Seabed: The New Frontier Seminar · Seabed: The new frontier. Exploration and exploitation of deep seabed mineral resources in the Area: Challenges for the International Community

Seminar

Seabed: The new frontierExploration and exploitation of deep seabed mineral resources in the Area:Challenges for the InternationalCommunity

Seminario

Los fondos marinos: la nueva fronteraExploración y explotación de los recursosminerales de los fondos marinos profundosde la Zona: retos para la ComunidadInternacional

Madrid, February 24- 26, 2010Madrid, 24 al 26 de febrero, 2010

Prog. Fondos marinos FINAL:Programa de mano 17/2/10 11:16 Pági

Seabed: The new frontier.Exploration and exploitation of deepseabed mineral resources in the Area:Challenges for the InternationalCommunity

Organized by:

Fundación Ramón Areces.International Seabed Authority.

The collaboration of the:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs andCooperation.

Ministry of Science and Innovation(Geological Survey of Spain).

Los fondos marinos: la nueva frontera.Exploración y explotación de losrecursos minerales de los fondosmarinos profundos de la Zona: retospara la Comunidad Internacional

Organizado por:

Fundación Ramón Areces.Autoridad Internacional de los Fondos Marinos.

Con la colaboración de:

Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores yCooperación. Ministerio de Cienciae Innovación (Instituto Geológico y

Minero de España).


INTRODUCTION

The Ramón Areces Foundation in collaboration with theInternational Seabed Authority (ISBA) and the Ministries ofForeign Affairs and Cooperation, and Science andInnovation, welcomes in this Seminar the actors involved inthe exploration and exploitation of the mineral resources ofthe deep seabed, to analyze the future challenges facing theinternational community.

The deep seabed area beyond the limits of nationaljurisdiction of coastal states, called "the Zone", covers no lessthan 260 millions of square kilometres, a figure three timesthe whole sum of all marine jurisdiction of every country inthe world, and which has hardly been exploited. However,there is consensus in the scientific community about thepotential exploitation of these resources, witch areconsidered “Common Heritage of Mankind” and regulatedby the ISBA, the International Seabed Authority (anintergovernmental body established by the United NationsConvention of the Law of the Sea and based in Jamaica), asa new horizon of economic investment.

The mineral resources that may be found in seabedincludes oil, natural gas, gas hydrates, manganese nodules,cobalt-rich crusts, massive sulphides rich in iron, zinc,nickel, gold or copper, aggregates and placer deposits rich intitanium, rare earths, tin, gold and diamonds. If we alsoinclude the biomineralisation as a potential source ofpharmaceutical products, it is clear that the extraction ofthese elements and components is of high interest.

The size and value of these resources are poorlyunderstood, as research in marine resources has been limitedand the development of marine mining slow. But the current


oscillation of the global market underscores the importanceof expanding the framework of knowledge of the seabed, asa key to the study of economic feasability of the exploitationof mineral resources and the development of newtechnologies and business activities.

Spain is a traditional maritime power that has a particularresponsibility in promoting scientific research in marinegeology and exploration of the deep ocean in coordinationwith developing countries promoting in this way theirinfrastructure through combined projects.

The Marine Geology Division of the Geological Surveyof Spain (in Spanish: Instituto Geológico y Minero deEspaña, IGME) has led the scientific research that supportsthe expansion of the Spanish outer continental shelf inCantabria, Galicia and Canary Islands. This has meant anenlargement of the Cantabric Sea of about 78,000 squarekilometres.

This seminar will review the current situation and theexperiences of other countries in this area. To Spain it offersan excellent opportunity to sensitize the scientificcommunity and public opinion on the need facing ourcountry to have more involvement and activity in a sectorwhich represents a “new frontier” for the scientificknowledge and also for the future strategic interests of theglobal economy.


INTRODUCCIÓN

La Fundación Ramón Areces, en colaboración con la AutoridadInternacional para los Fondos Marinos (ISBA) y los Ministerios deAsuntos Exteriores y Cooperación (MAEC) y de Ciencia eInnovación (MICINN), reúne en este Seminario a los agentesimplicados en la exploración y explotación de los recursos mineralesde los fondos marinos profundos, con objeto de analizar los retos defuturo a los que se enfrenta la comunidad internacional.

El área de los fondos oceánicos fuera de la jurisdicción de losestados costeros, denominada “la Zona”, abarca nada menos que260 millones de kilómetros cuadrados. Una cifra tres vecessuperior a la suma de las jurisdicciones marinas de todos lospaíses del mundo, y que apenas ha sido explorada. No obstante,existe un consenso entre la comunidad científica sobre elpotencial que ofrece la exploración de estos recursos, considerados“patrimonio común de la Humanidad y regulados por la ISBA,la Autoridad Internacional de los Fondos Marinos (organismocreado por la Convención de Naciones Unidas de Derecho delMar, con sede en Jamaica), como un nuevo horizonte deinversión económica.

Entre los recursos minerales que pueden encontrarse seincluyen el petróleo, el gas natural, los hidratos de gas, losnódulos de manganeso, las costras ricas en cobalto, los sulfurosmasivos ricos en hierro, zinc, níquel, oro o cobre, los áridos, y losyacimientos tipo placeres ricos en titanio, tierras raras, estaño,oro y diamantes. Si a estos recursos, se suman lasbiomineralizaciones con posibilidades como fuente de productosfarmacéuticos, resulta evidente que la extracción de estoselementos y componentes, pueda ser de gran interés.

El tamaño y el valor de dichos recursos son poco conocidos,dado que la investigación en recursos marinos ha sido escasa y el


desarrollo de la minería marina lento. Pero la actual oscilacióndel mercado mundial pone en relieve la importancia de ampliarel marco de conocimiento del lecho marino, como clave para elestudio de la viabilidad económica en la explotación de recursosminerales y en el desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías y actividadesempresariales.

España, tradicional potencia marítima, tiene una especialresponsabilidad en el fomento de la investigación científica engeología marina y en la exploración de los fondos oceánicosprofundos en coordinación con países en vía de desarrollo,impulsando su infraestructura a través de proyectos conjuntos.

El equipo de geología marina del IGME ha liderado lasinvestigaciones científicas que avalan la ampliación de laplataforma continental española en Cantabria, Galicia yCanarias, que ha supuesto ya una ampliación en el MarCantábrico de 78.000 km2.

Este seminario analizará la situación actual y lasexperiencias de otros países en la materia. Para España ofreceuna oportunidad inmejorable de concienciar a la comunidadcientífica y a la opinión pública en general sobre la necesidad deque nuestro país tenga un mayor protagonismo y actividad en unsector que representa una “nueva frontera” para el conocimientocientífico y para los intereses estratégicos futuros de la economíamundial.


PROGRAM / PROGRAMA

SEDE / PLACE

Salón de ActosFundación Ramón ArecesVitruvio nº 5. 28006 Madrid.

Wednesday / Miércoles, 24

09.45 h Welcoming remarks / Bienvenida:Presentación

H.E. Raimundo Pérez-Hernández y TorraDirector of Fundación Ramón Areces. Spain.Director de la Fundación Ramón Areces.España.

Prof. Federico Mayor ZaragozaChairman of the Scientific Council.Fundación Ramón Areces. Spain.Presidente del Consejo Científico.Fundación Ramón Areces. España.

H.E. Nii Allotey OduntonSecretary-General. International SeabedAuthority.Secretario General de la AutoridadInternacional para los Fondos Marinos.

H.E. Ambassador Jesús SilvaPermanent Representative of Spain toInternational Seabed Authority.Representante Permanente de España antela Autoridad Internacional de los FondosMarinos.

H.E. Ángel LossadaSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Spain.Secretario de Estado de Asuntos Exteriores.España.

10.45 h Break / Descanso


SESSION 1: THE DEEP SEABED AND ITSINTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORK ANDREGULATIONSSESIÓN 1: EL LECHO MARINO PROFUN-DO: MARCO INTERNACIONAL YREGULACIÓN

11.15 h Contents and achievements of the1982 United Nations Convention onthe Law of the SeaContenidos y logros de la Convenciónde las Naciones Unidas sobre elDerecho del Mar (1982)

H.E. Satya N. Nandan Former Secretary-General InternationalSeabed Authority and Chairman of theWestern and Central Pacific FisheriesCommission.

12.00 h The International Seabed Authority:Role, functions and organsLa Autoridad Internacional para losFondos Marinos: papel, funciones yórganos

H.E. Nii Allotey Odunton

12.45 h The International Tribunal for the Lawof the SeaTribunal Internacional de la Ley del Mar

Judge José Luis Jesus President of the International Tribunal forthe Law of the Sea.


16.00 h Mineral Resources of the Area: Types,distribution and the role of marinescientific research in their discoveryRecursos Minerales de la Zona: tipos,distribución y el papel de lainvestigación científica marina en sudescubrimiento

Dr. Charles Morgan Planning Solutions Inc. Honolulu. Hawaii.USA.



17.15 h The Legal framework for activities inthe Area: Prospecting and explorationfor polymetallic nodules and othermineral resourcesMarco Legal de las actividades en laZona: prospección y exploración denódulos polimetálicos y otros recursosminerales

Mr. Michael LodgeLegal Counsel, International SeabedAuthority.

18.00 h Plenary discussions / Plenario

19.00 h Cocktail receptions / Cóctel debienvenida

Thursday / Jueves, 25

SESSION 2: INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIESIN THE DEEP SEABEDSESIÓN 2: ACTIVIDADESINTERNACIONALES EN EL LECHOPROFUNDO

09.15 h Prospects for the development ofpolymetallic sulphides deposits in theAreaPerspectivas para el desarrollo dedepósitos de sulfuros polimetálicos enla Zona

Dr. Gregory Cherkashov VNIII Okeanologia (Institute for Geologyand Mineral Resources of the Ocean). St.Petersburg. Russia.


10.00 h Prospecting and exploration forcobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts inthe AreaLa prospección y exploración decortezas de ferromanganeso ricas encobalto en la Zona

Dr. James E. Hein United States Geological Survey. USA.


11.15 h Protection and preservation of themarine environment from Activities inthe Area: Considerations in respect ofpolymetallic SulphidesProtección y preservación del medioambiente marino de las actividades en la Zona: consideraciones respecto a los sulfuros polimetálicos

Dr. S. Kim Juniper BC Leadership Chair in Ocean Ecosystemsand Global Change School of Earth &Ocean Sciences and Department ofBiology. University of Victoria. BritishColumbia. Canada.

12.00 h Promotion and encouragement ofmarine scientific research in the Area-The Authority’s Endowment FundPromoción y fomento de lainvestigación científica marina en laZona-Dotación de la Autoridad delFondo

Dr. Lindsay Parson Southampton Oceanography Centre. UK.


12.45 h The activities of Brazil in relation todeep seabed mineral resourcedevelopmentLas actividades de Brasil en relacióncon el desarrollo de los recursosminerales de los fondos marinosprofundos

Dr. Kaiser Gonçalves de Souza Head Division of Marine Geology.Geological Survey of Brazil.

13.30 h The activities of Interoceanmetal JointOrganization in relation to deepseabed mineral resource development

Las actividades de la OrganizaciónInteroceanmetal Joint en relación conel desarrollo de los recursos mineralesde los fondos marinos profundos

Prof. R. KotlinskiDirector-General. IOM. Szczecin. Poland.


