Wild Tobago

An exhibition of art with ocean themes was mounted at the Trinidad Art Society on Saturday, January 14, by the Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA) to encourage its audience to restore the ocean and defend the deep. It was a significant event in their on-going project to raise awareness about the threats posed by Deep Seabed Mining. The Sustainable Ocean Alliance is working in support of a moratorium on Deep Seabed Mining sanctioned by the International Seabed Authority and likely to start as early as July this year, said Khadija Stewart, Coordinator of SOA Caribbean for Trinidad and Tobago. The Sustainable Ocean Alliance is a global non-governmental organization started in 2014 to mobilize a network of young people in support of the world’s oceans. SOA “has cultivated the world's largest network of next-gen leaders, entrepreneurs, advocates, mentors, and partners, working to create solutions for the largest challenges facing our ocean.” DEFENDERS OF THE DEEP ...

As companies move to find valuable resources in more hazardous territory – oil, gas, minerals – Dr Anjani Ganase asks us to pause and reflect on what mining the deep ocean means. As humans seek to exploit our most remote and unknown environments, we need to be mindful of the present threats brought about by decades of ecological damage from continuous production and consumption. Why? As long as we continue to build and advance our technology industry, there will always be a need to mine the elements used in our electronics. The iPhone, and most smart phones, on average are made up of over 75 elements and many have to been mined, including gold for electrical circuits, lithium for batteries, rare earth metals used to make up part of the screen and features in the phone.   However, it is not just phones, most modern electronics, battery systems and alternative energy systems, are built using these earth elements. Over the last fifty years as our tech...