Parents' Guide to

Gold Rush in the Deep Sea

By Melissa Camacho, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 12+

Unique docu raises big questions about ocean mining impact.

TV Max Reality TV 2015
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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.

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