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Deep-Sea Mining pp 465–482Cite as

Taxonomic Problems in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Linked to Ocean Mining and Possibility of New Technology Developments

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Abstract

The expectation for the development of deep-sea mineral resources has grown as global metal resources have continued to run short. At the same time, there is also a demand for rigorous environmental impact assessments. However, unlike risk assessments for human health, there are no clear standards or indicators for impact assessments for the natural environment. For this reason, although the importance of environmental impact assessments has been stressed at the conceptual level, it is not easy to suggest specific methods. In the case of shallow water, for which knowledge of the taxonomy and ecosystem is relatively rich, the impact is generally evaluated based on biomass, abundance, species richness, rare species, endemic species, dominant species, or keystone species. In contrast, for deep waters, there is a deficiency in highly specialized taxonomists and identification technicians, making it difficult to obtain such indicators as for shallow waters. On the other hand, opportunities for deep-sea mineral resources development are increasing. Therefore it is difficult to imagine that the development will be interrupted by EIA issues. These facts suggest that there is an urgent need for environmental impact evaluators to resolve the issues in indexing the impacts of mining of deep-sea minerals. In this chapter, the current problems of environmental assessment in relation to development of deep-sea mineral resources are explained, and the possibility of impact assessment through molecular biological approach is discussed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    End point: Nakanishi (1995) described end points as “consequences to be avoided at all costs” (Nakanishi 1995). Sharing the end points can lead to common measures in regard to various risks. In human health, for example, if the end point is the death caused by a certain action, it is possible to compare risks based on their death score (=loss of life expectancy). Today, however, the definition of end points for protection of natural environments has not been generalized. Nakanishi proposed end points to be the extinction of a species, but this has not been generalized.

  2. 2.

    Human health risk assessment: In the water quality guidelines for drinking water, the WHO sets the lifetime carcinogenic rate to be less than 10−5. In Japan, the value of 10−5 is set to be the lifetime risk level for air and water.

  3. 3.

    For example, if in a certain year A and B are classified as two separate species but classified as one species in the following year, the numbers of biological groups discovered becomes different. This could happen if the taxonomic system changes. Identification technicians would have to explain and handle such changes.

  4. 4.

    Primers are DNA fragments on both sides of the target gene nucleotide sequence region to be amplified by PCR.

  5. 5.

    PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction, which is a method for multiplying a DNA fragment of the nucleotide sequences of interest by some hundreds of thousand times by repeating DNA synthesis reaction of template DNA, DNA polymerase, and two primers, which are short DNA fragments. This method is called the PCR method.

  6. 6.

    There are three public DNA databases in the world (The DNA data bank of Japan (DDBJ; http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/), the NIH genetic sequence database (GenBank; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/), and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL; http://www.ebi.ac.uk/)). These institutes form a collaboration known as the Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) and share their data. Registered information is updated daily, and the registration numbers of whole genome sequences and a large number of sequences derived from such as metagenomic analysis have been increasing in recent years.

  7. 7.

    DGGE stands for denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, which is a method for separating amplified (by PCR) sequences such as 16S rRNA gene sequence from a mixed extraction DNA in an environment and analyzing them. Muyzer et al. introduced a case of analysis on bacteria (Muyzer et al. 1993). By changing the target genes, this method can be applied to fungi and nematoda (Möhlenhoff et al. 2001; Waite et al. 2003).

  8. 8.

    In analyses using next generation sequencers, the analysis method using PCR amplicons is called an amplicon sequence to distinguish it from methods without PCR.

  9. 9.

    When using PCR with primers designed from conserved regions for 16S rRNA gene sequence, amplicons produced are sometimes longer than expected if the PCR target regions contain organisms with introns. For example, an 16S rRNA gene sequence of foraminifera contains many introns, and this should be taken into consideration when treating them as meiofauna and applying amplicon sequence analysis in the presence of nematoda and harpacticoida.

  10. 10.

    Introns are the parts of a DNA sequence that are not transcribed into an amino acid sequence. Splicing is a process for eliminating introns during transcription. In contrast, regions of nucleotide sequences that are translated to amino acids are called exons. Though introns are often found in eukaryotes, they are also found in prokaryotes and viruses (Belfort et al. 1995; Berget et al. 1977).

  11. 11.

    A shotgun sequence with a next generation sequencer can produce large amounts of nucleotide sequence, but the ribosomal RNA gene, mainly used for estimating biota, makes up a small portion (less than 1% of an entire sequence) (Kawai et al. 2014; Shi et al. 2011). For this reason, shotgun sequencing for the analysis of biological diversity requires a large number of handled sequences.

  12. 12.

    If the genome information of the species is registered in a database, the origin of functional genes can be estimated.

  13. 13.

    This definition is for convenience, and it is possible that a 97% homology of a 16S rRNA gene sequence does not conclude the identity of the two species. In such cases, species richness in an environment might be underestimated.

  14. 14.

    Experiments with mouse cultivation cells reported that mRNA, compared to rRNA, is about 1–2% (Johnson et al. 1977).

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Acknowledgement

This study was conducted as a part of next-generation technology for ocean resources exploration, which is one of cross-ministerial strategic innovation promotion program (SIP), organized by Cabinet Office, Government of Japanese. Authors would like to express our gratitude to members of “Research and Development Center for Submarine Resources” of “Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)” for their valuable advice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka, Japan

    Tomohiko Fukushima & Miyuki Nishijima

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  1. Tomohiko Fukushima
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  2. Miyuki Nishijima
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Correspondence to Tomohiko Fukushima .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, Goa, India

    Rahul Sharma

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Fukushima, T., Nishijima, M. (2017). Taxonomic Problems in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Linked to Ocean Mining and Possibility of New Technology Developments. In: Sharma, R. (eds) Deep-Sea Mining. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52557-0_16

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