MANGAN 2022

On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economics and Energy, the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) holds an exploration license for manganese nodules with the International Seabed Authority (ISA) since 2006. During eight sea-going campaigns (2008-2021), the BGR and partner institutes mainly from Germany investigated the nodule deposits in the license area with a size of 75,000 km² in the eastern Pacific, including detailed environmental analyses of bottom currents, sediment properties and water column characteristics. Furthermore, the benthic faunal assemblages and their diversity were studied. In May 2021, the BGR and 28 other European research institutions, which gathered in the research project "MiningImpact", successfully completed the monitoring of the environmental impact of the world's first test of a manganese nodule collector at a water depth of around four kilometers. The collector, developed and owned by the Belgian company Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR), was tested by GSR in both the Belgian and the German manganese nodule license areas. During the cruise in April/May 2022, BGR plans to investigate the collector's impact on the fauna and sediment geochemistry one year after the test in the 22,000 square meter sized test area within the German license area. Furthermore, the fate of the suspension plume and the effects of sediment re-deposition on organisms living on and in the seafloor will be investigated The International Seabed Authority is currently working on the Mining Code, which will form the legal framework for future deep-sea mining. Part of this international legal agreement are regulations on environmental monitoring and the definition of environmental standards for the deep sea. We expect that the results of the 2021 and 2022 expeditions will contribute significantly to the development of evidence-based environmental standards that will be required by the International Seabed Authority as part of its future mining regulations.