Deep-sea mining discharge can disrupt midwater food webs
- Michael H. Dowd
- Victoria E. Assad
- Alexus E. Cazares-Nuesser
- Jeffrey C. Drazen
- Erica Goetze
- Angelicque E. White
- Brian N. Popp
2025-11-06
The Clarion-Clipperton Zone contains extensive beds of polymetallic nodules on the abyssal seafloor, with vast areas (~1.5 million km 2 ) under license for deep-sea mining. Mining companies have proposed discharging excess waste generated during nodule extraction in the lower mesopelagic and upper bathypelagic zones, which are home to a unique faunal community including zooplankton and micronekton. Here, using compound-specific isotope analysis of amino acids, we find that natural background particles larger than 6 µm form the base of the food web, but will be diluted by the same sized, nutritionally deficient mining-associated particles. Given that 53% of zooplankton taxa are particle feeders and 60% of micronekton taxa are zooplanktivores at proposed discharge depths, there is significant potential for food-web disruption. Therefore, we show that a midwater mining plume could trigger bottom-up ecosystem impacts with potentially severe consequences for the faunal community, extending beyond zooplankton and micronekton to nekton, including large marine predators.