However, when the risks are huge, there is a merit to proceeding with caution.
There’s tons of prior art here when it comes to exploring new building materials, new pharmaceuticals, etc…
Everyone bitch about CO2 problem. Oh noes, we produce it so much, planet cannot absorb it... BINGO. If you cannot recycle CO2 itself, leave it to the planet, it does it very well. Unfortunately, humans pushed they industrial operation to the extreme, planet is no longer able to absorb exceed CO2. Cycle is broken, we have a problem.
The shalow thinking of people annoys me a lot. The main driver is greed, not wellbeing of humans (except tiny group of super rich of course).
Modern society is quite literally disrupting these ecosystems, and you're suggesting we should continue fucking around with them before understanding the consequences of our actions?
We don't perform medicine like we did in the 19th century, cutting undesirable people open and seeing what happens, why should we do that on ecosystems when we know better?
I for one would rather the ocean continue to produce oxygen over some owner of a deep sea mining firm get rich.
We've learned a ton in the last few decades about how interconnected and complicated ecosystems can be. Likewise we've learned that the deep ocean isn't disconnected from the surface. The two send resources, energy, and bio mass to each other.
Additionally, we are extremely reliant on the ocean in so many ways and ecological collapse of the ocean would be catastrophic for our planet.
So while yes we don't have a smoking gun that says "deep sea mining is going to destroy the planet" we are being pretty cavalier playing with things we do not understand.