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Dark oxygen made by deep sea 'batteries'

Scientists have discovered “dark oxygen” being produced in the deep ocean, apparently by lumps of metal on the seafloor.

About half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean. But, before this discovery, it was understood that it was made by marine plants photosynthesising - something that requires sunlight.

Here, at depths of 5km, where no sunlight can penetrate, the oxygen appears to be produced by naturally occurring metallic “nodules” which split seawater - H2O - into hydrogen and oxygen.

Several mining companies have plans to collect these nodules, which marine scientists fear could disrupt the newly discovered process - and damage any marine life that depends on the oxygen they make.

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

I just learned of these lumps of metal, and I already care more about them than any CEO.

Dark thoughts get behind me, wait a second. We have metals on land. Research is needed to determine if we can magnify this process.

MartianSands ,

We can, it’s just electrolysis. All you need is electricity, and these nodules are simply batteries.

We’re not short of oxygen up here though, so it’s not terribly useful. We could get hydrogen that way, which would be greener than the way we get it at industrial scale now, but it would be way more expensive

girlfreddy OP ,
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

We’re not short of oxygen up here though …

How do you know that before further studies can verify how much the nodules are contributing to the earth’s oxygen levels?

AmidFuror ,

Color me deeply skeptical that these seafloor "batteries" have not been depleted. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We need to overcome the possibility of faulty measurements or other sources.

girlfreddy OP ,
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

Since the paper was just published yesterday I’m unsure why you would think the nodules are depleted.

porous_grey_matter ,

The review standards for nature geoscience are pretty high, I think they will have thought of that

Varyk ,

Seems monumental, I’m curious about more specific properties of the metal.

Seems like a valuable resource from a video game that charges science fiction energy drives.

It’s funny the title is “defies knowledge of the deep ocean”, given how often it’s proven humans have so little knowledge of the deep ocean in the first place.

MartianSands ,

The article is being pretty hyperbolic. There’s no mystery here, this is just something which happens if you put two different metals together. It’s nothing more or less than a crude battery, just like the ancestors of the AA battery the article kept harping on about.

This discovery could be important for people studying the climate on very early Earth, people studying early life, and the ecology of the deep sea today.

That last one is particularly troubling, though. If this is widespread, then this might be a major source of what little oxygen is down there. If so, then taking those nodules away (like a lot of people are keen to do, since some of the metals they’re made of are valuable) could destroy an entire ecosystem.

More research is required

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

“I first saw this in 2013 - an enormous amount of oxygen being produced at the seafloor in complete darkness,” explains lead researcher Prof Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

And because these nodules contain metals like lithium, cobalt and copper - all of which are needed to make batteries - many mining companies are developing technology to collect them and bring them to the surface.

And his discovery, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, raises new concerns about the risks of proposed deep-sea mining ventures.

The scientists worked out that the metal nodules are able to make oxygen precisely because they act like batteries.“If you put a battery into seawater, it starts fizzing,” explained Prof Sweetman.

And this discovery suggests that the nodules themselves could be providing the oxygen to support life there.Prof Murray Roberts, a marine biologist from the Univerisity of Edinburgh is one of the scientists who signed the seabed mining petition.

“There’s already overwhelming evidence that strip mining deep-sea nodule fields will destroy ecosystems we barely understand,” he told BBC News.“Because these fields cover such huge areas of our planet it would be crazy to press ahead with deep-sea mining knowing they may be a significant source of oxygen production.”Prof Sweetman added: “I don’t see this study as something that will put an end to mining.“[But] we need to explore it in greater detail and we need to use this information and the data we gather in future if we are going to go into the deep ocean and mine it in the most environmentally friendly way possible.”

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