James Ireland/Western Leader Cindy Baxter, left, is the chairwoman for Kiwis Against Seabed Mining. Seabed mining involves dragging huge machines across the seafloor, sucking up sediment onto a ship where large magnets separate out the ten percent of minerals, then dumping the remaining 90 percent back into the ocean. Some of that sediment goes back to the seafloor, but models show a lot drifts much further, smothering sea life, distant reefs and coral. This proposed seabed mine would be the first of its kind anywhere in the world. They simply don’t know the extent of the effect it would have on the ocean, whatever Mr Eggers may say.