July 12, 2023 — A new study has found that deep-sea mining may pose a big threat to tuna species moving into the eastern Pacific Ocean as climate change pushes them into the open ocean.
Dr Diva Amon, a scientific researcher at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Director and Founder of NGO SpeSeas explains that climate pressures are expected to push bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin tuna from their current range near small, developing Pacific nations into a “climate refuge” in a deep-ocean zone of the eastern Pacific Ocean.
“These tuna are going to be leaving these Pacific Nations and moving into the high seas and progressively eastward,” she says, adding that the highly-mobile tuna might arrive to these new areas only to find it is already inhospitable due to deep-sea mining.