OCEANS AND OCEANS OF MINERAL RESOURCES

A healthy society requires abundant energy and mineral resources. To date we have obtained these resources mostly from the ¼ of our planet that is not covered by water or ice with great benefit and some environmental cost. Although we have always feared these resources are depleting and we have always discovered more, at some point this may not continue to be the case. The earth is 71% ocean and there are vast mineral resources dissolved in the ocean waters, in nodules lying on the seafloor, in ocean sediments within a few meters of the seafloor, and in hydrothermal seafloor massive sulfide deposits that could be, and in the case of sulfides are soon to be, mined. The totality of ocean resources has yet to be defined but clearly could be huge. With modern breeder technology, reactors that cannot melt down could produce for 7,800 years the 7 kW per person needed for a European standard of living (currently supplied by coal, oil, gas, and some nuclear) from the U dissolved in ocean waters; half the massive sulfide resource that is calculated cover the seafloor could sustain humanity for 5,000 years; 3% of the Li dissolved in the oceans could provide ¼ of a hybrid car per person; the deep ocean could supply the phosphate required to sustain world agriculture for 33 centuries; and deep-sea muds contain a resource of the rare earth elements needed for modern electronics that is at least as abundant as that on land. The processes that accumulate these resources are fascinating, and of planetary scale. For example, the REE in deep-sea sediments were scavenged from the seawater by iron-oxyhydroxides and zeolites produced by ridge hydrothermal activity. Mining would be carried out by a mobile infrastructure and could surgically mine smaller deposits with greater safety than is possible on land. The ocean resources offer more equitable access, and can be recovered with less environmental damage than mines on land. Any discussion of a sustainable and healthy human future must take into account the oceans and oceans of mineral resources contained in the world’s oceans. We should accelerate laying the knowledge foundation for recovering ocean resources in the most environmentally and ecologically acceptable way possible. Our future could depend on it.