Deep Sea Mining Threatens $5.5 Billion Tuna Industry, Study Finds
Climate change is driving tuna toward toward the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a region of the Pacific Ocean targeted for the mining of valuable metals.
Rising ocean temperatures are expected to cause tuna to migrate eastward toward the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where deep sea mining is most likely to occur.
ISSF photo by Jeff Muir
Scientists expect climate change to increasingly drive tuna into the path of potential deep sea mining operations.
In a peer-reviewed paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature npj Ocean Sustainability, researchers analyzed climate models to predict that the biomass of bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin tuna species will increase by an average of 21% by mid-century in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast region of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico that is targeted for the mining of valuable metals.