Question

Read the passage and answer the question. Four kilometres beneath the Pacific, potato-sized lumps called polymetallic nodules carpet the seabed, rich in cobalt, nickel and manganese that battery makers covet. Mining companies argue that harvesting these nodules is cleaner than opening new mines on land, while marine biologists warn that the abyssal plains host fragile ecosystems of sponges, corals and species found nowhere else, and that sediment plumes from collectors could smother life for kilometres around. The International Seabed Authority, which regulates mining beyond national waters, has issued exploration licences but has not yet finalised exploitation rules. Faced with this regulatory gap, a growing group of marine scientists and several Pacific island nations are calling for a temporary moratorium on deep-sea mining licences until the environmental risks are properly studied. What reform do the marine scientists described in the passage propose?