Treasures under the sea 4000m . deep

In 1972, a young ecologist named Hjalmar Thiel ventured to a remote region of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). The seabed there boasts one of the world's largest collections of massive untapped 'treasures'.

Huge treasure under the sea

Experts have been amazed to discover that: About 4,000 meters below the ocean's surface, the CCZ's abyss contains trillions of mound-like multi-metallic nodules - these are tuber-sized deposits. Potatoes are filled with copper, nickel, manganese and other rare ores.

Hjalmar Thiel was only interested in meiofauna - tiny, invertebrate animals that live on and between nodules. But the young ecologist's companions were not. They are eager for the CCZ's wealth and want to extract potentially valuable ore from the metal-rich mud in the 4,000 meter deep sea.

Estimates suggest that the multi-metallic nodules in the CCZ - which stretches from Hawaii to the Baja California Peninsula - contain more Cobalt, Manganese and Nickel than the sum of all known deposits on land, the journal Nature estimates. price.

Manganese nodules cover the seafloor in the Clarion–Clipperton Region.

Specifically, according to the assessment of Nature, the CCZ area has a very rich amount of minerals, many metals have more reserves than on land. Specifically:

• Manganese reserves in the CCZ are 5,992 million tons - while worldwide inland manganese reserves are 5,220 million tons.
• Copper reserves in the CCZ are about 226 million tons - while world-scale inland copper reserves are >1000 million tons.
• Nickel reserves in the CCZ are 274 million tons - on land it is only 150 million tons.
• Titanium reserves in CCZ are 67 million tons - on land is 899 million tons.
• Rare earth reserves in the CCZ are 15 million tons - on land it is 150 million tons.
• Cobalt reserves in the CCZ are 44 million tons - on land it is 13 million tons.
• Yttrium reserves in CCZ are 2 million tons - on land only 0.5 million tons.

….There are many other metals and rare earths.

That was the beginning of the journey to find the bottom of the sea and exploit the "natural treasures" of man.

Half a century later, the dawn of the deep-sea mining industry has arrived. The growing demand for batteries to power electric cars and store wind and solar energy has increased the cost of many rare earth metals, which has created an urgent need for the ore mining industry. under the sea.

In 2019, a startup called DeepGreen in Vancouver, Canada, announced that it was raising $150 million to begin exploring the mineral wealth in part of the Pacific Ocean floor.

Deep sea animals were collected from the depths of the ocean in the Clarion-Clipperton Area. Clockwise from top left: Sea cucumbers called "gum squirrels" (Psychropotes longicauda), a sea urchin and two sea cucumbers.

The dark side of wealth

The deep sea - often defined as water less than 200 meters deep - is a world of indifference. The temperature near the seabed in many places hovers near 0 degrees Celsius. It's dark, there's no light and the pressure can exceed 1,000 bar - the equivalent of several elephants standing on your big toe. . But miraculously, life still thrived. The deep sea contains a host of ecosystems that researchers have barely been able to explore.

Areas like these are some of the quietest, most remote ecosystems on the planet, where fine silt flows down at a rate of about 1 centimeter every 1,000 years. That low-energy environment is home to polychaetes, crustaceans, sponges, sea cucumbers, starfish, sea urchins and many species of deep-sea fish, as well as a multitude of microorganisms and living organisms. under small sediments.

Another form of mineral deposit is the metal-rich crust that covers the seams, thousands of meters above the abyssal plain. These coatings include high-value metals, such as cobalt, platinum, and molybdenum.

A third type of mineral deposits that are attracting the attention of scientists and miners are the giant sulfides - rich in copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver. These ores form around hydrothermal vents that occur along volcanic ridges that run through oceanic basins.

The image depicts the extraction/harvesting of multi-metallic nodules on the seabed.

For many years, it was thought that the first deep-sea environment to be exploited would be hydrothermal vents in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea. Nautilus Minerals of Toronto, Canada, is pursuing that project, but financial difficulties and local opposition have derailed the project, making CCZ the most viable test ground for mining deep sea bottom.

Companies are moving forward with plans to exploit minerals in the CCZ. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) - a 168-member body set up by the United Nations to promote and regulate undersea fishing - has, over the past decade, issued 29 exploration permits to government-funded contractors to explore mineral assets in several deep-sea locations. Of the permits issued, 16 are for the CCZ, and these represent about 20% of the total area of ​​the CCZ.

As for scientists, since ecologist Hjalmar Thiel's first visit to the CCZ in 1972, they have explored it in much greater detail. Deep-sea biologist Craig Smith at the University of Hawaii at Honolulu (USA) has spent 30 years studying the inhabitants of CCZ, where he has collected sea cucumbers, sea urchins, soft corals, starfish, anemones, worms and more. About 90% of the animals his team collected were new to science or undescribed.

Among these are rare species found nowhere else in the deep sea. Even now, scientists have only sampled 0.01% of the CCZ's total area, says Craig Smith.

Mining in the CCZ, if it happens, is still nearly a decade away, with Global Sea Mineral Resources aiming to open a commercial undersea mine by 2027.

As the miners eagerly searched the seabed to get rich, the scientists became more and more worried. When CCZ mining begins, the scene on the ocean floor will look like this: Large robotic machines like combine harvesters will crawl along, picking up multi-metal nodules and sucking up about 10cm of the top of the mine. soft sediments with them.

The image shows in the North Pacific Ocean, a remotely operated vehicle collecting a metal nodule has stolen a deep-sea creature growing on top. Its fate is not difficult to envision.

Because the nodules grow so slowly, mining them will permanently remove them from the seabed "effectively," the scientists said. Nodules are an irreplaceable habitat for many organisms living in the CCZ.

'For most animals in the vicinity, mining would be disastrous. It will wipe out most of the large animals and everything that sticks to the nodules," said Henko de Stigter, an ocean systems scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Marine Research in Texel.

And yet, the impact of mining in the CCZ will be much broader than just killing off the ecology around the nodules. As the collection machines move across the seafloor, they stir up clouds of soft sediment that stretch for tens of thousands of kilometers. At high densities, sediments can bury and kill marine animals.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) says it is listening to scientists and combining their assessments to develop regulations for deep-sea fishing that are both economic and habitat-friendly. marine species. Michael Lodge, general secretary of the ISA, said: 'This is the most thoughtful preparation we have ever made for any industrial operation.

Currently, the ISA is convincing 168 member states to agree to a draft law, which conservationists and scientists hope will require the industry to behave responsibly in deep-sea mining.