by Mine Watch on Sunday, August 22, 2010 at 5:52am
By John Bowermaster
If you think the long-term impact of the Deepwater Horizon explosion is going to be harmful on countless fronts, wait until the ocean floor is harvested for copper, nickel, gold, silver, cobalt and other minerals a mile below the surface.
If the Chinese have their way, that’s just what is about to happen in international waters in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Papua, New Guinea.
So-called “deep-sea mining” was first proposed as far back as the mid-1960s, in a book called Mineral Resources of the Seas by J.L. Mero. He described the potential as “limitless.”
Over the next 20 years, the U.S., Germany, France and others spent hundreds of millions of dollars investigating the possibilities. The Convention on the Law of the Sea created anInternational Seabed Authority to oversee potential mines. In recent years, the possibility of mining the ocean floor 4,000 to 9,000 feet below the surface has been seriously considered, especially in countries with booming populations (and thus booming resource needs).
Now China has applied for a permit.
The Chinese are willing to pay for the risky and expensive operation, and a Canadian company, Nautilus Minerals, has agreed to undertake the labor.
In some respects the effort itself is not so different from mining on land. Deposits would be mined using either hydraulic pumps or bucket systems—essentially giant conveyor belts running from the sea floor to waiting ships above.
Is a mile down really where we want to start making cracks to extract more resources?
Thanks to the BP debacle, the world now has a slightly better idea of what exactly goes on a mile below the ocean’s surface. According to the few scientists who’ve taken a look at the potential for ocean mining, there’s obvious concern. Maurice Tivey, a Woods Hole geologist, says, “It’s a unique set of life down there. Frankly, we haven’t found everything. We need to make sure we go in with our eyes wide open.”
The most likely source of riches is near inactive hydrothermal vents, which are giant cracks in the ocean floor. The vents, known as “black smokers,” are chimney-like structures, home to their own little biospheres. Nautilus has identified the waters off Papua, New Guinea as rich with gold, copper and zinc. (Diamonds are already being taken from beneath the surface off the coast of Africa, but just a few hundred feet below.)
The true costs, both monetary and environmental, are yet to be discovered. All mines create waste and these will be no different. Disrupting the ocean floor in such a major way is an unknown, as are the invariable impacts on the food chain. But damage is certain. Waters will be polluted with toxic chemicals; piles of extracted tailings will need a home; and, undoubtedly, there will be leaks. Plant and animal life around the sites will be at great risk thanks to great plumes of sediment that will result.
Right now the best answer to what to do with the mine’s waste is to return it to the site of the mine—a mile below the surface—continuing man’s awful tendency to continue to rely on “out of sight, out of mind” technology.
Back in 2006, when deep sea mining was first publicly debated, Toronto geologist Steven Scott said that concerns about the potential environmental harms were a “knee jerk reaction” and that mining below the sea could be less destructive than on land.
Today Richard Harrington of the Marine Conservation Society suggests knee-jerk may be the best reaction.
“Deep-sea mining would take this sort of damage to a new level in the wider oceans. Conditions at this depth are normally very stable and any mining damage would impact the environment for a very long time.”
After 93+ days of watching oil gush from the ocean floor due to man’s overreaching for natural resources, concerns about what goes on below the ocean’s surface seem far more real today.
Maybe the BP tragedy will teach us something after all
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