Race to the bottom? The dangers of deep sea mining
Environment
44:44
Overheated and overfished, an sos for oceans under duress sent from a summit in Nice… but try telling that to those who advocate deep sea drilling for precious metals.In a world hungry for the minerals that power our batteries and connect our computers, the United States but also China, India, Japan, Norway and more are seriously studying whether science fiction can become reality.
We'lll ask about the actual feasibility of deep sea mining...and the competing narratives at play, what with the US boycotting the United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice… and a paltry 32 nations so far ratifying the UN's High Seas Treaty. How to protect the two-thirds of our planet's surface that belong to both everyone and no one?
On that score, no need to drill when you hit rock bottom. Even areas protected on paper remain vulnerable to large fishing trawlers that literally rake the seabed, killing both fish and plant life essential for our planet. What to do before it's too late?
Produced by François Picard, Andrew Hilliar, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip.
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UN Ocean Conference drums up signatories to key High Seas Treaty
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France 24
a day ago
- France 24
Race to the bottom? The dangers of deep sea mining
Environment 44:44 Overheated and overfished, an sos for oceans under duress sent from a summit in Nice… but try telling that to those who advocate deep sea drilling for precious a world hungry for the minerals that power our batteries and connect our computers, the United States but also China, India, Japan, Norway and more are seriously studying whether science fiction can become reality. We'lll ask about the actual feasibility of deep sea the competing narratives at play, what with the US boycotting the United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice… and a paltry 32 nations so far ratifying the UN's High Seas Treaty. How to protect the two-thirds of our planet's surface that belong to both everyone and no one? On that score, no need to drill when you hit rock bottom. Even areas protected on paper remain vulnerable to large fishing trawlers that literally rake the seabed, killing both fish and plant life essential for our planet. What to do before it's too late? Produced by François Picard, Andrew Hilliar, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip.
France 24
2 days ago
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Farmed production of some fish - and seaweed
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 99 million tonnes of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) were farmed around the world in 2023, five times more than three decades ago. Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing around the world -- but with large disparities from species to species. Fast-growing species The two biggest sellers on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, mainly came from freshwater farming, while other widely-consumed fish, like herring, came just from deep sea fishing Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France's national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP that fish farmers choose species that grow quickly and with simple requirements, to be able to control the life cycle. Sales of the most widely farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, came to 1.9 million tonnes in 2023, 99 percent of which were farmed. "We know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones," Laugier said. Asia main producer Asia is by far the biggest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 percent of the 136 million tonnes -- of both animal and plant species -- produced under manmade conditions in 2023. "For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent," the Ifremer researcher said. At the other end of the spectrum, sardines and herring are just fished in the oceans, mainly for profitability reasons as some fish grow very slowly. "It takes around two years to get an adult-sized sardine," Laugier said. He said farming of some fish has not yet been started as, "for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource". Seaweed Little known in the West, seaweed nevertheless accounts for almost a third of world aquaculture production. Almost exclusively from Asia, seaweed production increased by nearly 200 percent in two decades, to 38 million tonnes. It is mainly used in industry, in jellies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the expert said. He said seaweed also has the major advantage of absorbing not just CO2 in the oceans, but also nitrogen and certain pollutants. "And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon," Laugier said. © 2025 AFP
