Annual meeting for the Eco-Safe project
The annual meeting was a great opportunity for scientists, industry and authorities to interact and discuss the project's scientific results, as well as the environmental risk issues in relation to the opening process for deep-seabed mining in Norway.
Both the Norwegian Environmental Agency and the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate participated in the meeting in addition to project members.
Learn more about the Eco-Safe project at our seminar Accelerating deep sea exploration 19 April.
Risk framework
The first day was dedicated to a risk workshop, as part of a joint effort to establish a risk framework for the extraction of seafloor massive sulfides.
Steinar Sanni from the University of Stavanger steered the session, where relevant components of the framework were identified and discussed in light of scientific knowledge and expert opinions.
A key trend in risk analysis is more focus on uncertainties and the strength of knowledge.
Preliminary results
On the second day, the project participants presented an update of scientific research activities and some preliminary results.
A research expedition was conducted in 2022 and a new one is planned this summer. This works is done in conjunction with other related deep sea research activities. This mapping continues to add missing pieces to the biodiversity puzzle of this remote environment, as well as new knowledge about ecosystem functioning.
An important task is understanding connectivity - linkages between different areas maintained by the movement of organisms - because it influences the ecosystem's capacity to recover from disturbance. Work is also done on plume modelling combined with toxicity experiments.
Read more detail about the preliminary results at the Eco-Safe web page.
Contact Information
Further Reading
Related Events
GCE Ocean Technology Events
Other events