Deep Seabed Mining
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A quiet international rush is under way to stake out seabed claims to valuable minerals, concentrating on the central Pacific. Led by big businesses such as the US defence contractor, Lockheed Martin, it offers the dream of fortunes to poor island nations.
[ More ]Vast new areas of the ocean floor have been opened up in an accelerating search for valuable minerals including manganese, copper and gold. In a move that brings closer a new era of deep sea mining, the UN's International Seabed Authority (ISA) has issued seven new exploration licences.
[ More ]South Korea has secured an exclusive right to explore a vast area of underwater mines in the Indian Ocean, the government said Wednesday.
[ More ]The editors argue that "[o]n the evidence of the first response to an application for seabed mining, those seeking consent for economic activity in the 200-mile zone will have to clear a very high hurdle" due to the significant environmental unknowns involved.
[ More ]A project to mine undersea iron ore deposits off the New Zealand coast has been rejected because of uncertainty about the environmental effects of the project, the country’s Environmental Protection Authority said on Wednesday.
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New Zealand decides this week whether to approve an underwater iron-ore operation that would likely become the world's first commercial metals mine at the bottom of the sea.
[ More ]Oceana is calling on EU citizens to help push for the suspension of the European Commission’s plans to develop deep-sea mining operations.
[ More ]Undersea mining is an entirely new area of exploitation, the effects of which are not fully known. “We know less about the deep sea than we know about the surface of the moon,” says environtmentalist Richard Page. “So this is a big experiment.”
[ More ]A new fleet of underwater robots, built outside Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK, will dive down to 1,500 metres and claw up the rich minerals and metals carpeting the world’s seafloors.
[ More ]Plans to open the world's first mine in the deep ocean have moved significantly closer to becoming reality. A Canadian mining company has finalised an agreement with Papua New Guinea to start digging up an area of seabed.
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