Guest editorial to the special issue deep-sea mining and environmental protection

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank all contributing authors for their valuable research and our reviewers for their insightful feedback. This Special Issue was made possible with financial support from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2024YFC2815400), the Young Taishan Scholars Program (No. TSQN202507107), the Shandong Natural Science Foundation (No. ZR2025MS647), and the European Commission (HORIZON MSCA-2024-PF-01, 101200637).

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