Thinking about Deep Sea Mining, before the Mining.

Deep sea mining: Charting the risks of a new frontier | Environment| All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 24.01.2018

The Earth's oceans hide vast amounts of valuable minerals and metals, and as some onshore deposits run low, mining companies are looking for ways to make deep sea mining both technologically possible and profitable. This is partly driven by the need for so-called rare earth metals to produce the magnets, batteries and microchips driving our gadgets, electric cars and wind turbines.

 From article, (The Earth's oceans hide vast amounts of valuable minerals and metals, and as some onshore deposits run low, mining companies are looking for ways to make deep sea mining both technologically possible and profitable.

This is partly driven by the need for so-called rare earth metals to produce the magnets, batteries and microchips driving our gadgets, electric cars and wind turbines.

"New technologies have initiated the new gold rush," says Andrea Koschinsky, a professor of geoscience at Jacobs University in the northern German city of Bremen.

"Many of the new technologies — for example magnets of the wind turbines — need tons and tons and tons of rare earth elements."

Some deep sea mining machines have already been built, and many countries have bought permits for deep sea mineral prospecting in a massive 1.2 million-square-kilometer (463,322-square-mile) area of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Until now, deep sea mining has been hampered by high costs and technological challenges. The most feasible method would be to harvest so-called nodules — potato-shaped rocks made of manganese oxide — from the flat sea floor some 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) down.

These could simply be picked up by specialized machinery, before being brought to the surface to be processed."It is still associated with high cost in the beginning, but once these investments have been made — and some prototypes of well-functioning machines exist — I think it should be possible from both technological and financial sides," Koschinsky says.

Because of the warmer waters forming around these structures, they can be home to complex ecosystems. Yet Koschinsky is less worried about the possible impact on these areas from mining operations.

"These organisms are adapted to relatively quick and drastic changes," she says.

"They live in a toxic environment anyway," she explains. Such systems are frequently hit by volcanic eruptions, and then a new vent system comes up. "So they can probably recover relatively quickly.)

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