16.00 h The activities of Germany in relationto deep seabed mineral resourcedevelopmentLas actividades de Alemania enrelación con el desarrollo de losrecursos minerales de los fondosmarinos profundos

Dr. Peter Herzig Director Leibniz Institut fürMeereswisseschaften. Kiel. Germany.

16.45 h Plenary discussions / Plenario


Friday / Viernes, 26

SESSION 3: SPAIN’S INVOLVEMENT INTHE DEEP SEABEDSESIÓN 3: LA PARTICIPACIÓN DE ESPAÑAEN LOS FONDOS MARINOS PROFUNDOS

09.15 h Geoscientific infrastructure andrelated offshore mineral research inSpain. Experience from IGME(Geological Survey of Spain)Infraestructura geocientífica y lainvestigación relacionada conminerales marinos en España. Laexperiencia del IGME (InstitutoGeológico y Minero de España)

Dr. Luis SomozaIGME, Instituto Geológico y Minero deEspaña. Spain.

10.00 h Marine scientific research in Spain.Perspective from the Spanish NationalResearch Council (CSIC)La investigación científica marina enEspaña. Perspectivas del ConsejoSuperior de Investigaciones Científicas(CSIC)

Dr. Juan José DañobeitíaConsejo Superior de InvestigacionesCientíficas (CSIC). Spain.


11.15 h R+D activities of the SpanishOceanographic Institute, with specialreference to seabed studiesActividades de I + D del InstitutoEspañol de Oceanografía, con especialreferencia a los estudios de los fondosmarinos

Dr. Juan Acosta and Dr. José Luis Sanz IEO (Spanish Oceanographic Institute).Spain.


12.00 h Roundtable: Participation of theSpanish private sector in the deepseabed activitiesMesa Redonda: La participación delsector privado español en lasactividades de los fondos marinosprofundos

Representatives of Spanish companies Representantes de empresas españolas

Moderators / Moderadores:Dr. José Pedro Calvo Director General del Instituto Geológico yMinero de España (IGME). Spain.

H.E. Ambassador Rafael Conde Director General de RelacionesEconómicas Internacionales.Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores yCooperación. Spain.

13.00 h Closing Remarks and Summary ofdiscussionsSesión de clausura y resumen de losdebates

Mr. Michael LodgeLegal Counsel, International SeabedAuthority.

Dr. José Pedro CalvoH.E. Ambassador Rafael Conde

14.00 h Farewell / Despedida

H.E. Ambassador Jesús SilvaH.E. Raimundo Pérez-Hernández y Torra

Throughout the Symposium there will besimultaneous interpretationEl Simposio se realizará con interpretaciónsimultánea


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Vitruvio, 528006 MadridTel. 91 515 89 80


Seabed: The New Frontier

MINERAL RESOURCES OF THE AREA: TYPES, DISTRIBUTION

AND THE ROLE OF MARINE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN

THEIR DISCOVERY

PREPARED FOR:

PREPARED BY:

DR. CHARLES L. MORGAN CHAIRMAN, UNDERWATER MINING INSTITUTE

WWW.UNDERWATERMINING.ORG

FEBRUARY 2010

MINERAL RESOURCES OF THE AREA

PAGE i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................................... 1

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 1

NEED FOR MARINE MINERALS ................................................................................................... 2

MARINE MINERALS ARE IMPORTANT SOURCES OF SUPPLY ........................................... 4 AGGEGRATE DEPOSITS ................................................................................................................................. 5 PLACER DEPOSITS ........................................................................................................................................ 5 PHOSPHATE DEPOSITS .................................................................................................................................. 5 FERROMANGANESE DEPOSITS ...................................................................................................................... 5 METHANE HYDRATES ................................................................................................................................... 6 HYDROTHERMAL SULFIDE DEPOSITS ........................................................................................................... 6

THE TECHNOLOGY IS IN PLACE ................................................................................................. 7 EXPLORATION SYSTEMS ............................................................................................................................... 7 SEABED PICKUP SYSTEM, ORE LIFT SYSTEM, AND MINING SHIP ................................................................. 8 METALLURGICAL PROCESSING ..................................................................................................................... 8 ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND MONITORING .......................................................................................... 9

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ARE SIMILAR TO LAND MINES ......................................... 11 THE ENVIRONMENTAL CURSE OF MARINE DEVELOPMENTS ....................................................................... 11 THE ENVIRONMENTAL BLESSING OF MARINE DEVELOPMENTS .................................................................. 11 THE MIDDLE ROAD .................................................................................................................................... 11

WE NEED GOOD POLICIES AND REGULATIONS .................................................................. 12 COMPLETION OF PROGRAMMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STUDIES ...................................................... 12 COMPLETION OF DOMESTIC REGULATIONS ................................................................................................ 13 ENGAGEMENT WITH THE INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY (ISA) ...................................................... 13

SUMMARY REMARKS ................................................................................................................... 13

CITED REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 14


PAGE 1

ABSTRACT Despite the recent worldwide economic recession, metal prices are now well above levels that existed before the recession began. Generally, the number of mines has decreased over the past decade, while the consumption of metals has steadily increased, due primarily to the ongoing rapid development in Asia. The world oceans comprise two-thirds of the globe, but mineral exploration and mining in this vast area has to date been minimal. The time is ripe for the large-scale development of marine minerals, and they are poised to become in the near future significant sources of supply for base and precious mineral commodities.

The technology for delivering marine minerals to world industries is in place. The recent advances in offshore oil development, information science, and other areas make it possible now to deliver the necessary power and control to realize efficient seabed mineral extraction with modest investment in research and development. The highly effective remotely operated and autonomous oceanographic survey systems currently in use and under development for marine research are now being applied with only minor modification to the cost-effective prospecting for and quantitative delineation of seabed mineral resources.

Though all environmental impacts are site specific, there are good reasons to believe that, in general, environmental impacts of marine mineral development are generally the same as or less than land developments. The critical need for the prudent and productive development of marine minerals is the establishment of rational policies and regulations that can encourage this development with clear and consistent environmental controls.

INTRODUCTION Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this very important conference devoted to state of development of mineral resources in the international seabed Area. I have been asked to summarize the general topic of what and where marine minerals are and the status of our ability to go and get them. The following sections address four specific topics. They are:

1. Need for Marine Minerals: Simply put, we are running out of minerals to support worldwide industrial development, and the seabed must be considered to supply the ever widening gap between land-base supplies and demand for base and precious metals.

2. Resources: Seabed mineral deposits are significant and could contribute a major fraction of the global supply for base and precious metals.

3. Technology: The technology is in place for large-scale marine minerals development, including the oceanographic research tools to find and delineate the deposits and the engineering knowhow to extract the commodities of interest and provide them to world markets.

4. Policies and Regulation: The deposits are there and the technology exists to discover and recover them. The critical missing element is clear and consistent policies and regulations that do not discriminate against marine deposits in favor of land deposits.


PAGE 2

NEED FOR MARINE MINERALS While it may be obvious to most people that metals are fundamental components of modern society worldwide, it is far from clear how governments and private industry should deal with the current situation of rapidly increasing demands for them and ever-shrinking supplies. As shown in Figure 1, the number of new mines starting production peaked in the middle of the Twentieth Century and has been decreasing dramatically since the 1960’s. Part of this trend can be explained by the fact that newer mines are generally larger than older mines, but the implications of this graphic are unmistakable; we are running out of minerals on land.

Figure 1 Number of New Mines per Decade

1800 1850 1900 1950 2000Year

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

New

Min

es p

er D

ecad

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Source: U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Resources Data System

Highly respected professionals make the case for maximizing recycling and efficiency to address this trend. For example, Prof. Friedrich-Wilhelm Wellmer and his colleagues (Wellmer and Becker-Platen 2007) describe the concept of sustainable development of minerals as the inclusion of: (1) efficiency of use, (2) maximization of recycling efforts, (3) minimization of energy requirements, and (4) comprehensive inclusion of environmental impacts in any evaluation of minerals development.

Though efficient utilization and recycling can help the situation, it is clear (e.g. see Morely 2008), that the accelerating industrial development of India, China, (see Figure 2) and other former “third-world” countries is placing increasing demands on the existing supplies of minerals that cannot be met by any foreseen enhancement of substitutions, efficiencies and recycling. In addition, the appeal to free-market forces to solve these problems becomes questionable when significant portions of


PAGE 3

mineral production and consumption are under the control of planned economies (e.g. McCartan 2006).

Figure 2 Gross Domestic Product of China, 1950 - 2009

1,950

1,960

1,970

1,980

1,990

2,000

2,010

YEAR

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

Gro

ss D

omes

tic P

rodu

ct (R

MB

)

Source: http://www.chinability.com/GDP.htm

As shown in Figure 3, the recent worldwide recession depressed metal prices significantly, but even

Figure 3 Copper Prices, 2000 - 2009

Year

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Cu

($U

S/k

g)

20022000 2004 2006 2008 2010

Source: Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics


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at its lowest point last year, copper prices were still 50% higher than levels before 2004. Currently, prices are back up to the unprecedented levels reached before the recession.

An ironic parallel with the situation in minerals supply and demand can be seen in the current ideas about energy policy put forth by the political parties in the U.S. The liberals complain that the oil companies should be exploiting the offshore and onshore areas they already have under lease and that the government should maintain the existing bans on offshore drilling and concentrate on the development of alternative energy supplies. The conservatives want to open every potential puddle of hydrocarbons to exploitation and let the free market develop alternate energy without government subsidy or interference.

I am a member of the U.S. Department of the Interior Outer Continental Shelf Policy Committee that provides independent advice to the Minerals Management Service in its regulation of offshore oil development. I can report that, during our meeting in December 2008, there was an almost unanimous consensus that both the liberals and conservatives have it part right and part wrong. The energy crisis is so severe that industrial countries must support extensive government-sponsored subsidy and incentive programs to develop alternative energies, while at the same time opening every reasonable avenue for development of domestic fossil fuel supplies. If we do not move decisively in both of these areas, the economic security of the large energy consuming countries will face a constantly increasing threat.

Though not as visible to the average world citizen, a similar situation exists with respect to hard mineral resources, and it calls for a similar solution. While fostering more efficient use, increased substitution, and greater recycling, it is also vital that we develop all possible sources of minerals, including marine minerals. Accordingly, governments should foster reasonable and environmentally sensitive access to the marine mineral resources under their jurisdiction while also supporting incentives that encourage commercial development of marine minerals, including prudent research programs aimed at removing technical impediments to development.

MARINE MINERALS ARE IMPORTANT SOURCES OF SUPPLY A comprehensive review of the current knowledge concerning marine minerals occurrence is well beyond the scope of this paper. The simple fact that the oceans constitute about two-thirds of the globe suggests the importance of marine minerals to the overall Earth inventory. Because about 60% of the ocean surface (and 40% of the entire Earth’s surface) overlie waters at least 2,500 m deep (Sverdrup, Johnson and Fleming 1942), it is reasonable to suggest that deep ocean minerals alone could contribute significantly to the planet’s potentially exploitable resources. Human efforts to recover minerals have throughout history concentrated almost exclusively on land-based resources, so it is further not unreasonable to postulate that marine minerals might offer better prospects for future mineral supplies than land prospects.

