7 November 2020 | New Scientist | 39O
N 2 AUGUST 2007, bright light shone
on the ocean floor beneath the North
Pole for the first time, as a van-sized
submarine settled on the seabed. Inside,
pilot Anatoly Sagalevich deployed a
mechanical arm to erect a Russian flag. That
act stirred up more than the yellow-tinged
polar sediments.
“This isn’t the 15th century: you can’t go
around the world and just plant flags and say
we’re claiming this territory,” said Canada’s
foreign minister, Peter MacKay. Russia
countered that the flag-planting was merely
to celebrate their achievement – like taking a
flag to the moon. “The goal of this expedition
is not to stake out Russia’s rights, but to
prove that our [continental] shelf stretches
up to the North Pole,” said Russia’s foreign
minister, Sergey Lavrov. In 2015, Russia used
data from the expedition to support a claim
to seabed resources in 1.3 million square
kilometres around the pole.
This may look like a latter-day land
grab but it is actually a move in line with
international laws built on a vision of the
ocean floor being “common heritage”. Russia
isn’t alone in claiming resources on the Arctic
seabed, and nations are seeking to extend
their rights to ocean resources elsewhere.
Meanwhile, commercial enterprises are
gearing up to mine deep-sea mineral deposits.We are on the verge of a new era in deep-sea
exploitation. Marine biologist Jon Copley
considers the consequences
We have come to a crucial moment for the
future of our blue planet. As international
bodies prepare to decide about the legitimacy
of different mining ventures and how to
protect biodiversity in the waters beyond
national boundaries, the race is on for deep-
sea biologists like myself to understand how
these decisions will affect ecosystems on
the ocean floor.
Working out who has rights to what is
the easy part, at least in principle. The rules
determining rights on the ocean floor are
collectively known as the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea. UNCLOS
was agreed through conferences that
spanned decades, and has been signed
by 167 nations and the European Union.
It gives countries with a coastline a zone
of “territorial waters” extending 12 nautical
miles (22 kilometres) offshore. They own the
resources within that area, such as fisheries
and minerals, but ships of any other nation
have the right of peaceful passage.
Coastal countries are also granted an
“exclusive economic zone” (EEZ), with
further rights to resources extending out
to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres)
offshore. For both territorial waters and
the EEZ, if there is an overlap with the zones
for another country, the nations involved
JAS must agree a boundary. In practice, the >ONFORD