Marare minerals may not sound like an entertaining treasure to you, but in the mining industry the materials can be more valuable than gold. And there are still regulations in place to prevent deep sea mining from destroying the sea.
Right now the bottom line of the ocean defense is the International Seabed Authority (not to be confused with the International Waterbed Authority, which ended in the late ’90s). They have been working on the issue since they were first formed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and they have been fighting upwards (upstream?) Ever since. It is not because of lack of action - they have made regulations and suggested recommendations - it is for lack of knowledge. We only researched a small percentage of the ocean and mapped a little at sea, so it was difficult to know where mining would likely take place or how it would affect the surrounding waters.
But goodness knows that does not stop anyone from exploring what is there. A team of British scientists recently discovered a large commodity of essential minerals at the top of an underwater mountain called the Tropic Seamount. It is basically a large flat-topped mound of some of the very materials on Earth. This particular group is part of a research mission - and while they expect to find rare minerals, they do not expect too much of them. There is an equivalent of a dozen tellurium supplies in the world there, used in advanced solar panels, along with rare earth elements that enter electronics.
That makes deep sea deposits important, and the fact that they are currently very expensive and mine to spend on them is likely to deter everyone. And you know what they say: if you can't stop 'em, fix em. The million-or perhaps billion-dollar question is: how?
Even people who spend their lives exploring the depths of the ocean are not sure. Cindy Van Dover, who ventured into submitting Alvin both as a pilot and as a lead scientist over the last few decades, explains that it is difficult to apply the limited knowledge of certain sections of the seafloor to the whole thing.
We know if they are mine in some places they will just do the sea shearing, so to some extent we know that there is already some habitat going on, but he says, There are many who do not know. There are organisms that have a long life. There are organisms with very rapid reproduction that can be elastic, but they live in hydrothermal vents so they are really only endemic to small patches, and they need to look for another patch.
Without knowledge of how to accumulate mining effects, it is challenging to create effective legislation.
We know what will happen when we get to the land, so when the authorities create agricultural regulations they know exactly what to watch out for. It is not easy in the ocean. But it is important that we act now. They started, it was going to be like deep sea fishing, where it was really hard to manage, Van Dover said. I feel we have this opportunity now to get the regulations right.
On the seafloor, there are no unfortunate residents to complain about the effects of mining. Fish and microscopic organisms cannot tell us that they are dying. Residents of deep-sea oceans and other major geological hubs are likely to be richer in valuable minerals. Some are particularly vulnerable, as they do not have large habitats. Moreover, they are no longer in international waters, where no country drives the economy to sustain others. It is up to the International Seabed Authority to keep everyone in line, and it is our instinct to preserve nature. And that has always worked well in the past ... right?