Comprehensive assessment of marine mineral resources have been completed for the Southwest Pacific Region (Okamoto 2006), offshore Australia (McKay et al. 2006), the offshore United States (OTA 1987), and probably for other regions not known to the author. Currently, we know of at least six separate categories of marine minerals:

1. Aggegrate sand and gravel deposits;

2. Placer deposits of relatively high value minerals (gold, diamonds, tin, etc) hosted in aggegrates;

3. Biogenically derived phosphate deposits;

4. Sediment-hosted (manganese nodules) and hard-rock hosted (ferromanganese crusts) ferromanganese oxide deposits;

5. Sediment-hosted methane hydrate deposits; and


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6. Hydrothermally derived sulfide deposits of copper, gold, nickel, zinc, and other metals.

The following passages briefly describe these six types of marine minerals and note their potential relevance as sources of future minerals for modern society.

AGGEGRATE DEPOSITS These consist of unconsolidated products of erosion, entrainment in runoff, and size classification by currents and waves. Aggregates currently comprise important sources of industrial gravels and sands for structural fill, concrete and other applications for coastal nations worldwide. Japan has a well-developed offshore aggregate industry (Arita 2007), as does Europe (Singleton 2004) and the U.S. (Finkl et al. 2005). China (Li and Xu 2007) is actively surveying nine distinct regions associated with coastal centers and will likely begin commercial operations in one or more of these within the next few years.

PLACER DEPOSITS Placer deposits, both at coastal and upland settings, have been exploited throughout history to recover concentrations of heavy minerals (e.g. ilmenite, gold, silver, platinum, tin oxides and others). Of great interest in recent years are the southwestern Africa operations currently recovering diamonds using unique, state of the art systems in settings ranging from within the zone of breaking waves to seabed areas in water depths deeper than 75 m (e.g. Goodden 2007; Bluck, Ward and Dewit 2004). Some of these operations have proved to be very successful and presently provide a substantial percentage of the world supply of jewelry-grade diamonds.

PHOSPHATE DEPOSITS Marine phosphate deposits occur as muds, sands, nodules, plates, and crusts in seabed deposits lying under coastal upwelling zones, where the resultant high biological activity caused by the upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water leads to the deposition of the phosphate-rich deposits. Substantial quantities have been found off the U.S. east and west coasts (OTA 1987), but no commercial recovery has occurred to date.

FERROMANGANESE DEPOSITS Ferromanganese oxide deposits occur on the seafloor in many low-sedimentation environments, where they precipitate, either directly from seawater, or through various bio-geochemical intermediaries. Deposits on hard-rock substrates form laminar crusts; deposits on sediment substrates form discrete nodules that are susceptible to being over-turned episodically. The manganese oxides in these deposits are effective chemical scavengers that capture many metals, removing them from solution. This results in large marine ferromanganese deposits that are highly enriched in nickel, copper, cobalt and other metals.

The manganese nodule deposits in the Clarion-Clipperton region of the northeastern tropical Pacific (5˚ - 20˚ N; 110˚ - 160˚ W) have been extensively explored by commercial and research interests and are known to contain large quantities of manganese (>7.3 X 109 metric tons), nickel (>3.4 X 108 mt), copper (>2.9 X 108 mt) and cobalt (>5.8 X 107 mt) (ISA 2010). Smaller but still significant deposits occur in the Indian Ocean.

Exclusive exploration rights to portions of these deposits have been granted by the International Seabed Authority under the authority of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty to Contractors from Japan, Korea, China, India, France, Russia, Germany and a consortium of Eastern European countries and Cuba. The commercial viability of mining these deposits has yet to be demonstrated, but the sheer size of the resource continues to motivate these Contractors to retain their exclusive rights (Kudrass et al. 2006). In addition, a recent workshop sponsored by the International Seabed


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Authority (ISA 2008) concluded that, based on the most recent economic models available, mining of these deposits could generate an internal rate of return of between 15% - 38%.

The crust deposits of potential commercial interest occur around the summits of large guyots on flat or gradually inclined surfaces, such as summit platforms, terraces, and saddles (Hein, Usui and Dunham 2007). Deposits have been found in marine environments worldwide and are persistent features of seamounts in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean (Usui et al. 2007a). In addition to the metals, manganese, nickel, copper, and cobalt, some crust deposits host enriched concentrations (to ~ 1 part per million) of platinum group elements (Usui et. al. 2007b) and other rare metals and rare earth elements, such as titanium, cerium, molybdenum, and tellurium (Hein 2004). The International Seabed Authority is currently drafting exploration regulations to administer potential commercial exploration for these deposits.

METHANE HYDRATES Methane hydrates form naturally in sedimentary deposits at ocean depths of 500 m or more. They are a chemical phenomenon that occurs as methane gas escapes from reducing organic materials within the sediments and is trapped in stable clathrate mixtures of water and gas. Seabed methane hydrates may represent an enormous untapped energy resource. Estimates of the total volume of methane gas locked in hydrate deposits worldwide range widely from about 105 trillion standard cubic feet (TCF) to 108 TCF. Even at the lower end of this range, the energy contained in the methane hydrate resource exceeds that of all known coal, oil, and natural gas reserves. If the extraction technology can be perfected, then methane hydrates may play a major role in meeting the world's future energy needs (HNEI 2008).

Methane hydrates off the coast of Japan have the potential to supply the nation's natural gas needs for decades (JOGMEC 2008). In June of this year the Japan Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Akira Amari, and the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, agreed to cooperate in pursuing the commercial use of methane hydrates (Jiji Press 2008). Over the next three years, the two countries will promote exchanges of researchers and sharing of information and technology.

HYDROTHERMAL SULFIDE DEPOSITS From a commercial point of view, possibly the most interesting types of seabed metal deposits at this time are the hydrothermal massive sulfide deposits. Scientists have understood for many years that the marine deposits are newly forming examples of ore-forming processes that have culminated in some of the most important and commercially successful land deposits of copper, zinc, lead, silver and gold. Studies of the land deposits have guided exploration efforts for the marine deposits, and the studies of the marine deposits have elucidated many aspects of ore formation that led to the accumulation of the land deposits (e.g. Scott 2006; Binns, McConachy, and Yeats 2006; Hannington et al. 2006; Melekestseva et al. 2007). The metals available from these resources, specifically copper and gold, are currently in great demand and likely to remain so for the near future (Yamazaki 2005).

Much of the excitement about this deposit type currently stems from the Nautilus Minerals, Inc. venture that plans to mine deposits within the Territorial Waters of Papua New Guinea. Nautilus plans to begin commercial extraction of their Solwara 1 deposit in the third quarter of 2010. Independent assays of this deposit document an “indicated” ore body of at least 870,000 metric tons of ore with the following average grades: Cu: 6.8%, Au: 4.8 g/t, Ag, 23 g/t, and Zn, 0.4% (Golder Associates 2008). As discussed below, Nautilus has assembled the technology and expertise that may well succeed in successful commercial mining of this deposit.

The implications of the Nautilus effort, if it is successful in the near term, are potentially major for marine mining in particular and world mining in general (Yamazaki 2007). Marine hydrothermal deposits are widespread in the world’s oceans, and could potentially supply a major fraction of the demands for copper, zinc, gold, silver, and other metals. Japanese scientists have identified several


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major deposits in the Izu-Ogasawara oceanic island arc south of Tokyo (Iizasa 2002), and continuing expeditions to these sites suggest significant mineral accumulations (Iizasa et al. 2006; Iizasa 2007; Urabe et al. 2007). Other promising sites have been identified worldwide (e.g. Cherkashov 2005; Cherkashov et al. 2007; Okamoto et al. 2002; Halbach et al. 2002; Peterson et al. 2007; Koski and Tormanen 2001).

THE TECHNOLOGY IS IN PLACE In 1975, as a recent graduate entering the Lockheed ocean mining program fresh out of academia, I was in awe at the technology on display and in development. In retrospect, we were probably not ready for the challenges of deep seabed mining. For example, accurate navigation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was severely limited by the sparsity of navigation satellites, which passed overhead on average once every five hours. The communications link with our seabed mining test vehicle consisted of more than twenty copper wires bundled into a large, unwieldy umbilical that carried low-resolution analog video and other signals. Our computers still used 80-column punch cards. The first “mini-computers,” which were the size of large washing machines, were still five years from being commercially available.

In contrast, thanks primarily to the engineering developments made by the offshore oil industry and the computer-science advances that have revolutionized much of modern society, the technology is in place for most of the tasks of deep seabed mining.

The objective here is not to provide a general status update regarding marine minerals technology, but simply to demonstrate, using the best example available to date, that the technology is in place and ready to go. The following passages briefly describe the key technological components that are required for seabed mining and the status of their development by Nautilus Minerals. They include:

1. The exploration systems,

2. The seabed pick-up system,

3. The ore lift system,

4. The mining ship, and

5. The metallurgical processing systems.

It is important to acknowledge the support for this section provided by Mr. Michael Johnston, Vice President of Corporate Development of Nautilus Minerals. Mike kindly provided much of the information and materials that have made these descriptions authoritative.

One other area of great importance to the development of seabed mining is the capability to assess the physical and biological resources in the areas impacted by mining operations and to monitor the operations to ensure that these resources are protected. As discussed below, marine scientific research has in recent years significantly advanced the state of the art of marine survey capabilities and the development of understanding of how marine biological systems work.

EXPLORATION SYSTEMS The three challenges of any mineral exploration program are: (1) knowing where to look; (2) knowing how to spot likely mineral deposits; and (3) quantifying the value of the deposit once it is found. As noted above, the search for marine hydrothermal sulfides has greatly benefited from the knowledge about land-based deposits, and academic researchers, bent on confirming their hypotheses about how these deposits form, made the original discoveries of the initial mining targets for Nautilus. Since that time, Nautilus has used the expertise of these scientists in their effort to obtain exclusive exploration rights to several sites in the South Pacific.


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Since these original discoveries, Nautilus, aided by many talented consultants, has developed some sophisticated tools for accomplishing the second challenge by efficiently using proprietary acoustic, electromagnetic, and geochemical remote sensing techniques. Willaimson & Associates, Inc. developed key acoustic and electromagnetic systems in this effort and, according to its president, Michael Willaimson, it is able to “…locate, characterize and verify massive sulfide deposits with potential as mine sites within the tenements held by Nautilus …” (Roberts 2007).

Williamson’s claims must have some basis, since Nautilus and its affiliates are presently in the process of systematically mapping all of their exploration tenements using the system. This task is also aided by a well-developed technique used by academic researchers to find active seabed hydrothermal systems. Such systems produce metal-rich (particularly Mn) plumes of hot water that disperse widely and that can be detected using towed sensor systems and confirmed by ship-board analysis of water samples.

“Rocks in the box or no ship through the locks” is an old marine miners’ adage about the necessity of recovering and assaying representative samples of the minerals being sought before substantial investments can be made in developing the resource. In the case of hydrothermal sulfide deposits, the key is to obtain representative samples in all three dimensions of the ore body. To this end, Nautilus is heavily dependent on technology originally developed for the oil industry, i.e. remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). These systems are capable of extended deployment on the seafloor, operation of powered systems on the seabed, and highly developed surface-controlled communications and control systems. A well-known developer of ROVs for the oil industry, Perry Slingsby Systems, Inc., has developed a dedicated system that is currently being used to obtain the essential ground-truth drill cores from the Nautilus deposits (Spencer 2007).

