The scramble for the seas

Almost unnoticed, in May, during the first weeks of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a new era in man’s exploitation of the oceans began. The Chinese government lodged an application with the United Nations to mine for minerals on a ridge 1,700 metres down in the south-west Indian Ocean, outside any individual nation’s jurisdiction. It is the first application of its kind for mining in international waters, and so has potentially vast implications — for international law, for the price of metals, and for the marine environment. It is likely to be the first of many.

Experts have expected that someone would want to mine the sea floor since the 1970s. What looked like starting the ball rolling was the mining of manganese deposits — allegedly used by the CIA as cover for the attempted raising of wrecked Soviet submarines. The economics never stacked up and there are eight dormant claims for mining manganese in the Pacific. Now the keen prices for metals such as nickel, cobalt and tellurium, used in computers, batteries, mobile phones and military applications, have made the Chinese think that it is worth the many billions of yuan that it would take to establish and mine a claim on the sea bed. Asia’s manufacturing nations want security of supply and steady prices for the raw materials presently found within the borders of corrupt African democracies, failed states and dictatorships.

China wants to mine a rich layer of sulphide deposits in an area of hydrothermal vents — geysers driven by volcanic activity. Exploration in the central Pacific with remotely operated underwater vehicles has shown that sulphide deposits around hydrothermal vents can contain ores ten times richer than any left unexploited on land. Indeed, the richest deposits of copper known to the ancient world, on Cyprus, are now thought to have come from hydrothermal vents that ended up above sea level.