Some six billion tonnes of sand and other sediment is extracted from the world's seas and oceans every year, the UN said yesterday, warning of the devastating toll on biodiversity and coastal communities.
Launching the first ever global data platform on sediment extraction in marine environments, the United Nations Environment Programme warned the scale of dredging was growing.
"The scale of environmental impacts of shallow sea mining activities and dredging is alarming," said Pascal Peduzzi, who heads UNEP's analytics center.
He pointed to the effects on biodiversity, as well as on water turbidity, and noise impacts on marine mammals.
The new data platform uses artificial intelligence to track and monitor dredging of sand, clay, silt, gravel and rock.
It uses so-called Automatic Identification System signals for ships combined with AI to identify the operations of dredging vessels in hotspots like the North Sea and the US east coast.
The signals the ships emit allow "access to the movements of every ship on the planet" and AI makes it possible to analyse the mountains of data gathered.
That process is still in the early stages, nut Peduzzi said it is already clear these activities are "taking on gigantic proportions," he said.
