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InvestigatesSeagrassTHE MOST IMPORTANT place on earth that virtually no one has ever heard of is called the Saya de Malha Bank.
Among the world’s largest seagrass fields and the planet’s most important carbon sinks, this high-seas patch of ocean covers an area the size of Switzerland. More than 320 km from land, the submerged bank is situated in the Indian Ocean between Mauritius and Seychelles.
It has been called the world’s largest invisible island as it is formed by a massive plateau, in some spots barely hidden under 9 metres of water, offering safe haven to an incomparable biodiversity of seagrass habitats for turtles and breeding grounds for sharks and humpback and blue whales.
Researchers say that the Bank is one of the least scientifically studied areas of the planet partly because of its remoteness.
The area’s unpredictable depths have also meant that, over the centuries, merchant ships and explorers tended to avoid these waters. It has long been the type of fantastical realm so uncharted that on the old maps, it would be designated “Here Be Monsters”.
More recently, though, the Bank has been traversed by a diverse cast of characters, including shark finners, bottom trawlers, seabed miners, stranded fishers, starving crews, wealthy yachters and libertarian seasteaders.
The tragedy, however, is that since the Saya de Malha Bank is mostly located in international waters, where few rules apply, its biodiversity is being systematically decimated by a huge fleet of industrial fishing ships that remain largely unchecked by government oversight.
The Bank remains unprotected by any major binding treaties largely due to an anemia of political will by national authorities and a profits-now costs-later outlook of fishing interests.
The question now: Who will safeguard this public treasure?
More than five hundred years ago, when Portuguese sailors came across a shallow-water bank on the high seas over 1,100 km east of the northern tip of Mauritius, they named it Saya de Malha, or “mesh skirt”, to describe the rolling waves of seagrass below the surface.
Seagrasses are frequently overlooked because they are rare, estimated to cover only a tenth of 1% of the ocean floor.
“They are the forgotten ecosystem,” says Ronald Jumeau, the Seychelles ambassador for climate change.
Nevertheless, seagrasses are far less protected than other offshore areas. Only 26% of recorded seagrass meadows fall within marine protected areas, compared with 40% of coral reefs and 43% of the world’s mangroves.
The Saya de Malha Bank is so existentially crucial to the planet because it is one of the world’s biggest seagrass meadows and thus carbon sinks. Much like trees on land, seagrass absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in its roots and soil.
But seagrass does it especially fast — at a rate 35 times that of tropical rainforest.
What makes the situation in the Saya de Malha Bank even more urgent is that it’s being systematically decimated by a multinational fleet of fishing ships that virtually no one tracks or polices.
Often described as the lungs of the ocean, seagrasses capture about a fifth of all its carbon and they are home to vast biodiversity. Seagrass also cleans polluted water and protects coastlines from erosion, according to a 2021 report by the University of California.
At a time when ocean acidification threatens the survival of the world’s coral reefs and the thousands of fish species that inhabit them, seagrasses reduce acidity by absorbing carbon through photosynthesis, and provide shelters, nurseries and feeding grounds for thousands of species, including endangered animals such as dugongs, sharks and seahorses.
But the Saya de Malha is under threat. More than 200 distant-water vessels — most of them from Sri Lanka and Taiwan — have parked in the deeper waters along the edge of the Bank.
Ocean conservationists say that efforts to conserve the Bank’s seagrass are not moving fast enough to make a difference. “It’s like walking north on a southbound train,” says Heidi Weiskel, Acting Head of Global Ocean Team for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
In May 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to declare 1 March as World Seagrass Day. The resolution was sponsored by Sri Lanka.
Speaking at the assembly, the permanent representative of Sri Lanka to the UN, Ambassador Mohan Pieris, said seagrasses were “one of the most valuable marine ecosystems on earth”, highlighting, among other things, their outsized contribution to carbon sequestration.
