7 November 2020 | New Scientist | 41

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seven for polymetallic sulphides and five for

cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts. Countries

involved so far are Russia, South Korea,

China, France, Japan, Germany, the UK, India,

Poland, Brazil, Singapore, Tonga, Nauru

and the Cook Islands. No deep-sea mining

has taken place yet, however. That will

require a new phase in which exploitation

licences are issued.

Some scientists are already calling for a ban

on mining active hydrothermal vents – the

“black smokers” of TV nature documentary

fame. Cindy Van Dover, director of Duke

University’s Marine Laboratory in North

Carolina, is one of them. In 2018, Van Dover

and her colleagues published research

calculating that the total sea-floor area of all

known active hydrothermal vents is about

50 square kilometres – around half the size

of Disney World in Florida, or less than 1 per

cent of the size of Yellowstone National Park.

“It is a super-rare environment,” she says. Yet

that tiny global area is home to more than

400 species of animal not found in any

created in 1994 to regulate deep-sea mining
and ensure that lower-income nations
benefit from it. “It is the only organisation
that has such a broad mandate over a
common property resource,” says Michael
Lodge, secretary-general of the ISA, which
has its headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica.
Through the ISA, the UNCLOS signatories
have devised rules for the extraction of
three different types of mineral deposits
in the deep ocean: polymetallic nodules
(manganese nodules scattered across sea
floor plains), polymetallic sulphides (deposits
rich in copper, formed by hydrothermal
vents) and cobalt-rich ferromanganese
crusts (which form on undersea mountains).
Nations can sponsor applications by
contractors – either mining companies
or research institutions – for exploration
licences to map and study the value of a
particular type of deposit in an agreed area.
The first exploration licences were issued
in 2001. By last year, the tally had reached 30,
of which 18 were for manganese nodules,

21

billion tonnes of manganese nodules

exist in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone

5.88 billion tonnes of manganese

273 million tonnes of nickel

231 million tonnes of copper

42 million tonnes of cobalt

12 million tonnes of molybdenum

Containing: