Australia’s surfers, swimmers, and ocean community are paddling out for an important cause at Clarkes Beach on Sunday, July 20 meeting at 11.30am for a 12pm paddle out.
It’s part an upcoming global day of action to stop deep-sea mining before it starts, with the Australian contingent led by Surfrider Foundation Australia.
Organisers say, ‘The worldwide movement is coinciding with governments meeting in Jamaica to decide whether or not to open the global commons of the deep sea to industrial deep-sea mining for the first time in history’.
‘Just last week, Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, released reports that underscore the severe environmental risks and scientific uncertainty surrounding deep-sea mining. The findings confirm what ocean advocates have been warning – the deep ocean is too poorly understood to proceed with mining safely.
‘Seabed mineral extraction, or deep-sea mining as it’s more commonly known, involves industrial-scale strip-mining for metals and other minerals across vast tracts of the ocean floor, at depths of up to 6,000 metres.
‘The primary focus for deep-sea mining is a vast area of the deep Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico, known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ)’.
They add that mining companies are wanting to collect fist-sized rocks containing cobalt, copper, manganese and nickel scattered along the seafloor.
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