US Strategy on Deep Sea Mining? Dig, Baby, Dig
On my desk at home is a dusty, reddish mineral nodule about the size of a small potato. It was harvested from the deep Pacific, and given to me by a friend who is seized with the idea of mining the deep seabed. He also knew that I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in the early 1980s on the technology transfer provisions in the deep-seabed mining portions of the United Nations Law of the Sea treaty. I look at that nodule, which I generally use as a paperweight, from time to time as I muse about the huge potential of seabed mining.
Extracting minerals from the floors of the ocean is very attractive strategically. There are huge deposits of cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper, lithium and rare-earth metals that can be scooped up in the form of nodules and refined. The hard part is getting them to the surface, which can be done using a combination of underwater drones, dredging with mechanical arms and nets, and hydraulic systems to blast them up toward the ocean's surface.
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