Many Leagues Under The Sea

Proponents see glistening future in seabed mining, but environmentalists fret.

- Megan Van Wyngaardt

With the current known mineral deposits on land increasingly being depleted globally, necessitating greater exploration, interest in deep-sea minerals is growing as mining companies look for future sources to exploit.

“The ocean is where future resources exist,” India Council of Scientific and Industrial Research National Institute of Oceanography chief scientist Dr Rahul Sharma said at South Africa’s Council for Geoscience Annual Conference 2017, earlier this month.

Sharma highlighted that minerals from the deep seafloor, such as polymetallic nodules, ferromanganese crusts and hydro thermal sulphides, are potential sources of millions of tonnes of metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese and iron.

He highlighted that, with up to 0.358-million tonnes of metals mine able a year, with a value of about $963-million, or $18.73-billion, in 20 years, seabed mining was an attractive mining method.

Exploration licences have been acquired from the International Seabed Authority under the United Nations (UN) Law of the Sea over large tracts of the seafloor in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans in areas beyond traditional national jurisdictions.

Sharma noted that the research and development of technology for environmental studies and mining and exploration were also well under way in preparation for eventual deep-sea mining projects.

Until 2010, only eight contractors had been allotted areas for exploration in international waters by intergovernmental body the Interoceanmetal Joint Organisation, established in 1987 with the objective of exploring, prospecting and exploiting polymetallic nodules in accordance with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.