But recognition is one thing; action is another. As the ambassador gave his speech in New York, dozens of ships from his country’s fishing fleet were 14,000 km away, busily scraping the biggest of those very ecosystems he was calling on the world to protect.
The Saya de Malha Bank has also emerged as an attractive target for the mining industry that argues that the ocean floor is an essential frontier for rare-earth metals needed in the batteries used in cell phones and laptops.
Vacuuming up the treasured nodules of rare-earths requires extraction by massive excavators. Typically 30 times the weight of regular bulldozers, these machines drive along the sea floor, suctioning up the rocks, crushing them, and sending a slurry of pulverised nodules and seabed sediments through a series of pipes to a vessel above.
After separating out the minerals, the mining ships then pipe back overboard the processed waters, sediment and mining “fines”, which are small particles of ground-up nodule ore.
Most of the Bank is too shallow to be a likely candidate for such mining, but cobalt deposits were found in the Mascarene Basin, an area that includes the Saya de Malha Bank, in 1987.
South Korea holds a contract from the International Seabed Authority, the international agency that regulates seabed mining, to explore hydrothermal vents on the Central Indian Ridge, about 400 km east of Saya de Malha, until 2029. India and Germany also hold exploration contracts for an area about 1,200 km southeast of the Saya de Malha Bank.
All of this activity could be disastrous for the Bank’s ecosystem, according to ocean researchers.
Mining and exploration activity will raise sediments from the ocean floor, reducing the seagrass’s access to the sunlight it depends on.
Sediment clouds from mining can travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometres, potentially disrupting the entire mid-water food web and affecting important species such as tuna.
The ocean floor itself is also slow to recover from mining activity.
In 2022, scientists found that tracks were still visible from a deep-seabed mining test that had been completed off the coast of Charleston in South Carolina, half a century ago, according to a report by the Post and Courier newspaper in the United States.
The areas between the tracks were devoid of fish and sponges. Research published in 2023 found that a year after test seabed mining disturbed the ocean floor in Japanese waters, the density of fish, crustaceans and jellyfish in nearby areas was cut in half.
Proponents of deep seabed mining stress a growing need for these resources. In 2020, the World Bank estimated that the global production of minerals like cobalt and lithium would have to be increased by over 450% by 2050 to meet the growing demand for clean energy technology.
However, critics of the industry say that due to the long transport distances and corrosive and unpredictable conditions at sea, the cost of mining nodules offshore will far outstrip the price of doing so on land.
Other critics contend that technology is changing so quickly that the batteries used in the near future will be different from those that are used now.
Better product design, recycling and reuse of metals already in circulation, urban mining and other “circular economy” initiatives can vastly reduce the need for new sources of metals, says Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.
More recently, though, The Metals Company, the largest seabed mining stakeholder, has shifted away from arguing about batteries and instead claimed that the metals are needed for missiles and military purposes.
The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, a group of nongovernmental organisations and policy institutes working to protect the deep sea, reports that over 30 countries have called for a moratorium or a precautionary pause on deep-seabed mining due to growing global opposition to this type of mining.
Still, government officials in Mauritius and Seychelles seem to be eager to take advantage of the financial opportunity that seabed mining appears to represent. In September 2024, the countries agreed to a deal to initiate oil exploration in and around the Saya de Malha Bank, a region they jointly manage.
In 2021, Greenpeace, a member of the conservation coalition, chose the Saya de Malha Bank as the location for the first ever underwater protest of deep-seabed mining.
As part of that protest, Shaama Sandooyea, a 24-year-old marine biologist from Mauritius, dove into the Bank’s shallow waters with a sign reading “Youth Strike for Climate”.
She had a simple point to make: The pursuit of minerals from the seafloor, without understanding the consequences, was not the route to a green transition. She said:
“Seagrasses have been underestimated for a long time now.”
This article, published by The Journal Investigates, is by Ian Urbina, Maya Martin, Joe Galvin, Susan Ryan and Austin Brush – Editors at The Outlaw Ocean Project.
