#Hydrography– the science of measuring and describing the physical features of oceans, seas, coastal areas, lakes, and rivers. It is the foundation of our understanding of the marine world. In this vast field, #seabed #mapping has become one of the most vital tools of the 21st century. But could it also help restore our blue planet 
?
Find out more in our latest #GeoLog: https://egu.eu/6J43K2/
Veera Haapaniemi on https://imaggeo.egu.eu
Mussel power: how an offshore shellfish farm is boosting marine life.
Mussel farming provides a sustainable alternative protein source for human diets, because mussels filter feed on plankton and do not have to be fed wild-caught fish.
Researchers have found that one offshore mussel farm is boosting marine biodiversity and regenerating the seabed.
#US Is Reviewing #ImpossibleMetals Proposal to #Mine the #Seabed
The Interior Department said it would review a new proposal for operations off the coast of #AmericanSamoa.
The move follows an #executiveorder that urged government agencies to expedite permits for #seabedmining in US territorial waters as well as international waters. Most other nations argue US does not have the legal right to mine the seabed beyond its own territorial waters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/climate/trump-seabed-mining-impossible-metals-american-samoa.html
https://archive.ph/B5zn4
MAREANO adopts USV technology for North Sea survey https://www.byteseu.com/1008995/ #AcousticSensors #AutonomousSurveying #BathymetricData #Bathymetry #Fugro #MBES #MultibeamEchosounder #NorthSea #Seabed #SeabedMapping #Technology #uncrewed #unmanned
#SodiumBatteries offer an alternative to tricky #lithium
Lithium is relatively scarce and mostly refined in China. Sodium is neither
Oct 26th 2023
Excerpt: "Fortunately, lithium is not the only game in town. As we report this week, a clutch of firms are making batteries based on sodium, lithium’s elemental cousin. Since sodium’s chemical properties are very similar to those of lithium, it too makes for good batteries. And sodium, which is found in the salt in seawater, is thousands of times more abundant on Earth than lithium and cheaper to get at. Most of the companies using sodium to make batteries today are also Chinese. But pursuing the technology in the West might be a surer route to energy security than relying heavily on lithium.
"Besides its abundance, sodium has other advantages. The best lithium batteries use #cobalt and 3nickel in their electrodes. Nickel, like lithium, is in short supply. #Mining it on land is #environmentally destructive. Proposals to grab it from the #seabed instead have caused rows. A good deal of the world’s cobalt, meanwhile, is extracted from small mines in the Democratic Republic of #Congo, where child labour is common and working conditions are dire. Sodium batteries, by contrast, can use electrodes built from iron and manganese, which are plentiful and uncontroversial. Since the chemical components are cheap, a scaled-up industry should be able to produce batteries that cost less than their lithium counterparts.
"Sodium is not a perfect replacement for lithium. It is heavier, meaning sodium batteries will weigh more than lithium ones of an equivalent capacity. That is likely to rule them out in some cases where lightness is paramount. But for other applications, such as grid storage or home batteries, weight is irrelevant. Several Chinese carmakers are even beginning to put sodium batteries in electric vehicles.
"Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of sodium batteries is their late start. #LithiumIon batteries were first commercialised in the 1990s and have benefited from decades of investment. But the rest of the world is behind China on both fronts anyway. America and the European Union have announced enormous programmes of green industrial subsidies. If they are determined to bankroll batteries, some of the pot should go to sodium."
Read more:
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/10/26/sodium-batteries-offer-an-alternative-to-tricky-lithium
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/7x6JX#
As #Norway Considers #DeepSeaMining, a Rich History of Ocean Conservation Decisions May Inform How the Country Acts
In the past, scientists, industry and government have worked together in surprising, tense and fruitful ways
by Christian Elliott, April 21, 2025
"At the #Arctic #MidOceanRidge off the Norwegian coast, molten rock rises from deep within the Earth between spreading tectonic plates. Black smoker vents sustain unique ecosystems in the dark. Endemic species of long, segmented bristle worms and tiny crustaceans graze on bacteria mats and flit among fields of chemosynthetic tube worms, growing thick as grass. Dense banks of sponges cling to the summits and slopes of underwater mountains. And among all this life, minerals build up slowly over millennia in the form of #sulfide deposits and #manganese crusts.
"Those minerals are the kind needed to fuel the global green energy transition—#copper, #zinc and #cobalt. In January 2024, Norway surprised the world with the announcement it planned to open its waters for exploratory deep-sea mining, the first nation to do so. If all went to plan, companies would be issued licenses to begin identifying mineral deposits as soon as #Spring2025. To some scientists who’d spent decades mapping and studying the geology and ecology of the Norwegian seabed and Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge, the decision seemed premature—they still lacked critical data on the area targeted for mining. The government’s own Institute of Marine Research (IMR) accused it of extrapolating from a small area where data has already been collected to the much larger zone now targeted
“ 'Our advice has been we don’t have enough knowledge,' says Rebecca Ross, an #ecologist at IMR who works on Norway’s #Mareano deep-sea mapping initiative. She says the decision was based solely on the #geology of the area. Taking high-resolution scans of the seabed and sampling its geology is the first step when research ships enter a new area, but critical biological and ecological research is more difficult and tends to come later—which is the case on the ridge area targeted for mining. Ross says it’s certain that area contains vulnerable marine ecosystems that would be affected by the light and noise pollution and sediment plumes generated by mining. The IMR estimates closing the knowledge gap on the target area could take ten years.
