The ocean floor is scattered with vast beds of minerals that could be used to make modern gadgets from smartphones to solar panels and batteries.
But environmentalists warn that mining it could remove entire habitats and threaten as-yet-undiscovered species, and release toxins and create pollution in areas that have been undisturbed for millennia.
Though there is rising demand for the materials we need to transition to clean energy and combat climate change, do we need to plunder nature’s last frontier to find them?
On this podcast, Sian Owen, from conservation group the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, argues that mining the deep seas shouldn’t happen, no matter what treasures are buried in an environment scientists know less about than the surface of the moon.
