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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

The text makes it sound like a non-violent sort of event, like someone forgot to insert a locking pin or something. As opposed to something like unexpected external forces ripping it loose.

"On its final dive in the GSR area, a lifting point separated and Patania II now stands on the seafloor,"

"An operation to reconnect the lifting point begins this evening and we will provide an update in due course."

Also, a picture of it with people, so the scale is more clear: https://www.deme-gsr.com/wp-content/uploads/coverfoto-gsr_pa...

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Seems like these freaking huge tracks will treat deep-sea coral nicely

It's the size of a typical tank. This will do as much harm to coral or whatever is down there as one (1) WW2 tank did to the Black Forest.

Meanwhile, dissolved CO₂ is killing coral on a global scale. That seems like a very misplaced concern.

The comparison to a WW2 tank in the Black Forest isn't great though, because the environments live on different timescales.

A forest can regrow and thrive after a few decades. The same is _not_ true for the deep sea[1].

'Life on the ocean floor moves at a glacial pace. Sediment accumulates at a rate of 1 millimeter every millennium. With such a slow rate of growth, areas disturbed by deep-sea mining would be unlikely to recover on a reasonable timescale.'

[1]: https://news.mit.edu/2019/understanding-impact-deep-sea-mini...

Are they mining in sensitive areas? Isn't there an equivalent of an underwater deserts with little life/biodiversity? Not to diminish this idea, but the ocean covers >70% of the earth so I would think this could be done somewhere with relatively little impact, but maybe I am wrong.

This area with nothing in it sounds like the oil spill “outside the environment” in the very excellent comedy skit “The Front Fell Off”. https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM

Edit: Linked to official channel. Thank you for the correction.

Not really. We already mine on land that covers only 30% of earth, I would think that would have a much bigger impact. Second, and oil spill spreads far and wide contaminating a vast area. All I am saying is mining can in theory be contained to a much smaller area.

Might be nice to link to the official Clarke and Dawe channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM ) rather than some knock off reupload. RIP John Clarke.

I'm not sure our knowledge of the ocean is sufficient at this point to designate an area as "non sensitive".

And no fish nurseries in deep waters mean not mesopelagic fish. We could distroy it in a week, and the negative consequences over the human famine would be basically permanent. It just does not worth it.

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