No issue highlights the intersection of high-tech, climate change, international law, mining, biodiversity, cold war skullduggery, geopolitics and military interests as much as proposals to mine the deep ocean floors for billions of potato-shaped, mineral-rich, porous rocks called manganese nodules. In June, the tiny island country of Nauru (pop 10,000) set in motion a confrontation among great powers, the UN, the navies of many countries, high-tech ocean mining companies, environmentalists and more over deep seabed nodule mining.
The conflicts go way back to the 1970s, when then-rockstar billionaire, Howard Hughes, announced that his next big business was mining deep ocean floors for these nodules. Officials, executives and military brass worldwide took notice as Hughes launched a specially-built ship to scoop up nodules for manganese, nickel, copper and more. In a turn of events that almost defines “you couldn’t make this up,” however, it turned out that Hughes seabed mining venture was a cover for a top-secret project his company had undertaken for American intelligence to recover a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine. By then, however, the wheels had been set in motion to figure out who owns these seabed minerals, particularly since other American businesses had plans to mine the deep seabeds.
During the same period, the offshore oil drilling industry — driven by oil price increases — was gradually moving further out to sea on the continental shelves. This led to...
Read Full Story: https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/579365-battle-over-the-deep-seabeds
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