海洋性植物プランク卜ンを用いた環境影響評価の取り組み

摘要

Increasing the concern for development of deep seabed resources with efficient technologies for exploration and mining tools, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for deep-sea mining is recognized as an urgent task in protection of marine ecosystems. Among the various potential impacts caused by mining development, not only impact management for deep seabed ecosystems, but also those of surface ecosystems are necessity for vessel discharges, sound and light attenuation, water quality, emergency response and so on. In this paper, we focus on the EIA for the surface ecosystems using pelagic phytoplankton. The EIA consists of the baseline survey for the microbial community in the Okinawa Trough and the cultivation experiments for heavy metal effects on phytoplankton.