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‘the vast majority of whom will facilitate their patients through onwards referral to those who will.’
Surely ALL GPs should be facilitating through referrals? Conscientious objection is fine, deciding that a patient of yours won’t get access to healthcare you think is immoral unilaterally is not fine… This new legislation must make onward referrals an obligation
@Chucky Arlaw: The law must also recognise that a referral to a doctor in Wexford is pretty useless to a patient in Bundoran.
@Larry Doyle: but a GP is not like a consultant- you don’t need a referral to see a GP.
@Chucky Arlaw: no it should be their CHOICE whether to refer or to do anything at all that they don’t agree with. Are you not pro choice?
@Greg Kelly:
The Repeal people are wearing the hat now. They want to wave the Big Stick and use the law to bully conscientious objectors into submission.
The empathy hashtag has been dismantled it would appear.
@Greg Kelly: the choice is; do your job in it’s entirety or find a new one.
@Greg Kelly: that’s not as clever a point to make as I reckon you think it is.
Ithought that doctors first and foremost were there to save lives,and as far as your comment that patients will not get access to health care is a nonsence,and that referrals be made an obligation,.This abortion was badly thought out and the head of this government should have known and consulted the doctors,if only to show respect for his fellow doctors,there is no need for the big stick and you will do as you are told,they should be trying to help any doctor who is a conscientious objector,or is this country becoming a dictatiorship and no one will have any rights there is not a thing about the cervical cancer patients,or those suffering mental health issues,that need to be addressed or the housing or hospital waiting lists these seem to have been put on the back burner
@Karen Wellington: I presume that taking life was not in the contract of employment. We’re not talking about removing a splinter from a thumb here.
@False 9: keep doing your best to make sure that desperate women suffer unbearably just so that you can bury your head in the sand while up on your “no abortions in Ireland” pseudo high horse. Abortion has been a fact of life for women since time immemorial, what we’re doing now is trying to make it legal and safe in a patriarchal society where women must beg on their knees to be allowed to care for one another. If you care about “unborn children” so much why don’t you get off your ar*e and start fostering children or fundraising for children’s charities.
@False 9: do you think a GP contract lists every single medical procedure or treatment available in practice today? Their job is to treat their patients’ health concerns and help them maintain a comfortable standard of health, ideally while exhibiting compassion.
@Veronica: it’s all about women to you though isn’t it. Women’s rights, downtrodden women, poor women…. What about the children, lost lives? Have you ever once mentioned them? No. Ending life is not healthcare.
@Karen Wellington: yes Karen and where do you think it may mention the premeditated ending of life of one of the healthy patients in a pregnancy case? See the problem?
@False 9: yes, it is all about the women to me, I’m actually quite vocal about that in case you hadn’t noticed.
Considering that you say you care so much for children, why haven’t I seen you commenting encouraging more people to foster children, or to adopt older children who are less likely to be adopted? Or promoting schemes to make sure that every child in Ireland does not go home from school hungry?
@False 9: if they’ve gotten all the way through medical school and subsequent GP training they’re probably not delusional enough to take the view that a foetus equates to an actual person.
This is about leverage for renegotiating their contracts.
@Karen Wellington: yes. These doctors are misusing the situation where a tiny minority of doctors are refusing to give healthcare to women, and using it to leverage a financial benefit. BTW, these (minority) of doctors claiming religious objection should be struck off. Their job is to provide a prescription for a health issue, not perform a DNC. Follow your medical council advice, or leave it. It was the same nonsense with pills, coils and morning after pills, and if I recall, smear tests. Leave your prejudices at the door. We have thousands of Muslim doctors in this country who have managed to do it, so stop thinking your Catholic bigotry against women makes you so special.
@False 9: psst, the woman is the patient.
@Chucky Arlaw: if you go to your GP and their medical opinion is that you’re in the wrong GP’s office should you still pay?
Abortion is just wrong
@Elvis Polkasalad: sorry for your troubles
@Elvis Polkasalad: next time you’re pregnant don’t have one then.