SEABED PICKUP SYSTEM, ORE LIFT SYSTEM, AND MINING SHIP Nautilus has retained the British company Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd. (SMD) to design and build the seabed system that will extract the ore from the seabed deposit and deliver it to the lift system. SMD is a world leader in design and manufacture of complex marine excavation systems for the Energy, Telecom and Mining industries. On April 3, 2008, Nautilus awarded a contract to Technip USA Inc. to provide engineering procurement and construction management to design and build the ore lift system. On June 20, 2008 Nautilus announced that it has entered into a binding agreement with North Sea Shipping Holding AS to provide the specialized Mining Support Vessel for their initial commercial recovery system. North Sea Shipping is a leading Norwegian ship owner and operator in the offshore oil and gas industry.

The pace of development for these major components of the mining operation was reduced significantly during the last year due to the obvious negative impacts of the worldwide economic recession. However, Nautilus has in this economic downturn continued to pursue an aggressive exploration program. To date (February 2010), Nautilus has discovered at least 18 potentially commercial deposits of copper, gold and other metals within the Territorial Sea of Papua New Guinea and several prospects within the Exclusive Economic Zones of other Pacific nations (Nautilus 2010).

Thus, all of these systems are firmly based on existing technology developed primarily for the offshore oil industry. By using these contractors with proven records of accomplishment, Nautilus is avoiding many of the risks that would otherwise have to be confronted by this pioneering venture.

METALLURGICAL PROCESSING A very attractive feature of the hydrothermal sulfide deposits is their long history of use in land-based mining. For most mining operations, the costs of developing and operating the metallurgical processing systems consume well over 50% of the total capital and operational costs. Because sulfide ores are common sources of base metals, many existing processing plants can accept such ore.


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Nautilus has defined the necessary steps that are needed to transform the material recovered from the seafloor into a concentrate that can be sold directly to a processing plant. Preliminary flotation test work on 1.2 metric tons of drill-core recoveries have produced a saleable grade Cu-concentrate (>28% Cu with low impurity concentrations and with substantial concentrations of gold and silver). If these initial results are confirmed by subsequent testing, Nautilus will be able to generate a marketable product with very little investment in metallurgical process development.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND MONITORING The remarkable advances in marine technology that have revolutionized offshore oil exploitation have also made it possible for major improvements in the basic marine sciences. Scientific institutions worldwide, and particularly in Europe and the U.S., are making major progress in the methods of marine research. One of the exciting frontiers in this effort is the general deployment of autonomous Seagliders.™ More than 3,000 of these small (< 2 m length), sleek (see Figure 4) devices have no external moving parts and are equipped with sensors to measure temperature,

Figure 4 Sea Gliders

Left, deploying Seaglider; Right, typical deployment. Source: University of Washington: http://www.apl.washington.edu/projects/seaglider/summary.html

Sea Glider used by IFM-Geomar. Source: IFM-Geomarhttp://www.ifm-geomar.de/index.php?id=537&L=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=512&tx_ttnews[backPid]=1&cHash=27a539f8b3


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pressure, ocean currents, dissolved oxygen and other variables. They are able to collect and transmit profiles of data to depths of 1,000 m continuously for several months. When this new technology is used in conjunction with more established and conventional survey tools (e.g. CTD profiling and water sampling, plankton tows), it is possible to derive unprecedented three-dimensional coverage of the water column for collection of environmental baseline data and monitoring of mining operations.

The habitats that exist at the seafloor are not well understood, but scientists are making great progress in this area through research programs such as those affiliated with the InterRidge program.1 Key to this work is the continuously increasing usage of tethered, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) and un-tethered, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to collect data and samples from the seafloor. These systems are being used with traditional sampling and photographic techniques to obtain important baseline data at potential mining sites. As shown in Figure 5, the rate of discovery of new seabed polychaete species increased dramatically during the 1950s and 1960s, but, though the intensity of seabed research has greatly increased during the last several decades, the rate of discovery of new species has slowed down considerably.

Figure 5 New Discoveries of Abyssal Polychaetes

Source: Glover 2007

As noted above, possibly the most exciting potential at this time for commercial seabed mining is the Nautilus Minerals program for recovery of seabed massive sulfide deposits. Last year Nautilus completed their environmental assessment for this mining activity2 and in January of this year has received the necessary environmental permit from the government of Papua New Guinea, a major step toward initiation of mining operations. It is clear that much research and monitoring must accompany these and other seabed mining developments, but the technical capabilities available in the modern oceanographic community make it possible to provide adequate environmental protection for the potentially affected biological resources.

1 www.interridge.org 2 http://www.cedamar.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=5


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ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ARE SIMILAR TO LAND MINES A truism in the environmental impact assessment business is that all environmental assessments are site specific. Generalities such as the title of this section have no real meaning unless they are applied to real operations in real settings. While acknowledging the essential truth of this assertion, it is also true that such generalizations are required for policymakers who are contemplating allocations of public resources for research and development of natural resources.

Development of marine minerals has both the curse and blessing of taking place in the marine environment, as discussed in the following passages.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CURSE OF MARINE DEVELOPMENTS Since the 1970’s and before, the marine environment has taken on a public aura of sanctity reserved more commonly for religious beliefs. As the ultimate receptacle of virtually all waterborne human wastes throughout history, it is reasonable that we acknowledge the potential threats that our activities can pose to marine environments. However, what some of us in the profession irreverently refer to as “The Flipper Syndrome” has led to an exaggerated evaluation of all marine resources with respect to land-based resources and an exaggerated conception of the relative fragility of marine ecosystems when compared with land ecosystems.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development met at Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. One of the published results of this meeting, Principle 15, reads as follows:

In order to protect the environment the Precautionary Approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

Some enthusiastic environmentalists appear to this author to interpret this “Precautionary Approach” as applied to marine activities to mean “unless we know everything, we can’t do anything,” a fundamentally untenable position for anybody who is interested in developing marine resources.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL BLESSING OF MARINE DEVELOPMENTS A basic advantage of marine mineral developments is that nobody lives there. The pejorative phrases “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” or “Not in My Back Yard” come immediately to mind. Clearly, the fact that marine mining activities take place largely beyond common scrutiny is no reason to ignore their impacts. However, the fact that marine mining activities will not conflict with most normal human activities eliminates a large class of environmental impacts that plague land-based mineral developments.

Another advantage to marine mineral mining is well expressed by another discredited slogan: “Dilution is the Solution to Pollution.” Modern environmental impact analysis requires careful accounting of materials released into the environment and serious efforts to mitigate and eliminate such releases. However, having the ocean available to receive unavoidable discharges can be a distinct advantage when compared with much smaller and more confined fresh-water systems that might otherwise be used as receiving waters.

THE MIDDLE ROAD While it is not possible to assess the environmental impacts of marine mining in general, it is currently true that a priori public perceptions of potential impacts pose significant impediments to development. Thus, it is critical that proposed operations are subjected to thorough impact assessment analysis and that mitigation measures are well designed and rigorously enforced. However, it is also critical that policymakers take steps to provide a level playing field for marine


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developments that encourages objective comparisons with alternative land-based proposals for supplying needed mineral resources.

For as long as the governments of developed countries fail to act in these areas, prospective marine mining operations will of necessity confine their operations to the Territorial Waters of sovereign nations where responsive governments can provide clear guidelines for development.

WE NEED GOOD POLICIES AND REGULATIONS As discussed in the sections above, the economic incentives and technological capability are in place to permit significant development of deep seabed mining, both within the Area and national jurisdictions worldwide. A key missing element that is beginning to affect seabed mining in national jurisdictions is the lack of clear and fair regulatory regimes to guide this development. I do not presume to have developed a comprehensive description of how such regimes can be quickly established. However, based on inferences from the above sections, I can suggest the following objectives that the should be addressed:

1. Marine developments in general should be regarded within the same context as land-based developments. Public education efforts should level the playing field for marine and land-based developers. International regulatory controls over marine mineral developments should be consistent with national controls.

2. Marine mineral development proposals should comply with identical or closely analogous regulatory controls of land-based developments.

3. Research and development resources should be targeted specifically to encourage marine minerals development.

I offer the following three general work priorities that could address these objectives:

COMPLETION OF PROGRAMMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STUDIES In the United States, Programmatic Environmental Impact Statements (PEISs) are drafted by government agencies when there is the potential for new industrial development that is in the general public interest. The U.S. Minerals Management Service recently completed a PEIS for offshore alternative energy developments. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has finalized a PEIS specifically for wind energy developments on public lands. The State of Washington in 2007 completed a PEIS that addresses the major aspects of energy, aquaculture, and other industries that depend upon the Columbia River.

It would be very useful for coastal government agencies to draft programmatic environmental impact studies for specific marine mineral categories as soon as possible. Such studies are an excellent means to address the concerns identified above. They could:

1. Compare the relative environmental costs (land use, energy, water and air pollution, etc.) associated with the development of land-based minerals with those that would extract equivalent amounts of marine minerals;

2. Summarize the available mineral resource assessments within the government’s jurisdictional authority and recommend specific survey and analysis work to enhance the public data base;

3. Support directed research to:

a. Understand the basic formative processes that lead to the accumulation of these resources,

b. Perfect methods to detect and assess the occurrence of the deposits, and

c. Identify the engineering solutions to their extraction and processing.


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4. Examine existing regulatory controls and recommend changes, as appropriate for each resource.

COMPLETION OF DOMESTIC REGULATIONS One of the greatest risks faced by marine minerals ventures is the uncertainty of tenure. For example, Nautilus Minerals has succeeded in acquiring government guarantees from Papua New Guinea and Tonga, but has not achieved any such agreements with U.S., Japanese, or other governments of developed countries. This is not because Nautilus is trying to avoid environmental, royalty, or any other legitimate government controls. It is because the governments of these “developed countries” have not yet concluded that it is in their interest (national or bureaucratic) to offer any reasonable remedy for Nautilus Minerals or any other legitimate marine minerals miner.

ENGAGEMENT WITH THE INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY (ISA) By failing to ratify the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty, the United States is delaying its confrontation with reality and also putting it own citizens at a disadvantage in the development of deep seabed minerals. All nations must learn to take the ISA seriously.

As of December 1, 2009, 160 sovereign nations are members of the ISA, which is working on regulations to develop sulfide and ferromanganese crust deposits. In 2007, Germany made the latest claim to deep seabed deposits of manganese nodule resources in the Clarion-Clipperton region. The regulations that the ISA is drafting will provide precedents for national legislation worldwide. The high-level engagement of U.S. diplomatic representatives, backed by support of staff research to become knowledgeable in this discipline, would be a refreshing change.

SUMMARY REMARKS Thank you again for the opportunity to participate in this very interesting and important conference. In summary:

1. Need for Marine Minerals: Simply put, we are running out of minerals to support worldwide industrial development, and the seabed must be considered to supply the ever widening gap between land-base supplies and demand for base and precious metals.

2. Resources: Seabed mineral deposits are significant and could contribute a major fraction of the global supply for base and precious metals.

3. Technology: The technology is in place for large-scale marine minerals development, including the oceanographic research tools to find and delineate the deposits and the engineering knowhow to extract the commodities of interest and provide them to world markets.

4. Policies and Regulation: The deposits are there and the technology exists to discover and recover them. The critical missing element is clear and consistent policies and regulations that do not discriminate against marine deposits in favor of land deposits.


