The Mining Industry’s Next Frontier Is Deep, Deep Under the Sea

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Companies are diving to the bottom to scoop up metals essential for our EV-driven future. But how much ocean are we willing to sacrifice?

—a tiny fossil, a scrap of basalt, a shark’s tooth—that drifted down to the plain at the very bottom of the ocean. In the lugubrious unfolding of geologic time, specks of waterborne nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese slowly accreted onto them. By now, trillions lie half-buried in the sediment carpeting the ocean floor.

In an era when population growth and an embryonic environmental movement were fueling concerns about natural resources, seabed mining suddenly got hot. Throughout the 1970s, governments and private companies rushed to develop ships and rigs to pull up nodules. There was so much hype that in 1972, it seemed completely plausible when billionaire Howard Hughes announced that he was dispatching a custom-built ship into the Pacific to search for nodules.

Barron saw the potential bonanza decades ago. He grew up on a dairy farm, the youngest of five kids. “I knew I didn’t want to be a dairy farmer, but I loved dairy farm life,” he says. “I loved driving tractors and harvesters.” He left home to go to a regional university and started his first company, a loan-refinancing operation, while still a student. After graduating, he moved to Brisbane “to discover the big, wide world.

 

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This of course raising a difficult question - if we have to disrupt underwater ecosystems in the name of sustainability, have we missed the point?

Same is true for social media

Big mistake

The future of electric vehicle battery production! It's exciting to see how deep-sea mining could potentially provide a sustainable source of the critical metals needed for these batteries. Keep up the great work! TechForGood

Wow! How you going to send little African children down there?

And I thought the sea was already in enough trouble. It will likely lead to altering sea life and exterminating biodiversity, thus, humans. Carbon is just one part of the problem and green tech may worsen it if it’s misused as the next profitable trend.

Namor gonna be pissed

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