What if, after mining, a smaller amount of the minerals are put back, closer to the surface so that a smaller amount are more easily consumed and life could flourish again with less available?
The only opportunity we have to make things better is in areas we have ourselves destroyed. Then we have a chance to improve it. But if something is undisturbed we can’t really improve upon that.
This is an internet forum full of know-it-alls with Dunning-Kruger Syndrome and toxic personalities. You're not likely to get reasoned answers when you ask honest questions; instead, you just get downvotes and insults.
What isn't clear from the article is if they plan on dredging the top layer, which would entirely disrupt the ecosystem, or somehow pump up mud from under the seabed itself.
If it is the latter, the ecosystem is unlikely to have a dependency on the rare earths in the mud itself; at that depth you don't have plants with deep roots or anything transecting the layers. You will certainly have surface deformation which will be disruptive, but not so much as dredging would be.
> at that depth you don't have plants with deep roots or anything transecting the layers
Even if for some bizarre reason the metals were beneficial, what about when the mining operation is done and humans leave the area? It just goes back to the previous status quo.
It’s a disruption either way.
Any manual intervention into an ecosystem generally requires establishing an indefinite commitment to more manual maintenance.
Who determines what “optimal” means? Who implements the optimization? Who pays for it? What happens in a few decades when people lose political interest in the project? Which creatures do we optimize for? Why are we doing this at all? How have similar projects fared in the past?
I can tell you haven’t seriously studied ecology from the way you are approaching this question, so I’m not too worried. But consider questions like those as you ponder this scenario.