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CITED REFERENCES Arita, M. 2007. Offshore Fine Aggregate Extraction in Japan. In: The Underwater Mining Institute,

Marine Minerals of the Pacific: Science, Economics and the Environment. The University of Tokyo, Japan, 15-20 October 2007

Binns, R.A., T. F. McConachy, and C. J. Yeats. 2006. Search for Sediment-hosted Seafloor Polymetallic Sulfides: What Are We Doing Wrong? In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Scientific, Legal and Economic Perspectives of Marine Mining. Kiel, Germany, 24–30 September, 2006.

Bluck, B.J., J. D. Ward, and M. C. J. Dewit. 2004. Genesis of the Diamond Mega-placers of Southern Africa and Its Global Context. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Marine Minerals: The European Dimension. London, UK. 1 – 7 November.

Cherkashov, G. 2005. New Data on the Age and Structure of Hydrothermal Deposits at Logatchev (140˚ 45’ N) and Ashadze (120˚ 58’ N) MAR Hydrothermal Fields. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Marine Minerals: Crossroads of Science, Engineering, and the Environment. Monterey, CA, USA 1-6 November.

Cherkashov, G., G. Glasby, L. Anikeeva, T. Semkova, G. Gavrilenko, and V. Rashidov. 2007. Submarine Hydrothermal Activity and Mineralization on the Kurile and Western Aleutian Island Arcs, NW Pacific. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Marine Minerals of the Pacific: Science, Economics and the Environment. The University of Tokyo, Japan, 15-20 October 2007.

Finkl, C.W., J. L. Andrews, K. Willson, and M. Andrews. 2005. Sand Mining on U.S. Continental Shelves: Exploration and Exploitation for Shore Protection and Environmental Restoration In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Marine Minerals: Crossroads of Science, Engineering, and the Environment. Monterey, CA, USA 1-6 November.

Glover, A. (2007) Report on the Abyssal Polychaete Inter-calibration Project (APIP) Workshop. The Natural History Museum (London) January 8-11 2007. URL: http://www.cedamar.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=5

Golder Associates Pty Ltd. 2008. Mineral Resource Estimate, Solwara 1 Project, Bismarck Sea, Papua New Guinea. URL: http://www.nautilusminerals.com/i/pdf/2008-02-01_Solwara1_43-101.pdf.

Goodden, R. 2007. Offshore Diamond Mining on the African West Coast. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Marine Minerals of the Pacific: Science, Economics and the Environment. The University of Tokyo, Japan, 15-20 October 2007.

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Hannington, M., H. L. Gibson, S. Petersen, U. Schwarz-Schampera, and T. Monecke. 2006. The Metallogeny of Ancient Greenstone Belts and Implications for Modern Submarine Hydrothermal Systems. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Scientific, Legal and Economic Perspectives of Marine Mining. Kiel, Germany, 24–30 September, 2006.

Hein, J.R. 2004. Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts: global distribution, composition, origin and research. In: Proceedings, Workshop on Minerals Other than Polymetallic Nodules of the International Seabed Area, Kingston, Jamaica, Int. Seabed Authority, 188/256 (2004)


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Hein, J.R., A. Usui, and R. Dunham. 2007. Overview of Cobalt-Rich Ferromanganese Crusts, Seamounts, and the Outlook for Mining. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Marine Minerals of the Pacific: Science, Economics and the Environment. The University of Tokyo, Japan, 15-20 October 2007.

HNEI (Hawai`i Natural Energy Institute). 2008. Methane Hydrates: A Primer. URL: http://www.hnei.hawaii.edu/ocean.research.asp.

Iizasa, K, K. Tamaki, K. Okamura, M. Watanabe, and H. Shimoda. 2006. Preliminary Report: The Third Marine Kuroko-type Deposit in the Area 200 km2 of a Major Kuroko Province in Japan. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Scientific, Legal and Economic Perspectives of Marine Mining. Kiel, Germany, 24–30 September, 2006.

Iizasa, K. 2002. Kuroko-Type Deposits From the Izu-Ogasawara (Bonin) Arc, Japan. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, New Perspectives on Seabed Mineral Deposits. IGNS, Wellington, New Zealand, 13-18 November 2002.

Iizasa, K. 2007. Preliminary Results of ROV Expeditions to Kuroko-type Deposits in the EEZ of Japan. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Marine Minerals of the Pacific: Science, Economics and the Environment. The University of Tokyo, Japan, 15-20 October 2007.

ISA (International Seabed Authority). 2008. Polymetallic Nodule Mining Technology: Current Status And Challenges Ahead. Executive Summary of the International Seabed Authority’s workshop jointly organized with the Ministry of Earth Sciences of the Government of India - 18 to 22 February 2008 in Chennai, India ISBA/14/LTC/CRP.4.

ISA (International Seabed Authority) 2010. Development of Geological Models for the Clarion-Clipperton Zone Polymetallic Nodule Deposits (in preparation).

Jiji Press 2008. Japan, U.S. To Cooperate in Methane Hydrate Research. URL: http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1421839/japan_us_to_cooperate_in_methane_hydrate_research/index.html#.

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Koski, R. A. and T. O. Törmänen. 2001. Visible Gold in Massive Sulfides from Escanaba Trough, Southern Gorda Ridge. In: Underwater Mining Institute, Going to Extremes: Seabed Mining and Biotechnology. Hilo, Hawaii, 31 October – 3 November 2001.

Kudrass, H-R., M. Wiedicke, C. Rühlemann, and U. Schwarz-Schampera. 2006. Polymetallic Nodules as a Future Deep Sea Mineral. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Scientific, Legal and Economic Perspectives of Marine Mining. Kiel, Germany, 24–30 September, 2006.

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Melekestseva, I. Y., N. N. Ankusheva, G. A. Tret’yakov, V. V. Zaykov, and V. A. Simonov. 2007. Massive Sulfides from Ancient and Modern Margins of the Asian Paleo-ocean and Pacific: Textures, Mineralogy and Fluid Inclusion Data. In: The Underwater Mining Institute, Marine Minerals of the Pacific: Science, Economics and the Environment. The University of Tokyo, Japan, 15-20 October 2007.


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Cobalt-rich Ferromanganese Crusts: A Global Perspective

James R. Hein U.S. Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Rd., Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA, [email protected] INTRODUCTION

The resource potential of the vast mineral deposits that occur within the global ocean is unknown, despite many field studies that have taken place during the past 30 years. Since about 1975, information on marine mineral deposits has been obtained by numerous research cruises by the U.S., Germany, France, Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, and others. However, the global effort remains inadequate to allow for the quantitative evaluation of mineral resources contained within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of nations or within regions of the oceans beyond national jurisdictions (The Area).

This paper deals with basic knowledge of ferromanganese oxide crust deposits (hereafter called Fe-Mn crusts) that occur throughout the global ocean, as well as with mining, technological, and economic issues concerning this deposit type. Fe-Mn crusts have also been called cobalt-rich crusts, manganese crusts, and cobalt crusts.

There are three practical interests in Fe-Mn crusts, the first being their economic potential for cobalt, manganese, nickel, rare-earth elements, tellurium, titanium, and other metals. The second interest is the use of Fe-Mn crusts as recorders of the past 70 million years (Ma) of oceanic and climatic history. The third interest is in the fact that adsorption of metals onto Fe-Mn crusts may control their concentrations in seawater; such is the case for cerium and tellurium. Of these three interests, this paper will address only the economic interest. OCCURRENCE OF Fe-Mn CRUSTS

Fe-Mn crusts are found throughout the ocean basins on rock substrates. They form at the seabed on the flanks and summits of seamounts (see appendix), ridges,

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plateaus, and abyssal hills where the seabed has not accumulated sediment (Figures 1 and 2). Fe-Mn crusts of economic interest form by precipitation from cold ambient seawater, which is a process called hydrogenetic precipitation. Fe-Mn crusts occur at water depths of about 400-7,000 m, but most commonly occur at depths from about 1,000-3,000 m. The crusts most enriched in cobalt occur at water depths from 800-2,200 m, which mostly encompasses the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ; see appendix). In the Pacific, the thickest crusts occur at water depths of 1,500-2,500 m, which corresponds to the depths of the outer summit area and upper flanks of most Cretaceous guyots (see appendix) in the Pacific Ocean. The water depths of thick crusts with high cobalt contents vary regionally and are generally shallower in the South Pacific where the OMZ is less well developed (Hein, 2006, 2008). Crusts become thinner with increasing water depth because of mass movements and reworking of the deposits on the seamount flanks. Most Fe-Mn crusts located on the middle and lower seamount flanks consist of encrusted talus rather than encrusted rock outcrop, the latter typically having thicker crusts. Many seamounts and ridges are capped by pelagic sediments and therefore do not support the growth of Fe-Mn crusts on the summit. Fe-Mn crusts are usually thin on the submarine flanks of islands and atolls because of the large amounts of debris that are shed down the flanks by gravity processes. Regional mean crust thicknesses mostly fall between 5 and 40 mm. Only rarely are very thick crusts (greater than 100 mm) found, most being from the central Pacific, for which initial growth may approach within 10-30 Ma the age of the substrate rock. Thick crusts are rarely found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, with the thickest (up to 125 mm) being recovered from the New England seamount chain (NW Atlantic), and a 72 mm-thick crust being recovered from a seamount in the Central Indian Basin (Hein, 2006, 2008).

The distribution of crusts on individual seamounts and ridges is poorly known. Seamounts generally have either a rugged summit with moderately thick to no sediment cover (0-150 m) or a flat summit (guyot) with thick to no sediment cover (0-500 m). The outer summit margin and the flanks may be terraced with shallowly dipping terraces headed by steep slopes meters to tens of meters high. Talus piles commonly accumulate at the base of the steep slopes and at the foot of the seamounts; thin sediment layers may blanket the terraces alternately covering and exhuming Fe-Mn crusts. The thickest crusts occur on summit outer-rim terraces and on broad saddles on the summits. Estimates of sediment cover on various seamounts range from 0% to 100%, and likely averages between about 40 and 60%.

CHARACTERISTICS OF Fe-Mn CRUSTS Physical Properties

Fe-Mn crusts form pavements up to 250 mm thick on rock outcrops, or coat talus debris. Fe-Mn crusts have very high porosity (mean 60%), extremely high specific surface area (mean 325 square meters per cubic centimeter of crust (m2/cc), and accrete to the seabed at the incredibly slow rates of 1-7 mm/Ma (Hein et al., 1997, 2000). An important consideration in the exploration and exploitation of potential Fe-Mn crust resources is the contrast in physical properties between crusts and substrate

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rocks. Those comparisons are complicated by the fact that crusts grow on a wide variety of substrate rocks with a wide variety of physical properties, most of which overlap with those of the Fe-Mn crusts. The P-wave velocity of Fe-Mn crusts may be less or more than that of the sedimentary substrate rocks, but is generally less than that of basalt substrate. This variable contrast will make it difficult to develop sonic instruments for measuring crust thicknesses in situ. The most distinctive property of Fe-Mn crusts is their gamma radiation level, which averages 475 net counts per minute in contrast to sedimentary rock and basalt substrates. Gamma radiation may be a useful tool for crust exploration under thin-sediment cover and for measuring crust thicknesses in situ. Mineralogy and Chemical Composition

The dominant crystalline phase in Fe-Mn crusts is δ-MnO2 (also called vernadite), which commonly makes up more than 90 percent of the X-ray crystalline phases, the remainder being detrital minerals such as quartz and feldspar, and authigenic carbonate fluorapatite (CFA). The older parts of thick crusts may contain up to 30 percent CFA. Another major phase in crusts is X-ray amorphous iron oxyhydroxide (δ-FeO(OH), feroxyhyte), which is commonly intergrown with the δ-MnO2. In about 6% of 640 samples analyzed, the feroxyhyte crystallized as goethite (α-FeO(OH)) in the older parts of thick crusts.