"The same conflict, with a partial scientific understanding misinterpreted and used to justify resource extraction, is playing out in the #Pacific, where mining pilot projects are already underway in international waters. Years before, scientists funded by industry scouted the #seabed there, discovering both valuable minerals and new forms of life."
The #seabed disturbance from #trenching and #turbine foundations could destroy essential #SpawningGrounds for #herring and #SandEels, further destabilising the fragile marine #FoodWeb.
Bottom trawling in European waters costs society up to €11bn a year, new study finds.
A first-of-its-kind study released today found that this cost is largely due to carbon dioxide emissions from disturbed sediments on the seafloor.
The study is the first to measure the full economic cost of bottom trawling in European waters - including the EU, UK, Norway and Iceland.
Sabotage on the seabed: How can Europe protect itself?
Several recent submarine data-cable breaks in the Baltic Sea have exposed the vulnerability of critical underwater infrastructure. Russia is suspected of having been involved in the damage.
Europe is ill-prepared for such attacks in the future.
Sabotage on the seabed: How can Europe protect itself?
Several recent submarine data-cable breaks in the Baltic Sea have exposed the vulnerability of critical underwater infrastructure. Russia is suspected of having been involved in the damage.
Europe is ill-prepared for such attacks in the future.
Sabotage on the seabed: How can Europe protect itself?
Several recent submarine data-cable breaks in the Baltic Sea have exposed the vulnerability of critical underwater infrastructure. Russia is suspected of having been involved in the damage.
Europe is ill-prepared for such attacks in the future.
As countries scramble for minerals, the #seabed beckons. Will mining it be a disaster? – visual explainer - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/mar/12/as-countries-scramble-for-minerals-the-seabed-beckons-will-mining-it-be-a-disaster-visual-explainer well obvs...
Earth's hidden #carbon_recyclers: #Sulfur_bacteria team up to break down #organic substances in the #seabed.
#mightymicrobes #Sulfate-reducing_bacteria #Desulfobacteraceae #metabolism #biogeochemistry #global_carbon_cycle #genomics
https://phys.org/news/2025-03-earth-hidden-carbon-recyclers-sulfur.html
Ukraine Daily summary - Monday, March 3 2025
Norwegian fuel supplier halts sales to US Navy over Trump-Zelensky dispute, citing 'moral compass' -- Kremlin says perceived US foreign policy shift aligns with its vision -- Elon Musk publicly supports call for US to exit NATO, UN -- UK to provide Ukraine with $2 billion for air defense -- and morehttps://writeworks.uk/~/UkraineDaily/Ukraine%20Daily%20summary%20-%20%20Monday,%20March%203%202025/
Seismometers Reveal Earth's Longest-Runout Undersea Sediment Flows In Unprecedented Detail
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https://phys.org/news/2025-02-seismometers-reveal-earth-longest-runout.html <-- shared technical article
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02137-z <-- shared paper
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2024.109350 <-- shared paper
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01017-x <-- shared paper
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #remotesensing #Congo #CongoChannel #bathymetry #seismometers #monitoring #sediment #flow #submarine #massmovement #canyon #infrastructure #pipes #cables #engineeringgeology #geology #model #current #debrisflow #bathymetric #Africa #offshore #coast #coastal #river #WestAfrica #instrumentation #acoustic #doppler #moorings #turbidity #thalweg #morphology #landslides #stratigraphy #seismic #turbiditycurrent #flow #gradient #slope #erosion #risk #hazard #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #seabed
https://www.europesays.com/1756665/ Nato to deploy two ships to guard Baltic Sea infrastructure #AggravatedCriminalMischief #AggravatedInterferenceOfCommunications #BalticSea #CookIslands #EagleS #Eesti #ElinaValtonen #estonia #finland #helsinki #nato #NorthAtlanticTreatyOrganisation #RussianPetroleumProducts #sabotage #seabed #ShadowFleet #UnderseaCables #Uudised
https://www.europesays.com/1595210/ Research boat will scan seabed to search for missing in Spain’s floods #body #flood #ManyCar #MediterraneanSea #missing #PabloCarrera #police #RamónMargalef #ResearchBoat #scientist #seabed #spain #SubmersibleRobot #ValenciaCity #VEHICLE
Global activity of #seafloor #biodiversity mapped for the first time https://phys.org/news/2024-05-global-seafloor-biodiversity.html
Global distribution and environmental correlates of marine #bioturbation https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(24)00575-X
"like #worms enriching the soil in our garden, invertebrates are doing the same on the #seabed—improving conditions for #ocean life. Understanding how these processes operate gives #scientists insights into what is driving the health of #oceans and how they may respond to #ClimateChange."
These powerful #airguns fire loud blasts of compressed air every 10 to 15 seconds, 24 hours a day. The sound waves produced penetrate deep into the #seabed and bounce back to the audio receivers. From the sound patterns detected, #companies can work out the most likely place to find oil and gas reserves under the ocean floor. The next step is exploratory #drilling.
2/5
Greg Cocks 
