The Blue Wonder by Frauke Bagusche

Author:Frauke Bagusche
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gold Rush in Deep Waters

The search for raw materials is driving people to ever remoter areas. Sand, gravel, oil, and gas have been extracted from the oceans for many years, but now humans are beginning to predict the possibilities of another depot of raw materials—the deep sea. Way down there, in the darkness, lie raw materials worth billions of dollars, and various countries, particularly the industrial nations, need these raw materials. The demand is high for precious metals for smartphones, cars, and solar panels. News of deep-sea deposits are in the process of starting a real gold rush. The problem is the potential harm to sea creatures by deep-sea mining is so great that the International Union for Conservation of Nature equates it to forest degradation. We simply know too little about the deep sea, and deep-sea flora and fauna could be destroyed forever by the mechanical intrusions of mining. The demand for coveted minerals, however, continues to grow rapidly. Ever-faster development cycles mean that the latest models of smartphones with ever-decreasing durability are catapulted onto the market, and broken or unwanted ones, which contain copper, cobalt, and aluminum, end up in the garbage. These phones will of course need to be replaced, and they too contain rare and precious raw materials, raw materials that can be found in the deep seas and that are waiting to be exploited. Commercial deep-sea mining is planned to start in 2025.

The Peru Basin, the site of the two previously mentioned Casper octopus broods, is home to manganese nodules. The largest, and thus economically the most important, deposits of this metal are found in the equatorial North Pacific. The almost 2-million-square-mile area stretches from Hawaii to Mexico and is often referred to as the “manganese nodule belt.” This is an area slightly larger than Europe. The nodules cover roughly 60 percent of the seafloor in this belt, at depths of between 13,000 and 20,000 feet. And there they lie like potatoes in a field. Outwardly they also resemble potatoes, but they grow somewhat slower—on average roughly 0.2 to 0.4 inches every million years. The nodules form around a growth core and consist of 25 percent manganese and other pure metals such as iron, nickel, copper, and cobalt. In order to grow, they need chemical elements absorbed from the seawater or, more frequently, from the pore water of the underlying sediments.

It is these rare and very valuable metals in the 1-to 3-inch nodules that make them so attractive to the fast-growing high-tech industry. Mining licenses have to be authorized to exploit the resources. Germany has secured a section of the belt a bit larger than Bavaria. In 2006, the sector was leased for 250,000 Euros (US$275,000) by the UN for 15 years to investigate the deposits. Since 2015, Germany has had a mining license and is just waiting for the go-ahead. The prospective countries have to apply to the International Seabed Authority (ISA) for mining licenses. In the area leased by Germany, there are millions of manganese nodules lying on the sea bed at a depth of 13,000 feet.

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