Sailing the seas for new information in a targeted mining region

By Jessie Perelman, Safina Center Launchpad Fellow

In November 2019, a small red boat left Honolulu and set sail for the high seas. Except, it wasn’t really a ‘boat’ in the traditional sense. It was a Saildrone; an aquatic vessel equipped with oceanographic research equipment. There’s no room for a crew on the Saildrone. Propelled by wind and powered by the sun, Saildrones offer a new platform for scientific research in remote areas of the ocean. 

In November 2019, we launched a Saildrone out of Honolulu Harbor to collect data on deep-water animal communities in a targeted deep-sea mining region, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Photo: Jessie Perelman

The Saildrone navigated towards international waters southeast of Hawaiʻi. These waters mark the edge of a massive region in the eastern Central Pacific Ocean called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), which is currently being targeted for deep-sea polymetallic nodule mining. In an effort to investigate deep-water habitats that could be affected by mining, my colleagues and I deciced to send this drone to collect 30 days of ecological information in the CCZ.

Last week, I had the chance to share this research agenda with researchers in Hawaiʻi and California in a webinar for the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. In the webinar, I discussed the research questions that myself and other scientists are addressing to better understand deep-sea habitats in regions being targeted for mining. I explained how we are now working with Saildrones and spent most of the talk describing what the experience of working with this new research technology was like. The major takeaway from this presentation was that the drones provide a useful platform for monitoring changes in the marine environment once industrial-scale mining begins in the next few years.

In November 2020, I gave a webinar about the experience and research efforts using Saildrones to explore ecosystems in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Graphic: Jessie Perelman

Being asked to present my research to NOAA Fisheries was a huge honor and an experience that I never expected to have as a graduate student. It was an opportunity to share information about deep-sea mining and the vast scale of influence it may have. It was also a chance to answer questions about the research to which I’ve devoted the past several years. But most importantly, this webinar demonstrated and promoted the significance deep-ocean exploration and conservation.