rely more on batteries and the metals that make  them because land-based sources of these metals  

can meet the demand of a battery-powered world  private companies have turned their attention to  

the ocean floor but mining the murky depths  may come with a greater cost to the planet  

than it's worth terrestrial mining doesn't have  a perfect record it comes with a long list of  

environmental and human rights abuses including  pollution and child labor all this to dig up  

raw materials like nickel manganese and cobalt  that are necessary for our lithium-ion batteries  

some strategies for a carbon-free future depend on  making these batteries in much larger numbers and  

using them as a power source for electric cars  or a storage method for electricity generated  

by renewables but another source of these  materials could lie at the bottom of the ocean  

potato sized lumps called polymetallic nodules are  rich in manganese copper cobalt nickel and other  

precious metals and they're found in abundance  in some areas like the clarion clipperton zone  

that stretches from hawaii to mexico in this one  area alone known as the ccz nodules contain more  

nickel and cobalt than in all known land-based  sources combined there are a few reasons why  

we haven't scooped up those tempting little sea  nuggets one of them is technological between us  

and them there is a literal ocean and getting to  them is not a matter of just distance but pressure  

too the deep sea is usually defined as the water  200 meters below the surface and beyond every 10  

meters under water adds another atmosphere worth  of pressure and these nodules are often found  

below 3000 meters that means the machines that  harvest them would have to withstand more than  

300 times more pressure than you or i feel  walking around on the surface the expense  

and engineering that would go into a sea floor  harvesting operation has long deterred anything  

beyond small scale exploration but after decades  of testing the technology to mine the ocean floor  

looks like it's maturing and ready for large scale  use for example one company nautilus minerals has  

developed this trio of machines two of them are  for crushing up ore before the third collects it  

mixes it with seawater and sends it to a pump  that lifts the slurry to vessels on the surface  

the other thing standing in the way of deep sea  mining is a lack of a legal framework nodule-rich  

areas like the ccz are in international waters  a united nations chartered organization called  

the international seabed authority or isa has  been working with 167 member states and the  

european union to hammer out the rules and best  practices for deep sea mining they could agree  

on terms by 2021. in the past decade though the  isa has issued almost 30 exploratory licenses  

but once the rules are finalized operations could  ramp up to an industrial scale as companies gear  

up to mine the ocean many scientists that study  the ocean depths warn that mining could be  

environmentally devastating just how devastating  we don't really know yet because of that intense  

pressure at the sea floor it's the most poorly  understood ecosystem on earth scientists didn't  

even think it could support much life beyond a  few scavengers until 1977 when the first ecosystem  

around a hydrothermal vent was discovered  almost two and a half kilometers down even  

today marine biologists think we've only found a  tiny fraction of the life that lives in the deep  

mining could wipe out organisms before we've  had the chance to discover them like microbes  

that have possible uses in medicine many microbes  actually live on poly metallic nodules which can  

take over 10 million years to form so once they're  extracted that habitat isn't coming back the waste  

slurry that's dumped back into the ocean once or  is extracted could also be a hazard if it's dumped  

high up in the water column it could possibly  drift for hundreds of kilometers and disrupt  

ecosystems far removed from the mining site  and the site itself could be scarred for years  

in 1989 scientists simulated a mining operation  by dragging plows across the sea floor and nearly  

three decades later the tracks are still there and  the microbe and animal populations haven't fully  

recovered some of those bacteria absorb carbon  from the environment so mining operations could  

set back some of the efforts to go green it's  an uncomfortable dilemma mining on land has a  

lot of known negatives but the impacts of deep sea  mining are unknown and potentially huge a future  

where carbon emissions are under control could  depend on having enough of these resources but  

who knows what irreversible harm we could do  getting them fortunately we're getting better  

at recycling these metals and other energy storage  solutions do exist besides lithium-ion batteries  

maybe a healthy sustainable energy future is  within our reach but it's going to require  

informed people making decisions and caring about  what happens to a part of the planet that most of  

us will never see poly metallic nodules form as  dissolved metals build up on organic materials  

and they often form around ancient shark teeth  if you want an idea of just how much remains  

undiscovered in the ocean check out marin's  video on 200 000 new viruses scientists didn't  

know existed here thanks for watching be sure to  subscribe and i'll see you next time on seeker