Fe-Mn crusts are composed mainly of iron and manganese oxides, but it is their high cobalt contents (0.3 to 1.8 percent) that have elicited economic interest. However, crusts commonly have high concentrations of other metals (Figure 3) that are now becoming of economic interest and may surpass the value of cobalt in the future. This renewed interest is based on the high concentrations in Fe-Mn crusts of many metals that are essential for emerging high-technology and next-generation applications (Hein et al., 2010). These metals include titanium, cerium (and the other rare-earth elements), nickel, zirconium, platinum, molybdenum, copper, and especially tellurium, which has attracted much attention from the solar-cell industry (Hein et al., 2010). It is striking that tellurium is enriched by a factor of 10,000 over its mean concentration in continental rocks but that cobalt, bismuth, platinum, thallium, and tungsten are enriched only by factors of about 100. However, to put this into perspective, mean cobalt concentrations in Fe-Mn crusts for example are three- to ten-fold higher than those in mined land-based deposits. Tellurium has remarkable enrichments compared to both seawater and continental rocks and has a mean global concentration of about 50 parts per million (ppm; see appendix) in Fe-Mn crusts and a maximum value of 206 ppm (Hein et al., 2003). The central Pacific mean concentrations and global maximum concentrations for metals of interest to emerging and high-technology industries are shown in Figure 4. The central Pacific is a large geographic region (Figure 5) that shows the greatest enrichment of the high-technology metals (Hein et al., 2009), with the notable exception of thorium (see white horizontal lines in the vertical bars in Figure 4); thorium is higher in Atlantic and Indian Ocean crusts.

Fe-Mn crusts contain sub-equal amounts of iron and manganese (Figure 3). Iron/manganese ratios are less than 1 for open-ocean Pacific crusts and greater than 1

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for Pacific-margin crusts, and for most Atlantic and Indian Ocean crusts. Cobalt, nickel, titanium, and platinum contents are generally highest in crusts from the central and northwest Pacific and lowest in crusts from along the spreading centers in the southeast Pacific, the continental margins, and along the volcanic arcs of the west Pacific (Hein, 2006, 2008.) Cobalt contents are low and nickel contents are the lowest for crusts from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans compared to crusts from other regions. Copper contents generally follow the trend for cobalt, nickel, and platinum, except for the Indian Ocean, where a high mean value of 1254 ppm is found. The reason for those high values is the much greater mean water depth for crusts collected from the Indian Ocean. Shatsky Rise Fe-Mn crusts, mid-latitudes of the north Pacific, have a surprisingly high mean copper content, as well as the highest copper value measured in a single bulk crust, 0.4 percent (4,000 ppm). Cerium is generally lower in south Pacific crusts than it is in north Pacific crusts and has moderate contents in Atlantic and Indian Ocean crusts. Tellurium can be high in Fe-Mn crusts from throughout the global open ocean, but is lower in ocean-margin Fe-Mn crusts and those near hydrothermal input to the oceans. Thorium is higher in Atlantic and Indian Ocean Fe-Mn crusts.

Mechanisms of Formation

Even though Fe-Mn crusts form by hydrogenetic precipitation, the exact mechanisms of metal enrichments at the crust surface are poorly understood. The ultimate sources of metals to the oceans are river and eolian (wind) input, hydrothermal input, weathering of ocean-floor basalts, release of metals from sediments, and extraterrestrial input (micrometeorites). Elements in seawater may occur in their elemental form or as inorganic and organic complexes. Those complexes may in turn form colloids that interact with each other and with other dissolved metals (e.g., Koschinksy and Halbach, 1995; Koschinsky and Hein, 2003). Geochemical models show that most hydrogenetic elements in crusts occur as inorganic complexes in seawater (Koschinsky and Hein 2003). Hydrated cations (cobalt, nickel, zinc, lead, cadmium, thallium, etc.) are attracted to the negatively charged surface of manganese oxides, whereas anions and elements that form large complexes with low charge density (vanadium, arsenic, phosphorus, zirconium, hafnium, etc.) are attracted to the slightly positive charge of the iron oxyhydroxide surfaces. Mixed iron and manganese colloids with adsorbed metals precipitate onto hard-rock surfaces as poorly crystalline or amorphous oxides, possibly through bacterially mediated catalytic processes. Continued crust accretion after precipitation of that first molecular layer is autocatalytic. Additional metals are incorporated into the deposits either by co-precipitation, or by diffusion of the adsorbed ions into the manganese and iron oxide crystal lattices. Cobalt is strongly enriched in hydrogenetic crusts because it is oxidized from soluble cobalt (II) to the less soluble cobalt (III) on the crust surface. Tellurium, thallium, cerium, and platinum are also highly enriched in hydrogenetic deposits, probably by a similar oxidation mechanism (Koschinsky and Halbach, 1995; Hein et al., 2003). The dominant controls on the concentration of elements in hydrogenetic crusts are the concentration of each element in seawater; element-particle reactivity; element residence times in seawater; the absolute and relative amounts of iron and manganese

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in the crusts, which in turn are related to their abundance and ratio in colloids in seawater; the colloid surface charge and types of complexing agents, which will determine the amount of scavenging within the water column; the degree of oxidation of MnO2 (oxygen/manganese ratio)--the greater the degree of oxidation the greater the adsorption capacity--which in turn depends on the oxygen content and pH of seawater; the amount of surface area available for accretion; the amount of dilution by detrital minerals and diagenetic phases; and growth rates. ECONOMIC, TECHNOLOGICAL, AND INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

A critical concern of coastal States today is the limits of the outer continental margin and the possibility of extending (ECS) their 200 nautical mile (360 km) EEZ on the basis of geologic criteria codified in the United Nations Convention Law of the sea (UNCLOS). Applications made by coastal States are reviewed by the Commission of the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) and recommendations are made as to adherence to UNCLOS criteria. In addition, UNCLOS established the regulatory authority for deep-sea mining in areas beyond national jurisdictions (The Area) through the formation of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), headquartered in Kingston Jamaica. The General Assembly of the ISA now has 155 member States. Regulations have been established for exploration for manganese nodules and are nearly complete for polymetallic sulfides. Fe-Mn crust draft regulations may be discussed starting at the 2010 session of the Council. Additions of seabed areas to EEZs through ECS approvals decrease the amount of seabed that comprises The Area regulated by the ISA. New concerns about global supplies of energy and critical and strategic minerals demand that potential contributions from the global ocean be understood and considered in calculations of global mineral assessments. Emerging markets for metals in Asia and rapidly developing technologies for solar-cell technologies, fuel-cell and hybrid cars, and many other high-technology applications will significantly increase global demands for cobalt, tellurium, titanium, rare-earth elements, tungsten, zirconium, platinum, nickel, and others. These are among the most common metals found in deep-sea Fe-Mn crusts, which will be needed to meet the growing demands.

The global market for cobalt would likely support not more than one or two Fe-Mn crust mine sites. A mine site would require about 3.7% of the surface area above 2,500 m water depth of one to three guyots (0.01% of the total area of those edifices) depending on their size and other factors as discussed in detail by Hein et al. (2009); Hein et al. also provide criteria for exploration for thick Fe-Mn crust deposits. That mine-site area would be sufficient to sustain a 20-year mine site if cobalt was the primarily metal of interest. This 20-year mining operation for Fe-Mn crusts would supply about 15 percent of the annual global need for cobalt. Competing mining operations would probably not be economic for cobalt, although tellurium, nickel, platinum and other rare metals might support additional operations if warranted by the global markets for those metals. Technology also plays an important role in the exploitation of deep-sea minerals. For example, the advantage of the exploitation of manganese nodules versus Fe-Mn crusts is the relative ease of recovery of nodules, whereas the advantage of mining crusts is their occurrence at shallower water depths and their higher contents of

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rare metals. These and other changing economic, political, security, technological, and land-use issues can significantly affect the time frame of mining the deep sea. Technology

There are two main technological challenges to Fe-Mn crust mining. The largest impediment to exploration for Fe-Mn crusts is the real-time measurement of crust thicknesses with a deep-towed instrument. As mentioned in the Physical Properties section above, the most distinctive property of Fe-Mn crusts is their gamma radiation level. Consequently, development of a Gamma radiation instrument may be a useful tool for measuring crust thicknesses in situ. The largest physical impediment to ore recovery is separation of Fe-Mn crusts from substrate rock that occurs on an uneven and rough seabed. This requires appropriate cutter heads on the mining machine and creative engineering to solve this problem. Fe-Mn crust mining is technologically much more difficult than mining manganese nodule because nodules sit on a soft-sediment substrate. In contrast, Fe-Mn crusts are weakly to strongly attached to substrate rock. For successful crust mining, it is essential to recover Fe-Mn crusts without collecting much substrate rock, which would significantly dilute the ore grade. Five possible Fe-Mn crust-mining operations include fragmentation, crushing, lifting, pick-up, and separation (Hein et al., 2000). The proposed method of Fe-Mn crust recovery consists of a bottom-crawling vehicle (Figure 6) attached to a surface mining vessel by means of a hydraulic pipe lift system and an electrical umbilical (DOI-MMS, 1990). The mining machine provides its own propulsion and travels at a speed of about 20 cm/s. The miner has articulated cutters that would allow Fe-Mn crusts to be fragmented while minimizing the amount of substrate rock collected. About 95% of the fragmented material would be picked up and processed through a gravity separator prior to lifting. The net recovery of crusts depends on fragmentation efficiency, pickup efficiency, and separation losses. Fragmentation efficiencies depend on small-scale topography and depth of the cut. Pickup efficiencies also depend on seafloor roughness, but to a lesser extent than fragmentation efficiency, and on the size of fragmented particles and type of pickup device. Some new and innovative systems that have been suggested for Fe-Mn crust mining include water-jet stripping of crusts, sonic fragmentation, and in situ leaching techniques. Economic Considerations The importance of metals contained in Fe-Mn crusts to the world economy is reflected in their patterns of consumption. The primary uses of manganese, cobalt, and nickel are in the manufacture of steel to which they provide unique characteristics. Cobalt and the rare metals needed for emerging technologies have many potential applications (Table 1) should adequate supplies become available. Supplies of these metals and other rare metals found in crusts are essential for maintaining the efficiency of modern industrial societies and in improving the standard of living in the 21st century.

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Cobalt and many of the rare metals needed for emerging technologies do not have primary sources in land-based mining, but rather are byproducts of copper and other base-metal mining. This limits their availability to that of the demand for the primary commodity. This uncertainty in supply has caused industry to look for alternatives to cobalt, tellurium, and other rare metals resulting in only a modest growth in their markets over the past decade, and consequently relatively low prices. If substantial alternative sources for cobalt, tellurium, and other rare metal supplies are developed, there should be a greater incentive for product development and expanded markets. This is especially evident for tellurium, where it could be a key player in cadmium-tellurium photovoltacis for solar cells (Hein et al., 2010). Tellurium is considered the best material for production of multi-terawatt solar-cell electricity using thin-film photovoltaic technology (e.g. Fthenakis, 2009), but the present global supply is inadequate to fulfill that need.

