The Metals Company Australia and a consortium led by the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have partnered in creating an environmental framework for the company’s proposed deep-sea polymetallic nodule collection operations in the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean.
The CSIRO-led consortium will support the development of an ecosystem-based management and monitoring plan (EMMP) leveraging The Metals Company’s extensive environmental baseline data — acquired in the Company’s NORI project area in the CCZ — to help develop appropriate indicators and tolerance limits to create safe parameters for collecting seafloor nodules.
The work will form the scientific foundation of The Metal Company’s future Adaptive Management System (AMS), a state-of-the-art predictive system that will use environmental and operational data to enable the Company to mitigate operational impacts in the deep-sea environment as much as possible.
A core component of this system will be the Company’s Digital Twin, which is expected to provide robust scenario testing of seafloor mine plans, monitoring of nodule collection operations and a dynamic dashboard for review by stakeholders.
Chairman and CEO of The Metals Company, Gerard Barron, said the company was privy to the world’s most extensive deep-sea datasets.
“Last year our subsidiary, NORI, completed environmental baseline studies in partnership with leading marine research institutions,” Mr Barron said.
“We’ve now got one of the world’s most extensive deep-sea datasets to hand over to the CSIRO-led consortium, experts with the practical experience we need to develop a scientifically robust framework for a marine ecosystem-based management program for NORI-D.
“I’m thrilled that these trusted and independent institutions have agreed to undertake this research, setting a high bar for future work in this industry.”
