Nature's batteries at the bottom of the ocean!

And all it will take is a handful of greedy bastards sneaking down to one of the more obscure locations and vacuuming up tons of these things to destroy hundreds of square miles of thriving habitat, and leave a dead zone that won't be found for decades.

Just imagine all the silly microbes living on those little spheres thinking they are the center of the universe.

I think it is quite likely that these nodules are not just passively precipitated concretions. In order to keep producing a voltage, something must be replenishing the redox imbalance to both grow the nodules and keep that voltage from decaying. I highly suspect that the active component is bacterial colonies reducing something like sulphur compounds in the silt, and oxidising metal ions. Sulphur reducing bacteria are common everywhere, and definitely exist in benthic silts. The end result is something akin to a stomatolite colony, but without the air-water interface so they just grow spherically (or potato shaped).

If we didn't have independent analysis and reporting from channels like JHAT, nobody would know what is going on and bad actors would be free to cause damage. Well done, Sir.

1 thing remains constant, all mine operators & commercial fish farms claim no harm to the environment. Their denial has been debunked over & over. Basically all large scale human activities are bad for the environment IMO!

We cut down a lot of trees already. But the ocean produces the most amount of oxygen. I hope they better not mess with the ocean

Even before this research came out, there were no good reasons to permit seabed mining since so many major players have pledged not to buy minerals obtained that way and transition technologies are rapidly removing the need for many such minerals in the first place. Promises from the mining interests to do no damage and take only the minimum necessary ring very hollow; how many times has such altruism overcome simple greed in the past?

Plot twist. Destroying Ecosystem has consequences

Ok, I'm going to read the paper. Naturally, your Duracell will discharge and the reaction inside the cell will stop along with the reduction of oxygen from water going on outside the cell. For these nodules to produce a voltage implies that they are being oxidized while the H20 is being reduced. And yet the nodules are slowly growing, implying that metal oxides are being reduced to elemental metals, which are added to their mass. You can't have reduction of the metals AND reduction of the oxygen both going on. That is an obvious violation of the second law of thermodynamics. So what on earth is going on here? Off I go now to read the paper.

... There goes the undersea environment, just like all the other environments corporations have destroyed, leading to the end of humanity, as we know it!

Reminds me of the French people who made pulse fishing prohibited. Right now they are destroying the bottom of the entire ocean and on top of that, they need a lot of energy to actually do that. The Dutch somehow found out a technique where they put a little bit of electricity through some wires out there, it's called pulse fishing and then the fish come out of the bottom in a very similar way as destroying the bottom. It's very safe, you don't have to destroy the bottom of the ocean any more and it get's a lot less expensive once you have the technology. The Dutch fishermen invested in this technology and performed awesome. Partly because energy is very expensive in The Netherlands and this way they didn't need a lot, but also because they do care about the environment. The French fishermen on the other hand didn't care about the environment at all and got a disadvantage because they never invested in new technologies. Obviously France is much bigger then The Netherlands and had a much bigger vote within the EU. Because of this, they simply asked the EU to make this technology illegal and all the Dutch fishermen could essentially throw their boats away. The French lied about just about everything around it and to the day of today destroy the bottom of the oceans. It's disgusting what French people and especially their politicians in charge at the time are like. Without the French, the bottom of the oceans would have been a lot more healthy, especially in and around the entire EU.

Dave, you might want to update your information. Aotearoa New Zealand has since voted in a regressive government that wants to "fast track" and place sea bed decisions in the hands of a single MP without the need for environmental checks and balances. They have rolled back all sorts of environmental protections already.

Amazing that Sweetman was able to publish a paper that goes against the interest of the company sponsoring his research.

This is THE coolest scientific news I have heard in a long time!

It's so nice when papers are published openly. It's frustrating when all I can do is read a journalist's take on a paper without having the capacity to read it myself, as I haven't the benefit of access through institutional subscriptions.

Very interesting. Totally agree with you, lets not muck around with the seabed anymore than we already have without a good understanding of what we are doing.

Please don't let them suck these up ... We did that in the 1980s and haven't seen anything grow back in that area since.

The problem, as always, is that the people who don't sign the treaty will just do whatever they want.

Anaerobic dead zones played major roles in past mass extinction events.

Would be interesting to understand more about the composition and how it creates oxygen and how much of that oxygen can we safely breathe in other environments. These nodules provide essential clues that we can not and must not remove or disturb if it harms sea life.