Mining Consortia plan systems tests

Abstract

Four international mining consortia are planning systems tests for deepsea mining. The U.S. Commerce Department will monitor these initial manganese nodule gathering operations to measure their environmental impact. While industry has been working to develop deep‐sea mining techniques, scientists from Commerce's Deep Ocean Mining Environmental Study (Domes) have been engaged in base line studies of the state of the waters, life forms, and sea bed prior to mining. These studies have focused on three sites in the central Pacific judged to represent the range of environmental regimes that mining might affect.