Impacts of Up-Coming Deep-Sea Mining

Abstract

Deep-sea mining has been a subject of interest for several groups and countries for over four decades, due to its potential for the economical recovery of large reserves of minerals that would provide an alternative resource of strategic metals for industrial development. A deep-sea mining operation will offer a variety of challenges, owing to deep-sea mineral occurrences (1 to 6 km (0.6 – 3.7 mi) of water depths), extreme physical and chemical conditions (high pressure, low temperature) and unknown environmental settings. Owing to the growing concerns about the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining, multi-disciplinary environmental studies (oceanography, geology, geochemistry, ecology and geotechnical engineering) have been progressive in many countries. The historical approaches in the world are summarized. The important roles of environmental impact experiment and quantified environmental assessment for deep-sea mining are also introduced. A pioneer deep-sea mining project is under progress and the commercial mining is scheduled to start in 2012’2013. Because the metal contents of mined ore from the deep-sea mining are different with those from on-land mining, the commercial mining may cause some economic impacts on metal markets.