According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), over half of mollusc species that cluster around underwater vents are at risk of going extinct due to increasing deep-sea mining. The IUCN renewed its call for a moratorium on such operations before U.N.-led talks this month.
Conservation Efforts
A growing number of firms extract critical minerals such as copper, cobalt, or zinc from the superheated fluids emitted by natural hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. These species, though constituting less than 1% of global mollusc biodiversity, play a vital role in the food webs of deep-sea vents.
Dr. Chong Chen, a member of the IUCN’s Mollusc Specialist Group, explained that the loss of molluscs at a particular vent field would also mean the loss of all other non-mollusc vent species. Some of the vent molluscs have already proven to hold value for human society, such as a scaly-foot snail that has developed a biomineralisation process that is helping researchers produce nanoparticles for new technologies like solar cells.
The Red List was released ahead of a meeting of the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority in Jamaica from July 13-31 to decide how to regulate metals extraction from the ocean floor. The IUCN has called for such activities to be banned, but many governments want the opposite.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
