Environmental impacts from the marine mineral exploration

The offshore extraction of marine minerals can cause several environmental impacts to the marine ecosystems, being the habitat destruction the main factor affecting the decline of the number of species around the world. Besides direct interference on the sea-bottom, the marine mineral activities can cause an increase in the water turbidity, affecting the local primary production. These activities can introduce and promote nutrient availability causing eutrophication. Otherwise it can introduce toxic substances that may be incorporated by the organisms, causing growth changes and alterations on the rates of reproduction and survival of the species. Current methods to identify the environmental impacts associated with the offshore mineral exploitation are centered on the reconnaissance of pollutant introduction and bio-availability, on the verification of measurable environmental changes and on the establishment of the relationship among the environmental response and pollutants. These methods apply three approaches: measurement of the pollutant concentration on the physical (water and sediment) and biological (bio-accumulation) environment; laboratory and field determinations of the organisms toxicity responses to pollutants; and field investigations of the ecosystem's structure and processes.

Marine ecosystems; Environmental impacts; Marine Mining