;18;16
Unknown
There's a lot of support for what are called critical minerals mining. Mining, loosening the regulations and making it easier to go get these minerals. And a lot of that support for loosening the regulations comes from the Alaska congressional delegation, because a lot of these minerals are found on land in Alaska, and they would rather tear up Alaska.

00;46;18;16 - 00;46;56;00
Unknown
So, there's, what you call, a geographic set of viewpoints that differ, between different states in the US Congress about how, whether and when to go get these minerals. But at the end of the day, if you look at what is happening in the EU, electronic waste recycling is the fastest growing industry and most of the world, you shouldn't be throwing away after one use minerals, that are in various types of electronic devices.

00;46;56;02 - 00;47;47;06
Unknown
There are ways to extract those minerals and reuse them. The profit margin in that this is called the circular economy, but the profit margin in that is exceeded by going and getting, you know, seabed minerals and then throwing them away. That's it's something we've all experienced with, you know, disposable automobiles, disposable everything. And as we moved away from interchangeable, repairable devices where they are parts that we can't be replaced, we came upon this consumer society that we're paying the price for right now, both in terms of the atmosphere with global climate warming by the wasteful use of heat to refine new minerals, but also, we're wasting a lot of stuff that we've I

00;47;47;07 - 00;48;19;27
Unknown
just don't have a place to throw away. So we ship it to some third world country and it becomes a pile of waste. There. And, if we don't move toward our circular economy, I have very strong concerns about the survival of the whole planet, let alone the ocean. I mean, we need to start reusing, you know, I was fortunate because I went to a college where our scholar in residence was our Buckminster Fuller, and it made it very hard to go to class because he would come and teach these classes.

00;48;19;27 - 00;48;54;14
Unknown
And you got your regular class. And I listened to Bucky, and his watchword always was the same. And that was to do more with less, to do more with less. And I think that is if the fundamental challenge behind, renewed calls for more offshore drilling, for industrializing the North coast, for wind, and for ocean mining, if we would do more with less, we would have to destroy less of the planet to get what we think we need.

00;48;54;17 - 00;49;41;08
Unknown
And, so I always echoing in the back of my mind from hearing Buckley, again at the end of his life. I saw him when he spoke in Petaluma and he was still saying the same thing, you know, do more with less. And that is such an obvious mandate for the next generation. And in this last minute, Richard, is there one last thing that you'd like to tell our audience that they can do to get involved and, and to help our film at the end of the film has a QR code at a URL where you can click and send a message to the International Seabed Authority calling for a moratorium on deep sea

00;49;41;08 - 00;50;06;19
Unknown
bed mining. So if you go to our film, Find Yourself 20 minutes, you'll learn about a whole new, very interesting issue with some beautiful images and some amazingly content music. At the deep movie.org, that deep movie.org go there and at the end, if you don't have time to watch it, go to the end and it will tell you exactly what you can do right now.

00;50;06;22 - 00;50;28;10
Unknown
Because this decision about whether to go commercial extraction on leases that are already active is being made literally now, this summer, under this two year rule, you know, the pressure is, well, we don't have enough information. We don't know how we fix it. We're going to destroy it. And it'll take millions of years to recover. But let's let them do it.

00;50;28;12 - 00;50;49;22
Unknown
And that's the rule that's being allowed by the International Seabed Authority, with the exception of a couple dozen countries that are calling for a moratorium. So join with those countries and call for a moratorium. Thank you. Richard Charters, senior fellow of the Ocean Foundation, for joining us today, along with Scott and Terry Mercer of MIT and, a whale and seals study.

00;50;49;25 - 00;51;18;22
Unknown
Thank you again for being part of Resilient Earth Radio and Podcast. Thank you, Richard, very, very thank you so much. We came out here in 2014, ten years ago now. Your name was the one we heard, putting the other the, protected areas out here, the marine protected areas. This coast exists today because of the work of millions of people, not just here, but a lot of people over here, like millions of people all over the world of work to keep it this way.

00;51;18;22 - 00;51;36;10
Unknown
And when I look out at it, I don't feel responsible for it. I know that it was a collective process, and everybody who was here who loves the ocean has worked on it, and I have great faith that they will continue to do that. Thank you so much for your time and dedication and everyone else that you've mentioned.

00;51;36;15 - 00;52;03;17
Unknown
Take care. Richard. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank thank you. And this is Resilient Earth Radio on the morning show here at KGO in Molalla, 88.3 FM. I'm Leann Lindsay, GM of Kaga and also founder and owner of C Storm Studios, one of the producers of this show, along with Kaga, which is an independent public media station, a project of Native Media Resource Center.

00;52;03;20 - 00;52;16;00
Unknown
And We are in Guatemala, along with Scott and Terry Mercer of Minda, Noma, Whale and Seal Study. Thank you both. Very good.

00;52;16;02 - 00;52;53;25
Unknown
And thanks for listening to Resilient Earth Radio, where we talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. I'm Leann Lindsey, producer and host, along with my co-producers and co-hosts Scott and Tre Mercer of the Minda, Noma, Whale and Seal study. Joining us today, Richard Charter, senior fellow of the Ocean Foundation, produced in association with Planet Centric Media C Storm Studios, and KGO 88.3 FM, a public radio station on the Northern California coast.

00;52;53;27 - 00;53;01;18
Unknown
You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and wherever you get your podcasts.

00;53;01;21 - 00;53;29;05
Unknown
The music for this show is castles by the sea, from international composer Eric Allman of the Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, California.