Mining not only produces deep scars on the sea floor and a plume of sediment in the water column, he said, it also removes the hard substrate that many organisms need as an anchor on the abyssal ...

Some deep-sea ... areas like the Azores and the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the mineral rich stretch of international waters in the Pacific Ocean that’s the focus of deep-sea mining interests.

The Metals Company, a Canadian deep-sea mining company, in 2022 successfully recovered roughly 3,000 tons of nodules from the seafloor, collecting data on the plume and other effects in the process.