Deep sea mining: Into the deep | 60 Minutes Archive

60 Minute Rewind Imagine a piece of rock the size of a potato. Now fill it with some of the most valuable metals on Earth, including nickel, cobalt, and other minerals known as rare Earth elements. There are billions of these nodules, that's what they're called. waiting to be detected the problem is that they are at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean the nodules were discovered more than a century ago now new technology has unleashed fierce competition to obtain them these metals are critical for modern life Cell phones electric cars and supercomputers 19 Countries including China and Russia have already jumped into the

deep

end, but the only country on the sidelines, the United States, we'll talk more about that in a moment, but first we want to take a look at this new frontier.

Our adventure began at the point 3:00 in the morning, loading our tugboat, we left San Diego, the harbor lights quickly sank behind us, 10 hours later we were crossing the Pacific Ocean with nothing to see but the rough ocean , so it wasn't difficult to spot the MK Launcher, a 300-tonne

mining

research vessel we had come to join, all we had to do was climb aboard while the launcher dangled a rope ladder above us, the tug backed up with 10+ foot swells, the weather was all in on the top of the Wave, we took a leap of faith and landed in the new world of

deep

sea

mining

.

We were traveling with Gerard Baron, the CEO of the Canadian company Deep Green Metals. He was eager to catch up with the launch crew who had been at sea for 5 weeks. In a test mapping the seabed and fishing for nodes this was the sunken treasure we had come to see what makes them so valuable what is in that well which is an electric vehicle battery in a rock it looks like a piece of coal it does, but it is a beautiful piece of ndul. The amazing thing is that it is full of nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese, and that is all we need to build a battery.

Okay, start looking for the nodules. The crew lifts a 3-ton platform. called box core on the side plunging into the ocean it begins its 3 m descent to the bottom of the sea hours later it approached the bottom it felt like it was watching a new moon landing and there were giant fields of nodules covering an alien landscape of millions years old the nodules grow by absorbing metals from seawater slowly expanding around a core of shell bone or rock the potential is astonishing estimates of their value range from 8 to more than 16 billion dollars they are found mainly in the area of Clarion clipperton or ccz about 2 million square miles of ocean between Hawaii and Mexico in This deep green research trip collected more than 100 portions of the seafloor, each box returned on board loaded with the day's catch, thousands of nodules in 30 years, as geologist Warwick Miller told us he had never seen anything like it.

A great day to be a geologist. He said it was a great day to be a geologist. What did you want to say? We were standing next to the Box Cor. I remember raising my hand. It was covered in mud. It's nice to be able to understand it. to touch them, you know it's better than looking at it behind a display case, for example, you know they are all sizes, different sizes, like this one, there are different types, the type you are holding would be a type three nodule which is more large and has a characteristic cauliflower texture.

Miller told us that each nodule has the same proportion of metals after being weighed and measured, stored in a refrigerated container and will be further analyzed on shore to help give it a deep green color. find out where to mine first, they hope to start there in 3 years, many of them there exactly, if they found a deposit with such a concentration of metal on land, it would be a bonanza that no one would stop talking about for years, the rules for the deep sea. Mining is carried out by an obscure UN agency called the International Seabed Authority.

It has already divided the Czech Republic into dozens of concessions. Deep Green also operates. The company estimates that the nickel and cobalt in its portion of the ocean is enough to make batteries for 150 million electric cars. I love the fact that this is how we are going to move away from fossil fuels. I love the fact that these are all the metals we need to build those batteries. I mean, it's the most amazing coincidence I've ever had. I found Mother Nature I made these nodules, they're just sitting there, okay guys, you've ruined planet Earth, come find me, so you're called environmentalists, you're also minors, how do you combine the two?

Well, you know. Don't call me minor, but we're collecting nodules from the ocean floor, so if you're not minor, what do you call, what you'll do right, we call it uh, harvesting, harvesting, collecting nodules from the ocean floor, as opposed to the earth. There is no drilling or digging to do, but rather huge deep sea robots will do the heavy lifting to see one of the most advanced. We traveled to Belgium in a country best known for beer and chocolate. We met Pat, he's a caterpillar, he's a caterpillar, so he said what. It's the fastest C-pillar on Earth and it's called rural patana.

