A type of octopod spotted for the first time last spring could already be at risk due to deep sea mining, as the creatures lay their eggs on top of highly-sought after minerals used in consumer electronics, according to a newly-published Current Biology study.
The octopod, which was named “Casper” in honor of its ghost-like appearance, was discovered swimming at depths of more than 4,000 meters (2.5 miles) around Necker Island in Hawaii back in February, BBC News and Popular Science reported on Monday. Researchers believe that the creature is a member of a species that was previously unknown to science.
Unfortunately, as a team of German and American scientists reported in the new study, this new creature tends to lay and raise their eggs on a particular type of sponge that only grows on top of manganese deposits. Since commercial companies and tech firms are also interested in extracting these minerals, the octopods could be at risk from mining-related activities.
“These sponges only grow in some areas on small, hard nodules or rocky crusts of interest to mining companies because of the metal they contain,” lead author Autun Purser from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany told BBC News. “The removal of these nodules may put the lifecycle of these octopods at risk.”
Disturbing manganese deposits may have ‘serious consequences’
Casper, an octopod that lacks fins and crawls on the seafloor, was first spotted by the camera on an NOAA-operated submersible vehicle near Hawaii, reports indicate. They lay their eggs on top of dead sponge stalks attached to crusted rocks filled with manganese and other valuable metals.
The mothers protect their eggs while they grow – a task that, based on the observations of other deep-sea octopuses, could take as much as four years and could leave the creature vulnerable to the effects of deep-sea mining operations. Furthermore, the authors of the new study found that even octopuses that aren’t even caring for eggs tend to seek out these manganese nodules.
Complicating matters, Purser told Popular Science, is that “many of the metals contained [within manganese nodules] are ‘high-tech’ metals, useful in producing mobile phones and other modern computing equipment, and most of the land sources of these metals have already been found and are becoming more expensive to buy.”
Manganese nodules also grow rather slowly, developing one layer at a time similar how pearls form inside oysters, the publication added. Thus, disturbing them may have a long lasting impact on Casper’s population. In fact, the researchers said, an experiment from the late 1980s in which a team of scientists removed similar nodules found that even a quarter of a century later, not all of the local fauna had fully recovered.
“Our new observations show that we have to know about the behavior of deep-sea animals and the specific way in which they adapt to their habitat in order to draw up sustainable protective and usage concepts,” AWI researcher Antje Boetius said in a statement. Capser and its relatives, she added, are “particularly endangered” as studies have shown that they lay few eggs and have long reproductive cycles. Disturbances to their habitat, she and her colleagues noted, could have “serious consequences for the octopus offspring.”
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Image credit: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Hohonu Moana 2016
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