Deep Sea Mining
Deep sea mining refers to the extraction of minerals from the seabed. The main ores that attract commercial interest are unattached polymetallic nodules, which are found at depths of 2.5–3.7 miles (4-6 km), and contain nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese.
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China is going full Jules Verne as it prepares to go where no drill has gone before. As part of its Deep Ocean Drilling Program, the special-built Meng Xiang (梦想号, "Dream") drill ship is gearing up for a multi-year effort to pierce the Earth's crust. -
Deep sea mining has been off limits because it's awfully hard, and because governments haven't yet firmed up regulations around extracting minerals offshore. That might soon change with The Metal Company's latest move – perhaps sooner than it should. -
The green economy desperately needs huge quantities of battery metals, and they're sitting right there on the deep ocean floor. Here's a device designed to harvest them with the minimum possible impact to one of the world's last untouched ecosystems. -
The seafloor is rich in valuable metals, but gathering them is disruptive to the environment. An international project has now tested a system called Apollo 2, which can vacuum up metal nodules without kicking up sediment.