Five Otherworldly Species At Risk From Deep-Sea Mining : Vent shrimp
The deep-sea is completely dark, exposed only to bioluminescence. Abyssal fauna is not accustomed to the light emitted from deep-sea mining machines, and so they could be blinded by them. That’s what happened to vent shrimp (Rimicaris exoculata), a snow-colored crustaceous found in hydrothermal vents. These shrimp see from a single eye on their backs, and, in the darkness, their retinas are sensitive to the temperature of hydrothermal vent radiations. “Research has already demonstrated that their retinas could be damaged by deep-sea mining exploration. Currently, scientists are studying if the animals could survive and breed once they are blinded by light pollution,” says Dr. Jacopo Aguzzi, an expert in environmental monitoring technology and a researcher at the Marine Science Institute (ICM-CSIC) and Zoological Station of Naples (SZN). “We must be concerned about the possible domino effects pushed by deep-sea mining.”
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| Format: | entrada de blog biblioteca |
| Published: |
2020-06-13
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/236515 |
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