Chris Vana, the CEO of Global Marine Mineral Resources, or GSR, told us that Patna cost $12 million, which is what you'd expect if you crossed an excavator with a giant vacuum cleaner and then refilled. with electronics the nodules are sucked by a current and enter the system it has the capacity to store three tons of nodules three tons three tons of nodules how many nodules there are down there it is estimated that there is more nickel more cobalt and more manganese than in the rest of the planet In 2017, GSR was the first to place a robot on the seabed last summer.

Expectations were high for Snotlout's second dive in the Pacific. A specially built frame rotated the 35-ton machine over the edge of the ship. the umbilical cord uncoiled as it sank out of sight but then something went wrong the crew lost the signal to patan the test was canceled it was a big setback a big setback you said that uh, the depths of the sea have no mercy, is it What do you mean? that's exactly what we mean no mercy it has to be 1,000% perfect or it won't work GSR hopes to bring Patania back to the Clarion Clipperton Zone soon when mining begins Vana told us the nodules will be pumped to the surface for a ship waiting before being processed on shore with supplies of some critical metals running low.

The race to develop underwater trackers like this, led by a Dutch group, is underway, but some scientists fear deep-sea mining will destroy the seabed for a world. I didn't fully understand this rare albino octopus nicknamed Casper, a species discovered only 3 years ago when we went out and collected a sample at sea. Flower, we collected hundreds of new species, things you've never seen before, for sure, oh yeah, yeah. Craig Smith is an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii told us that he was surprised at how much life could survive at 3 million depths. His expeditions to the CCZ have appeared.

Fantastic creatures like this squid worm or a fluorescent sea cucumber nicknamed the gummy squirrel. There are other deep seas. The originals also have a foot-long shrimp, a pingpong tree sponge, and a galloping sea urchin. Mining companies say that the ccz is only about 1% of the ocean, that the ocean is so vast that it could absorb the activity in that small portion, yes that's a bit. It's a bit like saying the Amazon rainforest is only 8% of the world's land area, so we can remove it and it doesn't matter, won't deep sea mining be less invasive and have less impact than land mining?

I would say not. Mining is mining. I think it is similar to strip mining on land and will take a long time for things to recover. Smith is working with the United Nations Seabed Authority, which has set aside nine protected areas that will be off-limits to the miners and Chris Vana. He has invited independent scientists to monitor GSRS's work if they find that the environmental impact is severe. Would this stop the project completely? I do not believe that we are in this project to find a means to produce metals worse than those that are being produced. done today we are in this because we believe that it can be done better the story will continue after this so far 19 different countries have licenses in the Claran Clipperton area China has more than anyone else Russia and Japan have also intervened as has France Germany Korea, even Cuba and Tonga have at stake who is missing the United States, it is not for lack of evidence, the UN law of the sea covers deep sea mining and in 1994 President Bill Clinton signed the treaty, but it was left dead when reaching the Senate despite repeated attempts to ratify it, including last July, is doing us no harm at all, we do not have a seat at that table.

Jonathan White is a retired rear admiral who now runs a nonprofit to protect the oceans. He told us that being outside the treaty means that the United States does not have Let's say the way this new gold rush is being handled is a law and if we are not going to be part of that legal system, doesn't that make us kind of of outlaws of the sea with the United States on the sidelines? China has poured hundreds of millions into its deep sea Ambitions last month China unveiled its new weapons which included an underwater drone that will patrol the ocean if you are in the military a weapons system the guide to our weapons x-ray machines microwaves all depend on elements that are hard to come by, so China controls most of these elements from land sources, yes, and now they're going after most of the seafloor sources, they certainly are.

Does that worry you? It absolutely worries me. I am concerned in relation to our national security. In the future, we must participate in this game. My problem is sovereignty, so we called the 22 senators who opposed the treaty, all Republicans, to ask them why none of them would appear on camera. Those who wrote to us said that sending any controls to the United Nations was a deal. groundbreaking, but Rear Admiral White worries that if the United States doesn't ratify the law of the sea soon it will be too late, and if we don't, what does that mean for us?

I think it means that we will again become more isolated, especially in terms of a global economy that is growing and more dependent on China and absolutely more dependent on China, so what's the point of that? It makes no sense that the country that first reached the moon should now miss out on the race to this new frontier and the untold riches of the Earth. deep