快猫短视频

As a young researcher, Andrew Thaler got hooked on 鈥減laying with big robots鈥� underwater. A deep-sea ecologist by training, his work with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) turned into a passion for how humans interact with the ocean.

His interests range from fun projects, such as letting people experience sonar like a dolphin, to the potential impact of deep-sea mining. He is the staff ecologist for Sofar, which makes low-cost, scientific-grade underwater vehicles, and runs Blackbeard Biologic, an environmental consultancy. Both are enabling ordinary people to do oceanographic research.

Why the interest in citizen science?
Something that bothers me is how the people who make scientific proclamations about places tend not to be the people who actually live in those places. One of my goals is to help people who live and work in their particular chunk of the ocean have ownership over that science. One way to do that is to give them the tools and training.

A key tool being underwater robots?
That鈥檚 right. The robot is a low-cost, open-source underwater robot designed for scientific research as well as exploration. The basic model can dive to 100 metres, has an HD camera and can carry a variety of hardware. We have been doing workshops in places like Papua New Guinea and Saipan, one of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. We teach local communities how to build and operate these robots, then donate as many as we can afford.

What other tools do you have for citizen oceanographers?
My other main project is OpenCTD, an instrument for making basic oceanographic measurements. You can use it to look at patterns of temperature, depth and salinity. You can also use it to determine relative location. Once you go underwater, GPS becomes useless so accurate location data is incredibly valuable. It鈥檚 entirely open source; all of the instructions are online, including the software and 3D-printing files. The youngest person I know who has built the CTD was 8.

Why did you make dolphin-sense spectacles?
I wanted to see if I could create a device that approximates dolphin echolocation, albeit in a very simplified way, to teach people something about animal perception.

I started with bone-conducting headphones, which sit in front of your ears and send vibrations to your inner ear. Connecting them to an ultrasonic range-finder creates a sonar for your face, so you perceive distance as sonar pulses. If you close your eyes and sweep your gaze around the room, you can feel where the walls are by the ping rate: it can see open doors really easily.

My whole song and dance is how should we use technology to interact with the ocean. Sticking a dolphin sonar on your face and bumping into walls is one way. I鈥檓 currently focused on a more extreme way that we use technology to interact with the ocean: deep sea mining.

Where would deep-sea mining happen?
There are two main types of deep-sea mining, the one I focus on involves seabed features known as hydrothermal vents. There are about 600 known hydrothermal-vent fields, which usually have a whole bunch of chimneys in a big cluster. But they take up a tiny percentage of the sea floor 鈥� probably less than 0.001 per cent.

One example is a place called , off Papua New Guinea, a future mining site where I did a lot of my thesis work. It鈥檚 magnificent, completely full of some of the most amazing animals you have ever seen. It鈥檚 also unbelievably rich in copper, gold, nickel and a whole bunch of rare elements. Solwara 1 is the size of 11 football fields 鈥� a very small footprint, compared with the vast area that needs to be cleared for a land-based mine. To be clear, it鈥檚 an incredible ecosystem that I personally don鈥檛 think anyone should ever touch, but in terms of footprint, it鈥檚 very small.

Why are underwater vents so full of minerals?
When super-heated fluid from deep in Earth鈥檚 crust comes out of the vent and contacts cold sea water, all the heavy metals in that fluid are deposited on the walls of the chimney. Those chimneys, which can be several metres tall, are what the miners are after.

What machines can dig them up?
Nautilus Minerals, involved in Solwara 1, will probably have the first tools on the sea floor. They have a trio of massive robots, like underwater bulldozers. They have got one that looks like a giant meat grinder that just grinds everything into fist-sized nodules. Another machine follows that, sucking the pieces up to the surface. They have plans to then pump the waste back down and redeposit it at the same site. The idea is to minimise the area that鈥檚 disturbed, but the ecosystem in that area will be severely disturbed.

What are hydrothermal vent ecosystems like?
In the popular imagination, a hydrothermal vent often features giant tube worms. In fact, that鈥檚 a fairly uncommon vent ecosystem found on the East Pacific Rise and the Galapagos Rift. Others have fist-sized snails in two different species groups, one of which has cool fur all over its shell, and one of which has this really hard shell which makes it move like a tank. There are eight or nine completely different hydrothermal vent ecosystems that we know about that are all as different from each other as a tropical rainforest is from an arboreal forest.

What happens to the vents and the sealife around them after they are mined?
As long as the super-heated fluid continues to flow out of the fissures, the vents will continue to grow. And there are already vent sites that have been set aside as untouchable. If there are enough set-asides so the animal populations can recolonise, maybe those vent systems may recover over 10 or 20 years. On the other hand, they might shut down completely and never be recolonised. We don鈥檛 know, because no one鈥檚 ever done this before.

Are any other parts of the sea floor attractive to miners?
Another big target is the polymetallic nodule fields. These are areas where there are large amounts of golf-ball-sized rocky lumps just sitting on the seabed. They are rich in manganese, and a range of other metals, such as cobalt. Right now, cobalt is priced at over $60,000 per tonne: it鈥檚 an incredibly valuable resource, used in electronics and lithium batteries.
We know very little about these incredibly long-lived, stable ecosystems. The robots that will eventually mine such areas are like vacuum cleaners that crawl across the seabed. In all likelihood, mining is going to create a plume of sediment and it鈥檚 going to smother animals around the site.

What鈥檚 your input into the mining debate?
I鈥檓 involved both on the industry side and on the environmental side. I do some policy work with the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which has this sort of dual mission promoting sustainable use of the seabed and mineral extraction. So far that mission has worked pretty well, but that鈥檚 probably because no one has actually mined the deep sea yet.

Ultimately, what鈥檚 your stand on this?
There are parts of this planet that we haven鈥檛 messed with yet, and I鈥檇 rather we didn鈥檛. But my position is: if it鈥檚 going to happen 鈥� and mining companies talk about being ready to go as early as 2024 鈥� I want it to be done responsibly, with input from scientists and environmentalists.