Recent global prices for metals contained in Fe-Mn crusts indicate that titanium has the highest value after cobalt, the rare-earth elements (represented by cerium in Table 2) have a greater value than nickel, zirconium is equivalent to nickel, and tellurium has nearly twice the value of copper. However, the solar-cell industry would be willing to pay 5 to 6 times more for the tellurium should enough be produced for a viable cadmium-tellurium photovoltaics industry. Manganese is not shown in Table 2 as it could be recovered in several different forms depending on demand. Cerium and the other rare-earth elements may become increasingly important if China restricts export of those metals as some predict (Stone, 2009). Table 2 assumes that economic and quantitative extractive metallurgy can be developed for each of those metals. New extractive metallurgical technology developed for nickel laterite deposits (http://www.directnickel.com) can be adapted to extract many of the metals of interest from for Fe-Mn crusts with better than 90% recovery levels. There is a growing recognition that Fe-Mn crusts are an important potential resource. Accordingly, it is necessary to fill the information gaps concerning various aspects of crust mining through research, exploration, and technology development. Much of that research, especially technology development, is being done now in China, Korea, Japan, Russia, and India. Other countries have smaller programs or have finished scientific programs designed to study Fe-Mn crusts (Table 3). REFERENCES DOI-MMS and DPED-State of Hawaii, 1990, Proposed marine mineral lease sale:

Exclusive economic zone, adjacent to Hawaii and Johnston Island, Final Environmental Impact Statement, vols. I & II.

Fthenakis, V., 2009, Sustainability of photovoltaics: The case for thin-film solar cells. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, v. 13:2,746-2,750.

Hein, J.R., 2006, Characteristics of seamounts and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts. Proceedings of a Workshop held on 26-30 March 2006, International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica, 30 pp.

Hein, J.R., 2008, Geologic characteristics and geographic distribution of potential cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts deposits in the Area. In Mining cobalt-rich

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ferromanganese crusts and polymetallic sulphides deposits: Technological and economic considerations. Proceedings of the International Seabed Authority’s Workshop held in Kingston, Jamaica, 31 July-4 August 2006, p. 59-90.

Hein, J.R., Conrad, T.A., and Staudigel, H., 2010, Seamount mineral deposits, a source of rare-metals for high technology industries. Oceanography, v. 23:144-149.

Hein, J.R., Conrad, T.A., and Dunham, R.E., 2009, Seamount characteristics and mine-site model applied to exploration- and mining-lease-block selection for cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts. Marine Georesources and Geotechnology, v. 27:160-176.

Hein, J.R., Koschinsky, A., Halbach, P., Manheim, F.T., Bau, M., Kang, J.-K., and Lubick, N., 1997, In: Nicholson, K., et al. (eds.), Geol. Soc. London Special Pub. 119, London, p. 123-138.

Hein, J.R., Koschinsky, A., Bau, M., Manheim, F.T., Kang, J.-K., and Roberts, L. (2000) In: Cronan, D.S. (ed.), Handbook of Marine Mineral Deposits. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 239-279.

Hein, J.R., Koschinsky, A., and Halliday, A.N., 2003, Global occurrence of tellurium-rich ferromanganese oxyhydroxide crusts and a model for the enrichment of tellurium. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, v. 67:1117-1127.

Koschinsky, A. and Halbach, P., 1995, Sequential leaching of marine ferromanganese precipitates: Genetic implications. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, v. 59:5113-5132.

Koschinsky, A. and Hein, J.R., 2003, Uptake of elements from seawater by ferromanganese crusts: solid phase association and seawater speciation. Marine Geology, v. 198:331-351.

Stone, R., 2009, As China’s rare earth R&D becomes ever more rarefied, others tremble. Science, v. 325:1336-1337.

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APPENDIX Conversions Metal concentrations in weight percent to parts per million (ppm; same as grams per tonne) multiply by 10,000: for example, 1 percent equals 10,000 parts per million; 0.1 percent equals 1000 parts per million. Definitions Cretaceous is the geological period that extends from 65 Ma to 145 Ma ago. Guyot is a flat-topped seamount (see seamounts). Oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) is the water depth interval through the water column where the oxygen content is lowest. The low oxygen is caused by the oxidation of organic matter that is created in surface waters by primary biological productivity (mainly plankton); the organic matter produced descends through the water column once the plankton die. The water depth interval of the OMZ depends on the amount of biological productivity in the surface waters. In the central Pacific, the OMZ generally occurs from about 400 to 2,200 meters. This is important because manganese is more soluble in low oxygen seawater and therefore the OMZ acts as a reservoir for manganese colloids and associated sorbed metals. Seamounts are submarine volcanoes that may be active currently or may have been extinct for up to 180 million years. They do not currently extend above the ocean surface as islands, but some were once islands. Once the volcanoes became dormant, they subsided as much as 2 km. It has been estimated that about 100,000 seamounts are present in the Pacific Ocean, and lesser numbers in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, which are dominated by spreading ridges. Flat-topped seamounts, known as guyots, were once islands. Their tops were eroded flat by waves as the edifices sank following cessation of volcanic construction. Conical seamounts were never islands. Most seamounts in the central Pacific are 65 to120 million years old (Cretaceous) and have not been volcanically active for tens of millions of years.

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FIGURES

Figure 1. Size of selected large central Pacific seamounts and ridges compared to size of Iberian Peninsula. These Cretaceous volcanic edifices have Fe-Mn crust pavements covering surfaces not covered by sediment.

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Figure 2. A. Typical seabed Fe-Mn crust pavement from Horizon Guyot, central Pacific; field of view is about 4 m by 3 m. B. Cross-section of Fe-Mn crust from a seamount in the Marshall Islands, central Pacific. The crust started growing on the rock substrate about 72 Ma ago; note the distinct growth layers of this 180 mm thick crust.

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Figure 3. Mean chemical composition of 627 bulk Fe-Mn crust samples from the central Pacific compared with the mean composition of 103 crusts from the area around Johnston Island. Each area of the global ocean has a somewhat different mean composition of Fe-Mn crusts.

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Figure 4. Global trace-metal maxima and central Pacific mean concentrations (white lines) in Fe-Mn crusts based on data presented by Hein et al. (2000, 2008). The mean value for cobalt is 6,500 ppm, for cerium is 1,717 ppm (which fall in the break in the scale), and for platinum is 0.5 ppm (modified from Hein et al., 2010).

14

Figure 5. Location of seamounts, guyots, ridges, and plateaus used for surface area measurements and mine-site model evaluation. Brown areas were measured and are marked by red circles indicating relative sizes; dashed line encloses the largest region in the global ocean with permissive conditions for development of thick Fe-Mn crusts (from Hein et al., 2009).

15

Figure 6. Schematic representation of a deep-sea mining vehicle for Fe-Mn crusts; designed by J.E. Halkyard, OTC Corporation (from DOI-MMS, 1990).

16

TABLES Table 1. Use of rare metals in Fe-Mn crusts in emerging and next-generation technologies; ratio of U.S. imports to exports (modified from Hein et al., 2010).

Import/ Export

Main Uses

Emerging & Next Generation Technologies

Te

9

Steel, Cu, & Pb alloys, pigment

Photovoltaic solar cells; computer chips; thermal cooling devices

Co

4

Steel superalloys (e.g. jet engines), batteries, chemical application

Hybrid & electric car batteries, storage of solar energy, magnetic recording media, high-T super-alloys, supermagnets, cell phones

Bi

6

Metallurical additives, fusible alloys, pharmaceuticals & chemicals

Liquid Pb-Bi coolant for nuclear reactors; Bi-metal polymer bullets, high-T superconduct, computer chips

W

3

Wear-resistent materials, superalloys, electrical, chemicals

Negative thermal expansion devices, high-T superalloys, X-ray photo imaging

Nb

18

Steel & superalloys High-T superalloys, next generation capacitors, superconducting resonators

Pt

7

Catalytic converters, liquid-crystal & flat-panel displays, jewelry, electronics

Hydrogen fuel cells, chemical sensors, cancer drugs, electronics

Te is tellurium; Co is cobalt; Bi is bismuth; W is tungsten; Nb is niobium; Pt is platinum

17

Table 2. Value of metals in 1 metric ton of Fe-Mn crust from central Pacific; red indicates metals commonly used for economic evaluations.

Mean Price of Metal (2008 $/kg)

Mean Content in Crusts (g/ton)

Value per Metric Ton of Ore ($)

Cobalt $92.59 6899 $638.81 Cerium $125.00 1605 $200.63 Titanium $8.70 12035 $104.70 Nickel $20.74 4125 $85.55 Molybdenum $74.96 445 $33.36 Platinum $64,795.28 0.5 $32.40 Tellurium $350.00 60 $21.00 Zirconium $25.30 618 $15.64 Copper $8.48 896 $7.59 Tungsten $25.40 90.5 $2.30 Total -- -- $1,141.98

Table 3. Nations that have conducted scientific research for Fe-Mn crusts, the regions of their studies, and the availability of data. Nation Region Data Australia SW Pacific Data/science published Brazil Equatorial Atlantic Data/science published China N Pacific Proprietary France French Polynesia Data/science published 1980s Germany Global Proprietary/science published India Mid-Indian Ocean Proprietary/science published Japan N Pacific/SOPAC Proprietary/SOPAC reports Korea N Pacific/SOPAC Proprietary/science published New Zealand SW Pacific Data/science published Portugal NE Atlantic Data/science published Russia N Pacific Proprietary/science published U.S. Global Data/science published

Hydrothermal vent ecosystems associated with polymetallic sulphides ‐ conservation and genetic resource issues

