By Rachel Eng
The elevator doors chime as they open onto the lowest level.
It is dark, and I blink several times, attempting to adjust to the near total lack of light.
My son races ahead.
I step out more carefully, not wanting to drop the cup I brought from aboveground. In the light, the cup is a deep purple–down here, it just looks like my hands are gripping something hard, round, and black.
My son calls me over to a deep-sea aquarium tank with wormy polychaetes turning in circles and sponges sitting still. Our faces touch as we stare through the immensely thick glass;an intense cold emanates from its surface. At first, I struggle to see anything, but slowly, faint contours appear, organisms with an almost ghostly translucence. Dark nodules cover the entire sedimentary floor of the tank, and my son is pointing at a long, snaking line of them, almost as if something had burrowed beneath them. Some of the nodules shifted, revealing a smooth underside.
There are a few small objects in a dimly lit case next to the tank. A shark’s tooth, plankton shell, and mineral grains, each under their own magnifying glass. A fluorescent plaque to the left of them reads:
The black nodules you see at the base of this tank are made of manganese, cobalt, nickel, and other rare earth elements. Deep-sea nodules start with a nucleus such as any of these objects Often, remnants of living organisms that fall from above the abyssal plains becomes the catalyst for a nodule to form;slowly, over millions of years, metals precipitate in layers through various physical and chemical processes. At one time, deep-sea nodules such as these contained more manganese minerals than all the terrestrial sedimentary rock mines that were once active in Norway, Peru, Gabon, Georgia, South Korea, South Africa, Belgium, Brazil. Manganese deposits takek millions of years to form; their presence on land is an indication of tectonic uplift and the rising ocean floor as a result of shifts in Earth’s crust.
There is a rumble, the floor vibrates slightly, and I remember the manganese casting foundry that was down the street from the house my mother grew up in. There was sometimes an acrid smell in the morning, like burnt teeth. My son is looking at another illuminated plaque, with images of terrestrial open pits and the explosives and excavators that were historically used. Another image: a man, dwarfed by the dark pile of tailings behind him, tire treads in the foreground, and clouds of dust. Printed below the image is the text‘Modern-day slavery’. I continue to read:
In 2021, the Canadian deep-sea mining company The Metals Company went public. At that time, The Metals Company used powerful underwater vacuums to suck nodules and any other material to the surface, churning up vast amounts of sediment. The impacts of this were not well-studied. In the historic push for “critical metals,” deep-sea mining was proposed as a green alternative to land mining, which had previously led to high numbers of manganism in populations near and around mining sites. Ultimately, deep-sea nodule mining caused irreversible damage to many of the abyssal plain ecosystems.
As we walk by more tanks dedicated to the abyssal plains, a soft voice emanates from a hidden wall speaker. In 2035, The International Maritime Organization stepped in and required that nodule removal be done with less invasive equipment,at a slower pace, and that companies distribute profits to the island nations that would be the most impacted and protect dedicated areas of the deep sea.
“Those nations are underwater now” my husband says dryly as we walk past a decommissioned life-size submersible miner.
We make our way back to the elevator and as we ascend, the light shifts, becoming almost blinding. The elevator beeps as it passes every floor, each for an ecosystem now extinct in the wild: tropical coral reefs, Amazonian fresh water, the arctic ocean. The elevator comes to a stop, and again, the familiar chime and the doors open. We step out and squint at the brilliance of the daylight. The elevated light rail speeds by above us, casting a shadow through the glass enclosure of the lobby. We hear voices of other children by an ice cream stand that states “made from real cow’s milk,” a rarity in our time. Soft brown speckles on an off-white gloss, the crushed vanilla beans in his ice cream melt slowly down the waffle cone as we sit down with another family. My husband pulls out a thermos and fills the two deep purple mugs we brought. Looking down at the cup in my hands, I see the black tea has formed an iridescent metallic film at the top. My fingerssweep the underside of the mug where a familiar impression is stamped on the bottom:the initials of a studio potter who recycles manganese from old alkaline batteries, fertilizer spills, and scrap steel, just enough to make this deep purple glaze.
I steady my hands and take a sip.
The manganese we use in the studio today comes through our ceramic materials suppliers from the Vibrantz company.
Vibrantz sells this manganese as a brick colorant, under the brand name currently has over 65 manufacturing facilities but we believe the distribution location for our Manganese is located in Texas.
Manganese ore is typically extracted from open pit mines. Based on public shipping records we believe Vibrant sources their manganese from locations around the world including Norway, Korea, Gabon, Brazil, and Mexico.
Below are images of one of the largest Manganese mines in teh world, located in Gabon. This is one of the sites where the Manganese we use in teh studio comes from the earth.