@Elvis Polkasalad: vast majority of the people of Ireland don’t agree with you
@Elvis Polkasalad: Maybe you should have campaigned in the recent referendum.
@Larry Doyle: i did, and my conscience is clear, u all give out about what the catholic church did in tuam but you all are doing the same .
@Barry Somers: vast majority of germans agreed with hitler , was what he done right?
@Chucky Arlaw: i would never harm a child outside the womb ,so why would i agree to harm a child in the womb.
@Francis Mc Carthy: thanks francis ,
@Elvis Polkasalad: but you would take a woman’s body and free will hostage without a thought.
@Elvis Polkasalad: WTF?
@Elvis Polkasalad: You just lost what little credibility you may have had.
@Elvis Polkasalad: And u just lost. Ha haaaa
@Elvis Polkasalad: If your conscience is clear then stop hiding behind a false name. You are a coward.
@Ian Phillip Creaner: triumphalist ?? Poor reflection of you as a person …
@Deborah Behan: you’re not implying that Elvis impregnated these women are you? THEY had sex. THEY got pregnant. They are a hostage unto themselves. The do everything for me for free right now generation of today need to accept some responsibility. Not everything can be dismembered, hoovered out of you and flushed down the toilet just because it is an inconvenience.
@Ian Phillip Creaner: oh dear Ian. I’d check in if I was you. The only thing “lost” is lives.
@Elvis Polkasalad: is good to hear that you’re looking after your womb then
@False 9: get a life you sad trolling sap
@False 9: more evidence that those against abortion are more into punishing women and girls for the sin of fornication than actually giving a sh!t about “the unborn”.
Like, that comment is almost so obviously woman hating its got to be a joke.
@Elvis Polkasalad: don’t have one!
@False 9: Elvis did not impregnate them, a man did. An irresponsible, immature, selfish man who does not have to deal with the physical, psychological or even financial consequences for the rest of his life. All he has to do after failing to contain his emissions and changing a woman s life entirely, is do a legger.
A man like many men who have just been a little lucky or perhaps not so much if the woman discovering the type of person she is dealing with does not bother informing him.I wonder how many little False 9 s have gotten flushed away? We will never know.
One of the main contentions of the Repeal movement was that the threat of prison for women accessing abortion pills online was heavy handed and totalitarian and lacked empathy for women. Pro life people agreed with them and argued that the law should not be applied in any instance.
Now the same Repeal people want GPs wo refuse to provide abortion services jailed.
Interesting u-turn isn’t it.
It’s true what they say: Power ultimately corrupts.
@Jack McGready: this is just purposeful obfuscation and not what anyone wants. a GP should be allowed to conscientiously object to providing an abortion, but it is there job to refer on to someone who will do it. otherwise, we’re just back to denying healthcare to women.
@Jack McGready: You are making stuff up again Jack.
No one wants GPs jailed. If a GP wants to opt out of providing any service, then they should be allowed to do that. If they refuse to refer a patient to another doctor, then the should be severely reprimanded by the medical council. This should not just apply for abortion services, but all medical services.
@Chrip Ramsay: what is the difference between the referral to another doctor and just prescribing the 10 week pill, or referral to a hospital/clinic. Doctors should not be able to object to following a process in their training manual because they view the patient differently as a woman, anymore than a bakery refusing to bake because they object to the customer being gay. Are doctors allowed to object against sending women for radiotherapy of they know it will damage an unborn foetus. The more logic that is applied to this, the weaker these (few) doctors position stands.
@Gulliver Foyle: The argument in the article is around how they can confirm the gestation period, do they need ultrasound equipment etc, and the need for psychological services. Who is going to fund it?
No one, within reason, should legally have to supply a service they don’t want to. Any service they do supply should be supplied to all irrespective of sexual orientation or sexual history
@CrabaRev: If they can’t confirm the gestation period with confidence, then they can and should refer the patient, without delay (!), to a consultant or practice with the facilities who can.
