Deep Seabed mining, are you kidding? Mining at 10,000 or 20,000 feet below the ocean surface? Is it even possible? The short answer is yes and it's likely to happen in the next few years.

On September 8th, I was privileged to attend a briefing on this subject at the Pew Charitable Trust offices in Washington, DC. The briefing was conducted by Dr. Conn Nugent, Director of Pew's seabed mining project. According to Nugent, the upper few inches of the deep seabed contains deposits of valuable minerals, gold, silver, nickel, copper, manganese, lithium, and rare earth minerals. He discussed three sources of these minerals from different areas of the seafloor. I'll only mention polymetallic nodules.

The first step in considering mining of the seabed is exploration. Much exploration has been done and areas considered rich in minerals have been identified. Nugent showed the attendees a potato-sized polymetallic nodule from a flat area (plateau) in the seabed of the Pacific Ocean. The rock was black indicating that it was primarily manganese. Hundreds of thousands of these rocks litter the plateau.

Following exploration, the next step is the development of extraction technology. In areas like the plateau, a vacuuming device would be lowered to the seabed from a ship. This technology has been developed to the point that exploitation of the minerals will be possible in less than five years.

Sixty percent of the world's deep seabed lies beyond the exclusive economic zones of countries. A United Nations organization called the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has broad powers to establish conditions for exploration and exploitation of seabed mineral resources. Member states can apply for ISA contracts. At the beginning of 2017, there were 26 exploration contracts but no exploitation contracts. Nations with companies holding contracts include India, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Belgium, United Kingdom and several others including some small nations such as Tonga. Absent from the list is the United States who has not ratified the document creating ISA. Nugent believes that the first nation to be granted an exploitation contract will be Belgium.

Nugent was asked if seabed mining isn't already being done. He replied that yes but only in shallow water inside the economic zones of the countries in question. He cited the dredging of sand to replace sand eroded from beaches. He also cited oil drilling in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. But he reiterated that mining has never been done before now in the deep ocean.

There is serious disagreement about whether seabed mining should even be done. Some say there's reason to believe it should not. Some say there's reason to believe it should not. There is insufficient data to make firm conclusions, but seabed mining is not a matter of if but when. Nations wanting to benefit from seabed mining will make sure that this knowledge will be known and used.