![]() It’s really people living in the years 2100 or 2200 or 2300 who would be affected. In the rush to harvest these metals, nearly 600,000 square miles of the deep seafloor has already been set aside for commercial exploration, with much more expected to follow. That’s thanks to technological advances that allow industrial-scale mining at such depths, as well as the skyrocketing demand for metals to make all the solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and batteries needed to wean the world off fossil fuels.ĭeep-sea mining is also presented as an alternative to environmental degradation 1 and human rights abuses 2 linked to terrestrial mining. Yet only recently has it become economically viable to reap these riches tens of thousands of feet beneath the ocean surface. In addition to these nodules, which are scattered across undersea plains, later expeditions found that the seafloor’s slopes, ridges, and geysers are enriched with the same valuable metals. In 1873, a British expedition dredged up several potato-sized, black lumps from the North Atlantic seabed which turned out to be full of manganese, nickel, copper, and cobalt. Miners have long known that the abyssal depths of the ocean floor are filled with treasure.
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