Page 26 - Professorial Lecture - Prof Omoregie

Effects of impaired reproductive capacity, organ disease, and impaired growth
from contaminants are measured (Omoregie et al, 2009). Assessments are made
of contaminant impacts at both species and population levels. Implementation of
protocols to assess the frequency and effect of harmful algal blooms, emergent
diseases, and multiple marine ecological disturbances (Sherman 2000) are
included in the pollution and ecosystem health module.

Mining Impact on the Marine Environment
Large scale mining operations are required to satisfy the many demands of
modern day societies for several minerals. Mining is one of the major human
activities impacting significantly on the environment in terms of degradation of
environmental quality.

The mining of minerals from the sea has been receiving attention recently. This
attention include those supporting the notion that the seabed is a vast reservoir
of minerals needed to sustain global demand. The other group includes those
with the notion that mining minerals from the seabed will add to the current
devastating human’s activities impacting on the marine environment.

The deep seabed as documented by Markussen (1994) covers an area twice the
total land area of the earth and a great reservoir of three groups of seabed
minerals of which the group ‘polymetallic nodules’ is off most significant. The
polymetallic nodules include over fifty different metallic and non-metallic
elements. Markussen (1994) also noted that the release of any of these elements
into the water column from the seabed beyond natural loading capacity could
have serious deleterious effects on both the abiotic and biotic structure of the
sea.

Ingole et al. (2000) documented that when an artificial disturbance is created on
the seabed, the surface layers of the sediment in the upper few centimeters is
disturbed, which will lead to changes in the existing depositional and
decompositional biota-sediment processes. Thus, deep-sea mining operations will
potentially produce some undesirable environmental effects, both in the water
column and on the seabed (Berge et al. 1991 and Thiel et al. 1992). Possible
effects are expected to involve biochemical changes resulting in biotic responses
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