Internationally there is unprecedented economic interest in minerals embedded in the seafloor.
Consents have been issued for huge amounts of seabed mineral prospecting and extraction on our West Coast, with Greenpeace warning global seabed mining could cover the widest area of all human destruction.
Mining and prospecting includes drilling and sucking, plus a range of seismic and sonic testing. Already, Rio Tinto are prospecting for minerals off Auckland’s West Coast, covering an area of over 540 km2, and Australian company TransTasman Resources (TTR) is preparing for their first seabed mining consent sometime in the next couple of months.
There’s also already sand mining occurring within and outside the Kaipara Harbour.
All these activities have impacts on marine life, especially dangerous for Maui’s dolphins who cannot sustain a single human induced death.
Seabed mining affects surf breaks, coastal land forms and other marine life. see this article from KASM: