As Peacock and Alford calculate, companies would need to collect 3 million tonnes of dry manganese nodules a year to profit — which would mean underwater collector vehicles combing 50km a day, and reaping nodules in concentrations above 10kg per square metre. By now, Chinese companies have three of the 27 licences so far awarded by the International Seabed Authority, and China controls more mining exploration areas in international waters than any other country. How concerned China is about the environmental challenges is another matter.

David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view.

Skip to main content. As China leads the hunt for deep-sea minerals, environmental and financial concerns come to the surface. Friday, 04 May, , 1: Friday, 04 May, , Related topics China science. More on this story. Science Operation Z machine: Science Storm clouds continue to brew over Sky River rain-making project 13 Dec Letters Are gene-edited babies safe from HIV mutations?


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China enters a new era for conservation and pollution control, but can it implement all the sweeping changes? You are signed up.

Japan breaks China's stranglehold on rare metals with sea-mud bonanza

We think you'd also like. Thank you You are on the list. This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Neodymium is used in hybrid cars, and terbium cuts power use for low-energy lightbulbs by 40pc. The metals are also used in precision-guided weapons, missiles such as the Hellfire, military avionics, satellites, and night-vision equipment. Washington was caught badly off guard when China started restricting supplies. The US defence and energy departments have now made it an urgent priority to find other sources, but warn that it may take up to a decade to rebuild the supply-chain.

Most rare earth metals are not that rare but they are hard to find in viable concentrations, and the metallurgy is complex. The new discovery is the second time this month that Japan has announced a major find on the sea floor.

TOKYO (3 p.m.)

It announced a break-through in extracting gas from methane hydrates under the ocean last week, a technology that is likely to prove costly but could meet Japan's gas needs for a century. Accessibility links Skip to article Skip to navigation. Wednesday 19 December Japan breaks China's stranglehold on rare metals with sea-mud bonanza Japanese scientists have found vast reserves of rare earth metals on the Pacific seabed that can be mined cheaply, a discovery that may break the Chinese monopoly on a crucial raw material needed in hi-tech industries and advanced weapons systems.

The team have found deposits just two to four metres from the seabed surface at higher concentrations than anybody ever thought existed. More from the web. The member states of the ISA form an Assembly that elects 36 representatives to serve on the Council, a policymaking body that approves mining contracts. The Council in turn elects experts in mining, science and law to serve five-year terms on the Legal and Technical Commission LTC , which reviews mining applications, drafts regulations and ensures mining companies comply with environmental rules.

Its deliberations are mostly confidential, and the LTC does not disclose what mining companies from China, Japan, Russia and other countries are finding at depths that can reach 4 miles 6km below the surface of the ocean. It will be years before the first robotic mining machines are expected to descend to the sea floor to scoop up potato-sized polymetallic nodules and scrape hydrothermal vent fields and underwater mountains for valuable minerals. The race is on. Mining minerals at extreme depths and under extreme pressure has until recently been more science fiction than scientific possibility.

Still, the ISA in began awarding year contracts to mining companies that give them the exclusive right to explore 29, square mile 75, square km sections of the seabed for polymetallic nodules. Other contracts were issued for 3, square mile 10, square km patches to look for polymetallic sulfides at hydrothermal vent fields, and 1, square mile 3, square km concessions to explore cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts of underwater mountains called seamounts. To date, 28 contracts have been issued that cover more than , square miles 1.

Rich in manganese with concentrations of nickel, iron, cobalt and other valuable metals, the nodules formed over millions of years as, according to a prevailing theory, metallic elements in seawater slowly precipitated to the ocean floor. Those nodules, the researchers found, are habitat for a host of deep-sea marine life, such as anemones and sponges that in turn host tube worms, corals and other bottom-dwelling critters.

Just last year the discovery of a new species of ghost-white octopus — nicknamed Casper — on the seabed off Hawaii created a media sensation. Scientists in discovered a new species of octopus that lays its eggs on the stalks of sponges attached to polymetallic nodules on the seabed. Vent fields spew superheated sulfide-laded fluids that, over the eons, have laid down deposits of copper, gold, iron, silver and zinc on the sea floor.

The vents spawned species and ecosystems that depend on chemical synthesis rather than photosynthesis — light — for life.

Japanese team films fish at deepest-ever depth in Mariana Trench | The Japan Times

It totals, in our generous estimate, 50 square km. And this means disturbance from mining will persist for centuries. The environmental impact of seabed mining is on the minds of national delegates as they take their seats behind a sweep of tables arrayed in concentric semi-circles before a dais presided over by the president of the ISA Council, Ariel Fernandez of Argentina. It was a view expressed by nearly every national delegate that spoke during the ISA session.

There needs to be environmental controls for the public to buy into seabed mining.

The draft regulations detail their obligation to conduct environmental assessments and minimize the impact of seabed mining. A deep-ocean species of sea cucumber swims over polymetallic nodules on the seabed. If scientists, policymakers and advocates agree on one thing, it is that there is a fundamental paucity of data on deep-sea marine life and thus an understanding of the functioning of seabed communities and their role in the larger ocean ecosystem.

Until the advent of deep-ocean remotely operated vehicles ROVs in the s and 90s, it was simply not possible to explore the seabed in a systematic way. The seabed authority bases its decisions in large part on scientific data gathered by the mining contractors themselves during surveys of marine life and seabed conditions, as well as the results of computer modeling and laboratory testing of potential mining impacts. For instance, the seabed authority used such data in to create Areas of Particular Environmental Interest in the CCZ that put nine 62, square mile , square km blocks of the sea floor off-limits for mining.

Those issues continue to spark controversy.