nodule

There are competing theories of the chemical process by which this occurs, but the result is a concretion that grows at the pace of a few centimeters every million years to form a small rock known as a polymetallic nodule.

“So, if you are a sessile organism sitting on a nodule, and we collect you, then that’s probably the end of life. But for the bacteria, you know, what our studies are proving is that actually there may be a net positive impact... a little bit like tilling the soil.”

“There’s already overwhelming evidence that strip mining deep-sea nodule fields will destroy ecosystems we barely understand,” he told BBC News.

Five expert human annotators might provide five different segmentations, perhaps disagreeing on the existence or extent of the borders of a nodule in a lung CT image.

The Metals Company says the research trip interrupted by Greenpeace in November was for science that aimed to help improve knowledge of the effect nodule collection will have.