#isitfridayyet

Friday, are you there? We can't see you! 👀 

Sediment in the deep midwaters of the ocean acts very differently from what we see in shallow waters when we walk across the shoreline or wade into the beach. Most deep-sea habitats have very low concentrations of naturally suspended sediment even near the seafloor. Decades of deep-sea research by MBARI scientists and their colleagues have shown that many water-column organisms feed on particles or on other organisms that are particle feeders—these include midwater worms, snails, salps, larvaceans, and even vampire squid. These animals are part of a complex food web that connects all the way to humans. 

In the last decade, interest in mining the deep seafloor for copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, and other valuable metals has grown substantially. To collect the valuable minerals from the seafloor, deep-sea mining companies use a sort of vacuum to pull up the metallic nodules, along with the silt and water surrounding them. The material is brought to a ship at the surface, where the minerals are removed, and the byproduct silt and toxicant-enriched fluids are discharged back toward the seafloor. The process is also extraordinarily noisy. In addition to clogging animals' filtering mechanisms and adding non-nutritious or toxic material to these animals’ diets, this sediment would absorb the blue-green light that glowing deep-sea animals use to attract prey, search for food, and find mates.