About two-thirds of the surface of the Earth is covered by the oceans. And since on land mines are depleting, due to human greed, it is hardly surprising people are looking to explore the seabed for resources. This is known as deep-sea mining.
Though deep sea mining is expensive, increased demand has driven up prices of certain minerals to such levels, that it has become economically viable. Especially elements like copper, zinc, manganese and cobalt seems to be of great interest.
ScienceDaily reports the following studies regarding deep sea mining:
The bottom line of all these studies is that the environmental risks of deep sea mining are simply too large. However, with the number of humans estimated to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064 and more importantly growing wealth, it seems inevitable that our species will move to extract resources from the ocean floor.
Fortunately, there are a few alternatives to deep sea mining. First of all, improved recycling will mean that we will need less new resources to meet demand (for instance new phones could be made of old ones). Secondly, mining near earth asteroids could also provide required minerals without unnecessary harming our planet’s environment.
Given these alternatives and the unrecoverable damage to our environment, we believe that deep sea mining should be strictly limited or preferably banned all together.