05 March 2025/Kiel. Mining of polymetallic nodules from the seabed might lead to significant and long-lasting ecological changes — both in the mined area, where surface sediments and the fauna living in and on it are removed along with the nodules, and on the adjacent seafloor, where the sediment suspended by the mining resettles. Independent researchers from the MiningImpact project and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, BGR) monitored the test of an industrial pre-prototype nodule collector vehicle in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the eastern Pacific and analysed the spread of the suspended sediment plumes and the patterns of sediment redeposition in space and time. Their results have now been published in the journal Nature Communications.