Deep-sea impact experiments and their future requirements

In recent years, several experiments to assess the potential impacts due to deep-sea mining in the Pacific as well as the Indian Oceans have indicated the immediate changes and restoration patterns of environmental conditions in the marine ecosystem. The large volume of sediment (similar to 500 x 10(7) m(3) per year) estimated to be resuspended would be the major influencing factor in environmental impact in the mining area, leading to changes in availability of certain nutrients and composition of biomass, followed by gradual restoration. Important results have been obtained from these experiments, but in order to have a better understanding of the impacts and restoration processes, it will be necessary to improvise future experiments to resemble actual deep-sea mining in terms of scale and methodology.