Will humans mine for gold on the sea floor?

SAN FRANCISCO--The next gold rush might take place at the bottom of the sea.

Commercial mining companies are studying the possibility of extracting silver, gold, copper and other valuable metals from the volcanic vents found in the world's ocean floors.

"What is driving it is the increase in metal prices," said Peter Rona, professor of Marine Geology at Rutgers University, speaking at the 2005 American Geophysical Union, an annual conference on earth sciences taking place this week in San Francisco. "It is not out of the realm of possibility" that undersea mining could begin in a few years.

The most likely place where undersea mining might start is off the coast of Papua New Guinea, where a company called Nautilus Minerals has been exploring a series of offshore vents about 1.2 miles down since 1997. Volcanic vents in the seas near Tonga have also drawn interest from speculators.

The volcanic fields in the world's oceans form on the borders of tectonic plates: Metals from deep within the Earth well up through the cracks. The individual vents themselves are around the height of a human being and form in fields. In the Pacific, the fields are relatively small but are situated close to one other.

Volcanic fields in the Atlantic, which scientists two decades ago didn't believe existed, sit farther apart, but grow larger. The Trans-Atlantic Geotraverse (TAG) field, smack in the middle of the Atlantic, is about the same size as the Roman Coliseum.

"The TAG field is made up of iron, copper zinc and significant but smaller amounts of gold and silver," Rona said, although the location means it won't likely be harvested.

Volcanic vents have somewhat recently been discovered in the Arctic and Indian oceans. These fields remain elusive, asserted Robert Reves-Sohn, a scientist in the geology and geophysics department of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Scientists place a sensor in a can and then drag it around the ocean looking evidence of seismic activity.

"This is a real needle-in-a-haystack problem," Reves-Sohn said.

Similar volcanic fields on the dry parts of the world were scoured long ago. "The fields on Cyprus were almost single-handedly responsible for the Bronze Age," Reves-Sohn said.

Huge environmental and commercial risks abound. Regional governments will need to create laws to supervise this activity, should it occur, said Rona. National governments have jurisdiction over their own coastal zones.

Some companies already exploit undersea volcanic vents for profit. Microbes that have evolved to feed off the chemical energy exuded by the vents are now harvested to produce enzymes. These enzymes then get used in food preservatives and in DNA fingerprint systems, Rona said.

[SqlserverCode]

Humans would

Humans would mine on the moon for gold if they knew there was any. Greed is the driving force

http://otherthingsnow.blogspot.com

[JHann]

Sensitive marine environment

It would be nice to see more coverage in this article about the sensitive marine environments around these volcanoes. Some species rely entirely on these environments. Like the rainforests, several new (and valuable) species have been found here.

It's probably inevitable that we'll start mining these vents, but let's do it responsibly.

[sanenazok]

Last time

The last time the media ran "mining under the sea" story, the whole operation turned out to be cover for a US extraction of a Soviet submarine.

[Tierragroup]

Undersea mining

The idea of mining the volcanic vents in the mid ocean ridges is as old as the discovery of those mineral rich formations. But even if the technology makes it economicaly feasible, the environmental impact would be so big that wouldn't be worth it. let's remember that the ecosystems associated to those vents are among the only ones that don't depend on the Sun's energy to exist and thrive. There is still a lot to learn from them.

[superdave132]

nature dosent pay us enough

why stop destroying the planet now, i mean nature dosent have a big enough wallet to bribe us to stop. PURE GREED and selfishness for the almighty dollar. not that nature dosent feed us every day of our lives and how we repay the wonderful planet, is buy digging its guts out, no wonder god is punishing so much, and it's only going to get worse...