Gold Rush in the Deep Sea
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Gold Rush in the Deep Sea
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this TV show.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Gold Rush In The Deep Sea is a documentary about a science team who researches the impact of seabed manganese mining on the ecosystem. It’s informative, but raises some difficult questions about how we think about humanity's consumption of technology, as well as other issues relating to the economic and social implications of finding alternatives for ore mining. Most of the presentation features documentary footage, but the beginning and end of the show feature fictional images and narrations set 60 years into the future.
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What's the Story?
GOLD RUSH IN THE DEEP SEA explores the potential impact of the industrialization of the ocean. The increasing demand for metal, thanks to our technology-dependent society, is motivating the search for new places to extract ores. Scientists from the Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Oceanology Kiel like Jens Greiner and Matthias Haeckel know that the floor of the Pacific Ocean is filled with manganese nodules, which can serve as a new source of iron, and alleviate the growing metal shortage. But they are not renewable resources, and are located roughly 4 kilometers below the water’s surface. The impact the extraction of these raw materials will have on the natural environment is unknown, so researchers are coming together to conduct environmental impact studies on deep seabed mining to determine if it is sustainable. They also think about how this industry should be regulated, and the impact it will have on economic growth and development around the world. The Geomar team is committed to their work, and hope that their efforts will lead to a sustainable, and profitable, enterprise that will have long-term benefits for everyone.
Is It Any Good?
This interesting German program (which is in English) combines elements of fantasy and documentary to tell a story about seabed mining research from a decidedly pro-environmental point of view. The narrator, who is speaking from 60+ years into the future, introduces the scientific work of the Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Oceanology Kiel research team as a project from the past, and uses its findings as a way of raising important questions about how society thinks about the environmental consequences the continual demand for things like cell phones, TVs, and computers is having on our planet. Also questioned are the solutions being used to alleviate the impact of this phenomenon, many of which are short-term and cause other types of harm to the global ecosystem. But the stance Gold Rush In The Deep Sea takes on manganese extraction is far from objective, thanks to offering a fictitious, but uncomfortable, look at what the resulting ecosystemic decay from the work will be like in 2077. It’s a unique way of approaching the subject matter, but one that never loses sight of the fact that we are dealing with a very real, long-term crisis for which there are currently few answers.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the way our everyday use of technology impacts the planet. What harm does our use of phones, computers, and other devices pose to the environment? How does it impact things like global politics and economics? Does our use of technology help the planet in any way?
Gold Rush In The Deep Sea presents the subject of seabed manganese mining in a way that is very subjective. Does this take away from the value of the scientific information it is presenting? Should all content about the environment be unbiased? Why or why not?
TV Details
- Premiere date: February 9, 2015
- Cast: Jens Greiner, Matthias Haeckel
- Network: HBO Max
- Genre: Reality TV
- Topics: Activism
- TV rating: TV-PG
- Last updated: August 26, 2021
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