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Oxygen discovery defies knowledge of the deep ocean
The discovery that lumps of metal on the seafloor produce oxygen raises questions over plans to mine the deep ocean.
“I first saw this in 2013 - an enormous amount of oxygen being produced at the seafloor in complete darkness,” explains lead researcher Prof Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where the discovery was made, is a site already being explored by a number of seabed mining companies, which are developing technology to collect the nodules and bring them to a ship at the surface. “Because these fields cover such huge areas of our planet it would be crazy to press ahead with deep-sea mining knowing they may be a significant source of oxygen production.”
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