Exploring the growth of deep-sea bivalves in areas of potential sea-floor mining

大陆架以外的海床区域构成了地球上最大的生态系统之一。然而，人们对深海底栖生物的了解非常少，这在很大程度上是因为环境相对难以接近。已知的是，深海群落是多样化的，其组成是不同的，既有通才生物，也有专业生物，例如那些生活在热液喷口等特别具有挑战性的地区的生物。大多数深海动物的生活史都是谜一样的。例如，对大多数物种的增长速度缺乏了解，这些增长速度可能在多大程度上受到遥远的外部因素的影响，如光带生产力和潮汐效应。这些生活史问题并不深奥，因为深海环境正越来越多地受到人类活动的影响，这既是通过气候系统的变化间接影响的，也是通过目前和计划中对海洋资源的开发直接影响的。海底多金属结核和热液喷口矿床是一种潜在的未来金属资源，其中锰、镍和钴用于多金属结核，铜、铅、锌、银、金和其他微量金属用于喷口矿床。这些潜在资源主要存在于国家专属经济区以外的地方和深水(数千米)，因此在开采之前需要解决一些重大问题，有些纯粹是后勤问题(例如开发新型采矿机械)，有些则与政策有关。专属经济区以外的所有海底资源都由国际海底管理局发放许可证，这首先需要对采矿的生态影响进行充分调查，然后才能进行这项工作。目前，这类工作正由不同的承包商在许多区域(例如，中太平洋的克拉里昂-克利珀顿区)进行，这些区域被授权给一些不同的国家。这些海底金属资源的商业开采将影响深海环境，而关于采矿后生态恢复的持续时间或潜在划出区的范围的问题，由于普遍缺乏关于深海动物的数据而受到阻碍。该项目将提供关于各种深海环境，主要是热液喷口和多金属结核矿场的双壳类生长的重要新信息，这些环境的目标是即将进行的商业开采。材料将来自现有的收藏品，但有可能参加一次研究巡航，从克拉里昂-克利珀顿区结核油田收集新的标本。将对较大的双壳类标本使用已有的细菌年代学成像和地球化学技术，但是，许多深海双壳类的小而脆弱的贝壳将需要修改一些现有的方法，并有可能酌情开发新的方法。对分析结果进行数学处理(如光谱分析)将是这项研究的重要组成部分。

The area of seabed beyond the continental shelves makes up one of the largest of the Earth's ecosystems. However, the deep-sea benthos is very poorly understood, in large part because the relative inaccessibility of the environment. What is known is that deep-sea communities are diverse, heterogeneous in their composition and contain both generalist and specialist organisms, such as those living in particularly challenging locations, like hydrothermal vents. The life histories of most deep-sea animals are enigmatic. For example, knowledge of growth rates for most species is lacking, as is the extent to which these rates might be influenced by distant external factors, such as photic zone productivity and tidal effects. These life history questions are not esoteric because the deep-sea environment is being increasingly impacted by human activities, both indirectly through changes in the climate system, and directly through current and planned exploitation of marine resources. Seafloor polymetallic nodules and hydrothermal vent deposits are a potential future metals resource, of manganese, nickel and cobalt for polymetallic nodules, and copper, lead, zinc, silver, gold and other trace metals for vent deposits. These potential resources exist largely outside of country exclusive economic zones (EEZs), and in deep water (thousands of metres), so there are major issues that need to be solved before they can be exploited, some purely logistical (e.g., development of novel mining machinery), and some policy related. Outside of EEZs all seafloor resources are licenced by the International Seabed Authority, and this first requires adequate investigation of the ecological impacts of mining before this can go ahead. Currently this type of work is being undertaken by various contractors in a number of areas (e.g., the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the central Pacific) licenced to a number of different countries.Commercial extraction of these seafloor metal resources will impact the deep-sea environment, and questions about the duration of post-mining ecological recovery or the extent of potential set-aside areas are hampered by a general lack of data about deep-sea animals. The project will provide essential new information about the growth of bivalves from a variety of deep-sea environmental settings, principally hydrothermal vents and polymetallic nodule fields, which are targeted for imminent commercial exploitation. Material will come from existing collections, but there is the potential to join a research cruise to collect new specimens from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone nodule fields. Established sclerochronological imaging and geochemical techniques will be used on larger bivalve specimens, however, the small, fragile shells of many deep-sea bivalves will necessitate the modification of some existing methodologies, with the potential to develop new approaches, as appropriate. Mathematical processing (e.g. spectral analysis) of analytical results will be an essential component of the research.