S. Kim Juniper

University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Abstract In addition to forming mineral deposits of economic interest, hydrothermal venting at mid-ocean ridges supports unique biological communities that are adapted to extreme environmental conditions and derive their energy from chemical substances in hydrothermal fluids. Most vent species occur nowhere else on Earth. Mining of hydrothermally active polymetallic sulphide deposits will result in the destruction of habitat used by vent organisms. In order to mitigate the impact of mining on the survival of individual hydrothermal vent species, research must be carried out prior to the planning of mining operations. The establishment of protected vent areas is one management tool that could be used to prevent eradication of species. Vent organisms also constitute a unique genetic resource. Academic researchers and the biotechnology industry have been particularly interested in the extremophile organisms that inhabit hydrothermal vents. Features such as tolerance to high temperatures and toxic chemicals, rapid growth and unusual symbioses with bacteria are common at vents. Already, enzymes from high temperature microorganisms being commercially marketed and other products of vent research are undergoing testing or clinical trials. Introduction The discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems in the late 1970’s was one of the most important biological discoveries of the latter half of the 20th century. Everywhere scientists have found hydrothermal vent activity in the deep ocean, they have found communities of specialized vent organisms. In order to understand the scientific value of vent ecosystems and their potential value to society, we first need to consider how ecosystems normally operate in the deep ocean. In the total darkness of the deep ocean most food chains are nourished by organic debris that sediments down from surface waters where phytoplankton carry out photosynthesis. Only a very small fraction (1% or less) of this surface productivity reaches the deep ocean floor. As a result, nutritional resources and animal life are very scarce. An exception to this rule is found at deep-sea hydrothermal vents at mid-ocean ridge and back-arc spreading centres, and at underwater volcanoes associated with island arc volcanism. In these settings, geological forces provide ecosystems with non-photosynthetic energy sources. Hydrothermal vents discharging from the seafloor provide chemical energy for specialized microbes and vent animals that concentrate around vent openings. Vent faunal biomass can be 500 to 1000 times that of the surrounding deep sea and rival values in the most productive marine ecosystems such as shellfish cultures. Biological productivity at hydrothermal vents is sustained not by photosynthetic products arriving from the sunlit surface ocean, but rather by the chemosynthesis of organic matter

by vent microorganisms, using energy from chemical oxidations to produce organic matter from CO2 and mineral nutrients. Hydrogen sulphide and other reducing substances present in hydrothermal fluids provide the fuel for organic matter synthesis by free-living microbes and microbes living in symbioses with vent organism. This chemosynthetically produced organic matter then provides food, often very abundant, for the animal communities living around vents (see Tunnicliffe 1992 and Van Dover 2000 for detailed discussion of the biology and ecology of hydrothermal vents). Vent biodiversity So far around 600 different organisms have been found at deep-sea hydrothermal vents. This is a small number compared to the 500,000 – 10,000,000 species estimated to inhabit the deep ocean, but vent organisms make up for their low diversity with a great deal of evolutionary novelty and the fact that most are found nowhere else on Earth. They exhibit many unusual adaptations to the severe, potentially toxic nature of the hydrothermal fluids. High animal density and the presence of unusual species are now known to be common characteristics of deep-sea hydrothermal vents all over the globe, with the composition of the fauna varying between sites and regions. More than 100 vent fields have been documented along the 60,000 km global mid-ocean ridge system since the first discovery in 1977. Hydrothermal faunal communities occupy very small areas of the seafloor and many sites contain animal species found nowhere else. Cutting edge biological science has become an important stakeholder in this resource and millions of research dollars are annually directed to laboratory and field studies of vent organisms. Research missions with deep-diving submersibles visit several vent sites around the world each year. Vent biology, in its brief history, has made major contributions to the development of basic models of life processes. Most recent editions of university textbooks in biology and ecology now use examples from hydrothermal vents to illustrate points on symbiosis, detoxification, adaptation to extreme conditions and ecosystem function. While few of the novel animal species discovered at vents may be edible or of any immediate material value, there is considerable interest from the biotechnology industry in extreme vent microorganisms. Features such as tolerance to high temperatures and toxic chemicals, rapid growth and unusual symbioses with bacteria are common at vents and have attracted a great deal of research interest. Hydrothermal vents are sites colonized by hyperthermophilic Bacteria and Archaea. They are called hyperthermophiles because they grow at temperatures in excess of 80˚C. Enzymes from these microorganisms have a range of specialized applications from molecular biology to the food processing, fabric and chemical industries. Such enzymes are produced by growing microorganisms in culture rather than harvesting biomass directly from the sea. The "Taq" DNA polymerase enzyme, used worldwide in molecular biology, is produced from Thermus aquaticus, a thermophile first isolated from terrestrial hot springs. Today, the annual market for Taq polymerase is worth approximately $500 million per year. Several DNA polymerase enzymes from hydrothermal organisms (Pfu DNA polymerase, Deep VentR DNA Polymerase and others) now constitute a substantial share of this market. We still know very little about the biodiversity of microbes at vents and their full

biotechnological potential remains unquantifiable. In addition to biotechnological exploitation of vent microbes, the vent fauna is also attracting research interest from this sector. One interesting examples comes from studies of the hemoglobin of a hydrothermal vent worm by French researchers. This work has led to a promising biotechnological development aimed at producing artificial blood from worm hemoglobin (Harnois et al. 2009). It is important to point out the bioprospecting at hydrothermal vents is very costly and development time for commercial products can take many years. Nonetheless, there are strong economic, as well as ecological arguments for preserving vent sites to safeguard this biodiversity and the genetic potential of both the prokaryotic and higher organisms. The visually spectacular and extreme nature of vent communities also makes them popular subjects for the science media and science education sectors. Several of the world’s leading natural history museums feature new exhibits on hydrothermal vents. A brief consideration of mining impacts Mining of hydrothermal polymetallic sulphides in coming decades will likely be concentrated in a few limited areas where polymetallic sulphide deposits of commercial size are known to occur. At these locations, extracting ore will result in removal of the substratum and production of a particulate plume. Some organisms will be directly killed by mining machinery, while others nearby risk smothering by material settling from the particulate plume. The high degree of uniqueness of the vent fauna, together with their limited distribution are important issues to be considered in developing strategies and regulations for the mining. In contrast, microorganisms colonizing hydrothermal sites are generally assumed to be drawn from a globally distributed gene pool and therefore little threatened by localized mining activities. The biogeography of marine microbes has been little studied and this view of their global distribution may eventually change. Studies of the rapid colonization of new vents following seafloor eruptions demonstrate the ability of the vent communities to re-establish at a severely disturbed site, as long there are hydrothermal emissions to support microbial chemosynthesis. While time scales for the establishment of mature, multi-species communities remain uncertain, high biomass and faunal density levels are attained within a few years after eruptions (van Dover, 2000). Observations of local shifting of vent species to adapt to changes in fluid flow reinforce this notion of resilience. While it may be tempting to apply the resilience argument to considerations of mining impact, it is important to point out that the mother populations that permit repopulation after perturbation are themselves particularly vulnerable to mining. There is some evidence that biodiversity within a given region is greatest at larger, longer-lived hydrothermal sites. This is in keeping with what has been observed in other ecosystems on Earth. Long-lived ‘mother populations’ may be critical to the maintenance of vent species biodiversity within a region. These same long-lived hydrothermal sites are also the most likely locations for accumulation of large sulphide deposits and therefore will be prime targets for mining. As well, many localized species many not have a nearby mother population or they may be unable to recolonize the altered substratum after mining. In the latter case, only the establishment of protected areas would prevent eradication of species.

Managing the impact of mining activities on hydrothermal vent ecosystems will present many challenges to regulatory agencies. The remote and deep location of these environments will mean that the mining industry and occasional scientific expeditions will be the only regular visitors and therefore will be the primary source of ecosystem information for managers. It will be essential that regulators, scientists and industry maintain a close and regular exchange of information. Otherwise, management of these vent ecosystems will be largely based on principles developed for near-shore marine environments, where conservation of living ecosystem components and physical and chemical properties are the primary high-level objectives. Maintaining an ecological status quo is probably of little relevance to these deep-sea vent ecosystems whose populations are virtually unquantifiable, where there is no documented ecosystem history and where seafloor volcanic eruptions and seismic activity can completely eliminate benthic communities in a matter of hours. If sustainable use for science and industry are to be overall management goals, then specific objectives and plans will need to be flexible and adapt to new knowledge of the ecosystem that researchers are acquiring each year. Research into the biology and ecology of hydrothermal vent organisms and other chemosynthetic ecosystems is a multi-million dollar industry that attracts some of the most talented researchers worldwide. Marine scientific research is therefore the most important stakeholder at hydrothermal vents and needs to partner with commercial exploitation of polymetallic sulphides to assure that mining is done in the most environmentally responsible way possible (Hoagland et al. 2010). Acknowledgements The International Seabed Authority and the Fundacón Ramón Areces provided support for the preparation of this paper and for travel to Madrid, Spain where the paper was presented at the Seabed: The new frontier seminar held February 24-26, 2010. References Hoagland, P., S. Beaulieu, MA Tivey, R.G Eggert, C. German, L. Glowka, J. Lin (2010) Deep-sea mining of seafloor massive sulfides. Marine Policy 34, 728-732. Harnois, T., M. Rousselot, H. Rognieaux, F. Zal (2009) High-leve production of recombinant Arenicola marina globin chains in Escherichia coli: A new generation of blood substitute. Artificial Cells, Blood Substitutes and Biotechnology 37, 106-116. Tunnicliffe, V. (1992) Hydrothermal-vent communities of the deep sea. American Scientist 80: 336-350. Van Dover, CL (2000) The ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

22586,2

683,9445,9

39,7

540,0

1,3

130,0

1360,0

17,020,4

1800,0

1,1

760,6

5846,0

1

10

100

1000

10000

100000

Mn Ni Cu Co Mo Zn Ag

mln ton

Ocean Terrestial

-160

º 00

' -1

60º 0

0'

-155

º 00

' -1

55º 0

0'

-150

º 00

' -1

50º 0

0'

-145

º 00

' -1

45º 0

0'

-140

º 00

' -1

40º 0

0'

-135

º 00

' -1

35º 0

0'

-130

º 00

' -1

30º 0

0'

-125

º 00

' -1

25º 0

0'

-120

º 00

' -1

20º 0

0'

-115

º 00

' -1

15º 0

0'

-110

º 00

' -1

10º 0

0'

0º 00' 0º 00'

4º 00' 4º 00'

8º 00' 8º 00'

12º 00' 12º 00'

16º 00' 16º 00'

20º 00' 20º 00'

24º 00' 24º 00'

28º 00' 28º 00'

30º 00' 30º 00'

Z O N E

F R A C T U R EZ O N E

F R A C T U R E

C L A R I O N

C L I P P E R T O N

Hawaii

ClippertonIsland

Kiribati

F R A C T U R EZ O N E

M O L O K A I

CONTRACTORS AREAS: ISA RESERVED AREAS: APPLICATION AREAS OF POTENTIAL INVESTORS:DORD (JAPAN)

IFREMER/AFERNOD (FRANCE)

YUZHMORGEOLOGIYA (RUSSIA)

COMRA (CHINA)

INTEROCEANMETAL JOINT ORGANIZATION (IOM)

KORDI (KOREA)

FIGNR (GERMANY)

OMI - II

OCEAN MINING ASSOCIATES (OMA)

OCEAN MANAGEMENT INCORPORATED (OMI - I)

LOCKHEED MARTIN SYSTEMS Co. Inc. (LMS)

L E G E N D

IOM's PROSPECTING AREA

1

The activities of Germany in relation to deep seabed mineral resource development

Prof. Dr. Peter M. Herzig

Director and CEO Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences IFM-GEOMAR

Kiel, Germany For many years, Germany has been active in world-wide scientific investigations of seafloor mineral resources, including polymetallic massive sulphide deposits, manganese nodules, manganese crusts and, most recently, gas hydrates. A large number of research cruises have been directed to the western and southwestern Pacific Ocean where numerous new discoveries of copper- and gold-rich metal sulphide deposits were made. A successful drilling cruise to the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea has resulted in drill cores of massive sulphide deposits that are now further investigated by commercial mining companies. A new type of submarine gold deposit that was found at a seamount in the same area has also generated the interest of mining companies. The German manganese nodule program currently focuses on the German claim in the Clarion-Clipperton area and has resulted in a renewed interest in the recovery of manganese nodules as a source for nickel, copper and cobalt. This program is ongoing and supported by German Federal authorities. Gas hydrates are currently investigated for their potential of combining CH4 recovery with the deposition of CO2. This concept has been developed based on many years of fundamental research and, if proven to be successful, may lead to a new industry combining two major issues of today’s and future societies: the need for clean energy and the protection of our climate.

Documents

Seabed: The New Frontier Seminar · Seabed: The new frontier. Exploration and exploitation of deep seabed mineral resources in the Area: Challenges for the International Community