Seabed mining risks in Pacific on Fiji talks agenda

[Judi Lynn]

Source: BBC News

5 June 2011 Last updated at 23:54 ET
Seabed mining risks in Pacific on Fiji talks agenda
By Vaudine England
BBC News, Bangkok

The prospect of deep sea mining for precious metals - and the damage that could do to marine ecosystems - is worrying environmentalists.

The number of firms seeking licences to dig through the Pacific Ocean floor is growing rapidly. A conference on the subject opens in Fiji on Monday.

Such seabed mining used to be too costly to be worthwhile.

But environmental groups fear advances in technology pose a new risk to the world's oceans.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13663804

[99th_Monkey]

1. Not to mention chances of triggering earthquakes by poking around down there. ~nt

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Good grief, is NOTHING safe?

[dipsydoodle]

3. K & R

.

[Citizen Worker]

4. This must mean that precious metals have just about been tapped out on land. So, now we're going to

strip mine the seafloor! Wasn't the BP oil eruption in the Gulf of Mexico enough?

[quaker bill]

6. The black cloud (smoke)

is metal sulfide precipitate. In short, the metals will be very concentrated in the sediments that settle out. The vents are all but a refinery in this respect. The chemistry suggests very acidic water washing over very hot rocks dissolving out all the metals, as it reaches lower pressure, lower temperature, and higher pH, the metal sulfides precipitate out, the minerals crystalize or settle on the seafloor as dust. If it was not highly concentrated, it would not be worth the expense of recovering it.

On land, a ton of rock is ground to get an ounce of gold. In these locations the amount of material to be processed for each ounce will likely be far smaller.

I agree that this probably should not be done regardless.

If there are active vents, then there should also be extinct vents that were active 100s of thousands or millions of years ago. The deposits would still be there, but the biology, which is dependent on the vent being active as its only energy source, has likely moved on. If this is to be done at all, they should search out these locations.

[PuffedMica]

5. K&R