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MostlyStable 13 hours ago [-]
There are loads of unknown (to science) deep sea sharks out there, most of them quite small. A friend of mine in grad school spent several trips on a deep sea trawler out of Madagascar and described multiple new species.
doodlebugging 13 hours ago [-]
Sometimes the first opportunity to see something occurs while you are actively destroying the habitat where it lives. Sounds like your friend's work took advantage of the access that deep sea trawlers would have to species unknown to science, allowing them to have a rough idea of their distribution. In a sense this is very useful to researchers who can argue the case that trawling is too destructive for that area due to the presence of species new to science.
Trawling and mining, both activities mentioned in the article, can be very destructive to habitats. With the global race to lock up sources of rare elements and elements that are more commonly found in conflict zone nations the sea floor is seen as the best source for some of these. The manganese nodules that I learned about in geoscience classes decades ago are targeted by miners today who will have no qualms about scraping the seafloor clean just as those fishing fleets strip the oceans of wild fish species.
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
FWIW, one of the executives working on seafloor mining claims that they'll only suck up a limited pattern of manganese nodules from the seafloor and leave the rest undisturbed. If we're going to have an industrial economy then we do need the metals and extracting them will inevitably cause some environmental impact whether that's on land or under the ocean.
Yeah, sure, and tobacco execs claimed cigarettes didn't cause lung cancer.
nradov 1 hours ago [-]
We don't need cigarettes but metals are a necessity. How would you prefer we get them?
ceejayoz 1 hours ago [-]
Do we not have these metals now, before we've done a single bit of seafloor mining?
Keyframe 1 hours ago [-]
Asteroids mining!
__bb 10 hours ago [-]
> The manganese nodules that I learned about in geoscience classes decades ago are targeted by miners today who will have no qualms about scraping the seafloor clean
This (and the concept of extinction credits) is an opening plot point in the book “Venomous Lumpsucker”, which I found a good read.
XorNot 8 hours ago [-]
No one is mining manganese from the sea floor. The whole idea was a CIA cover story for a mission to recover a sunken Soviet submarine that the Americans knew the location of but the Soviets didn't. They needed an explanation for a cargo ship headed out to a specific area with deep sea construction equipment on board: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
juahan 6 hours ago [-]
It was a cover, but they did not invent it. It is an actual sudied thing and there has been some experimental mining operations as well.
MomsAVoxell 6 hours ago [-]
They're mining them now. They weren't then.
hackeraccount 2 hours ago [-]
They aren't. It's still being looked into.
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
The whole point of a cover story is to be plausible.
tchalla 4 hours ago [-]
And then we wonder why people don’t believe news articles.
gr_norm 13 hours ago [-]
Wow! It's amazing how little it seems we've explored of the deep ocean, whenever I hear about it. A whole other world down there, lying in wait... the frontiers of our own planet have yet to be conquered!
FabHK 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed. Until around 2021 or so, more people had been to the moon than to the bottom of the ocean (Challenger Deep).
This kind of posts make me think. We all love technology because it's so cool, but how cool is nature already? Making our lives awesome is as much about protecting and discovering the sources for our inspiration, as building the stuff we are inspired to build.
dandaka 5 hours ago [-]
There is not much we can do/build with nature. Even if everyone would take idea of "protection/inspiration", there are not many sustainable business models towards that direction. Nature is more aligned with inward observation / meditation, which is more aligned with Eastern tradition.
itintheory 3 hours ago [-]
We sure can do things with nature. for instance, sustain any and all life on our planet. Viewing the natural world purely in an extractive mindset is the very reason we're in the dire mess we're in today.
dandaka 7 minutes ago [-]
Whenever I have this choice "destroy or sustain any and all life", I always pick "sustain". Problem is, I don't often meet such an option to choose. Maybe your life is different.
altmanaltman 4 hours ago [-]
I am sorry but why are you assuming "nature" cares? We benefit from the climate which allowed us to prosper and evolve but there have been periods of time on earth where nature was absolutely inhospitable to life. We just want to keep nature the way it works best for us but that is not protection.
donatj 6 hours ago [-]
It took me longer to get past the "human verification" than to read the entire article. Odd state of the world.
ajsnigrutin 5 hours ago [-]
At least it didn't show the "give us your email to subscribe to our spam" the moment you scroll a milimeter down the page. I started subscribing "admin@theirdomain.com" every time i get a popup like that... maybe i should start using some regulator (fcc,..) email instead.
6 hours ago [-]
everyone 13 hours ago [-]
Could the light be blinding all the animals? I would assume their eyes would have evolved to be extremely sensitive to light.
MomsAVoxell 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, there is an issue with exploration lights effecting native life.
Recent attempts to capture a giant squid on video were only realized when they switched the lights off.
nly 7 hours ago [-]
They can...swim away
mshockwave 12 hours ago [-]
or have little vision to begin with
pvaldes 7 hours ago [-]
Probably, most sharks have nictitating membranes to protect the eye, but this family of sharks didn't evolved one apparently. In any case, they can avoid easily the light source swimming away.
triyambakam 13 hours ago [-]
> the animal leisurely glid along the sea floor
Strange. I thought it was glided, or at least glode
mr_toad 4 hours ago [-]
Glid vs glided, slid vs slided are examples of the inconsistency of the English language. Glided is more common than glid, and slid is more common than slided. Linguistics says that that makes slide an ‘irregular’ verb, but that’s basically a circular definition.
Trawling and mining, both activities mentioned in the article, can be very destructive to habitats. With the global race to lock up sources of rare elements and elements that are more commonly found in conflict zone nations the sea floor is seen as the best source for some of these. The manganese nodules that I learned about in geoscience classes decades ago are targeted by miners today who will have no qualms about scraping the seafloor clean just as those fishing fleets strip the oceans of wild fish species.
https://music.youtube.com/podcast/2zrIilw-87k
This (and the concept of extinction credits) is an opening plot point in the book “Venomous Lumpsucker”, which I found a good read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_Deep
Or
s/conquered/discovered/
...
the article: Goblin sharks have never before been filmed in their natural habitat
Surprisingly bad headline.
https://openai.com/index/where-the-goblins-came-from/
Recent attempts to capture a giant squid on video were only realized when they switched the lights off.
Strange. I thought it was glided, or at least glode
They are synonyms
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/yeah-nah_adv
2. Goblin penis soup.