The principal issue is that some GPs are saying that they can’t even make an initial assessment of a patient and WON’T refer them to a place that can. That is utterly disgraceful, given the distress the patient may be under and the time-constraints within which a decision must be made. The more delay there is, the more danger to the patient – very unethical.
@Twitnoc: p.s. psychological services may be required for any patient who presents with any condition (even a pregnancy they intend to continue to term with!), so that argument is a red herring.
And with regard to cost, maternity care for a pregnancy taken to term would FAR exceed that of an early abortion. Another red herring. This is a minority of GPs seeking to exercise a totally inappropriate moral judgement on their patients and another cohort who are immorally using the introduction of this treatment to lobby for more money.
I agree that an opt-in service is best but the GP needs to be compelled to refer patients on…once again this doctor is suggesting that we return to an “ireland of nods and winks”….the impression he gives is that ppl will know where to go as we are a small country…this is unacceptable…
@Cal-Dog: I think there should also be a minimum number per district who will treat patients wanting an abortion- what if there’s some young one in the sticks of Donegal needing help? How many GP surgeries will she have to pass before she comes to one willing to help her?
@Cal-Dog: why? The state can supply a list that can be read. We have citizens information webpages, why can’t there be one on abortion? If a GP actual believes an 8-week old featus is a human being then helping in any way to end that life would go against his/her beliefs. How could you make it mandatory for that GP to participate in what to them is the taking of life?
@Rob Lyn: and if a GP believed dealing with gay patients was wrong for religious reasons would it be ok to refuse them medical treatment also?
@Barry Somers: where’s the moral dilemma in treating gay patients and is this against the moral code of any religion? I can’t remember all of the 10 commandments but I don’t remember anything about treatment of gay people. This is a critical moral decision, religion independent, about whether it is right to take another life. A large proportion of doctors don’t want any act or part in it it seems.
@Barry Somers: no, of course it wouldn’t. Such a GP shouldn’t be allowed to practice as a GP.
What is your point? If you are trying to draw a parallel I do not see it.
Would it not make more sense to have a list of GP’s who are willing to state pubically that they are offering Abortion assistance and those who state they will not, possibally an online list county by county and available on the citizens information website.
It would save a lot of unfruitful conversations.
@Andrew Connolly:
Common sense.
Unfortunately the Repeal movement wants to wave the Big Stick it would appear.
@Andrew Connolly: “pubically ”
@Andrew Connolly: yes, we can let those who object to providing healthcare call themselves non-general practitioners, or “religious doctors”, and they can let the church maintain their register, and manage their remuneration and contracts. All the other doctors will be managed by the medical council, and we will call them general practitioners, or doctors.
@Andrew Connolly: There is no reason why GPs cannot opt out of providing the service if they wish. Its as easy to opt out as it is to opt in. But for the doctors, by being allowed to opt in, they get negotiation power. we won’t opt in unless we get funding etc.
@Jack McGready: You are a p&thetic sh!t stirrer. The only “movement” involved in the referendum was the highly funded, highly organised, ultra catholic “Yes Campaign”. It was soundly defeated by normal right thinking people who came out in their droves. Get a life!
@Andrew Connolly: Because they will be targeted by Pro Lies lunatics. Their campaign managers have said as much.
It needs to be opt out to protect women and G.P.s
They can provide a list of those who do opt out…they will be under no threat from anyone.
Show me the money….
Why are people still writing these articles? There is NO ONE suggesting anyone be forced to provide them. And it is entirely reasonable to expect every GP to refer patients where necessary. Not most. Every single one.
@Gerard: should it not be their CHOICE whether or not they take part in any way including the choice to refer? Are you against choice ?
@Greg Kelly: no, we’re pro people doing their jobs, the jobs that they get paid very well to do
@Chrip Ramsay: or of interest, do the doctors who object really object? That hairy “mindfulness” gp from cork during the campaign provides well women clinics, including contraception, cervical screening, family planning and fertility referrals such as IVF, all of which one can claim are against their religion. What else will we allow them to object to that prevents them from doing their job
@Greg Kelly: Let’s say there was a Jehovas Witness doctor, he or she would be against blood transfusions, do you think it would’ be OK for the doctor to to withhold this service?
Why should any woman need a referral at all? Why not self refer? I think GPs are not trying to be obstructive, just saying their plate is already more than full and abortion services should be provided by other clinics. Just like they are in most other countries!
Where are the gps going to refer to? The legislation hasn’t past yet and the government are scaremongering all gps into thinking they’ll be performing 20 abortions a day all so they can use it as a negotiating tactic in the new Gp contract, how is a Gp going to date a pregnancy? Is Harris going to provide a state of the art ultrasound machine to every practice in the country along with the many weeks to months of training to be able to use one effectively, which can only give a rough estimate +/- 1-2 weeks? No, he’s not, there’ll be a few dotted around the country or in hospitals in which he n Leo will be falling over each other with a huge golden scissors to open, don’t see why women won’t be able to go to these ‘centres of excellence’ first without bothering their own Gp?#cartb4horse
I am OK with abortion provision being on an opt-in basis as long as proper protections are in place so that the patients healthcare is paramount. That includes that a GP that doesn’t want to perform abortions being required to refer their patient on. It could be as simple as “I don’t perform abortions in my practice. Here is a list of other GPs in the area that do perform them”. If a GP can’t even do that for their patient then I don’t think that they should be a doctor at all.
I see the fascists are out in their numbers again.. This time, they aren’t demanding women can kill their child for any reason, they’re demanding doctors must be made to do the killing or go to jail.. The irony of it all..
@Mark McAuley:
Mark if you had a coherent argument you wouldn’t have to lie and make stuff up. Nobody is asking for anyone to be jailed.
With regards to the fascists being out in their numbers, you really don’t see the Irony in your comments at all? Do you?
This article talks about opt-in, opt-out services for patients in this country.
This is the problem in general with health care and the way it is dispensed here. Doctors need to just do their fecking jobs.
@Ron O’Keefe: Interestingly the vaccine schedule for patients is opt out by default. So if you did not want your child to receive the swine flu vaccine that caused narcolepsy for example you had to write a letter/e mail in to the school noting your non agreement. If there was any clerical error your child could receive this vaccine or others without your knowledge or permission. It should have been opt in.
It is the reverse scenario with G.P.s…Opting out is the better course of action in order to protect patients (women and girls) and the many G.P.s who will provide this service, as the so called reasonable leaders of Pro Lies have in effect said that they will target such services as their next plan of action. The spurious objections in the high court is only the tip of the iceberg. They intend to take their dirty tricks manual back to the streets and we know where they will focus their attention this time.
Excellent article. Prob the very first one that stated v clearly the pro’s and con’s of the many angles to all of this- angles that many people either don’t consider or WANT to address.
Opt in or out, whatever. All GPs must be made to have their stance available somewhere public and easily accessible to paitients. Firstly so no woman is potentially humiliated or lectured in a time of crisis by a prolife doctor who won’t even have the decency to refer them on to someone who will help. Not to mention, have the opportunity to charge the woman a fee for the non ‘service’. Secondly so people can make an informed decision on who provides their healthcare. I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable being treated by a GP who considers my life and situation less important than an embryo or 12 week feotus.
No legislation has been passed to even make abortion legal as of yet, and with at least one challenge in the courts against the referendum result it could be another 3 years before any law is passed to even allow abortions to be performed in the country. They still have time to thrash out the details or the who, how, where and when.
I thought if you were a GP (same as a Solicitor) you don’t really get to pick and choose who your clients are? You can’t refuse them as such, however that said, I think a GP should be allowed to choose whether or not to offer this ‘service’ as such
NO – it should be an opt out service
Doctors that murder and use violence and tyranny against the weak. Indoctrination is a powerful thing!
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