SATURDAY SUPPLEMENT: 'Mining' our oceans- but is it really ours?

I am tapping these keys whilst cruising the M25, having just returned from an open day at the Royal Holloway, University of London; an institution of excellence in which I will be immersed within from September. I will have the pleasure of becoming engrossed under a duvet of innovation, wrapped in a sandwich of cutting edge geographical exploration, absorbed into a warm and friendly society with a shared zeal for learning. In short, pure bliss.

This afternoon, if nothing else, has reaffirmed my passion for discovery and in particular, my ardour for Geography. Even if Earth has been poked and prodded, scrutinised and sampled, modelled and mapped, I know that there are aspects of this planet that we know very little about. Arguably, man knows more about the surface of the Moon than we do about our own sea floor, though interestingly enough, both have sparked interest in the mining industries.

In the news this week, a "new and controversial frontier in mining is opening up" as a British firm- UK Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin- is set to exploit the ocean floor. Ironically, such a plummet to the depths of our world as we know it, is perhaps a zenith of a triumph, as a survey has revealed that parts of the Pacific sea floor are residence to a huge number of valuable metals. Specifically, (maybe for those with an urge for a spot of deep sea diving) the area concerned here lies south of Hawaii, along the western coast of Mexico; an area twice the size of Wales and 4000m deep. However, litigiously, vacuuming these minerals could result in incalculable damage to marine ecosystems. Any mining activity could generate plumes of sediment that could quite literally choke the aquatic life that feed by ingesting water and filtering out vital nutrients.

In an age where everything has a value, from a Shark's tooth to a Rhino's horn, from the tangible to the 'idea', it's easy to see why UK Sea Bed Resources has secured a license to explore the possibilities of mineral extraction. Shadowing the underwater acts though will be those who fear the risk to marine integrity; arguably a recent league of concern.

I delved back to a National Geographic article from November 1961, where in report is an ocean-bound investigation, 20 miles off San Diego. As it quite proudly states, "they went not to seek oil, but to probe the secrets of our planet's heart and past." In a project known at the time as Mohole, the initial plan was to drill a Mohole through the Earth's crust, and yet nowhere in the article is the slightest hint at the environmental impacts involved. No word or phrase makes even a passing consideration to how the drill- a tool just to settle a few curiosities- might be influencing underwater fauna and floral species. But I then shuttle forwards just a mere twenty years, to December 1981, and the mood is shifted. The Mohole project from the 1960s was incidentally aborted because of soaring costs, a fact the National Geographic have very little trouble reporting twenty years later. But whilst the drilling was taking place, fascinatingly, Hess was drilling through the boundaries of knowledge to make a landmark discovery of sea floor spreading, which he later addressed in a very notable paper called 'An Essay in Geopoetry'. Six years later, in 1968, the Glomar Challenger vessel was negotiating a deep sea drilling project, and sampling deeper than ever before. It was found that water ejects from hydrothermal vents and is rich in minerals, a fact that later on would become a fountain of hope for the mining industries.

Here in this 1981 article, readers are taken to the Red Sea where an oozing mud over 60 degrees C contains a bounty of elements, namely Silver, Lead, Zinc, Copper and Iron worth potentially billions of dollars. "Exploitation has been held back by legal and technical factors," it states. "Inability of the world's nations to agree on a Law of the Sea treaty has delayed the start of deep sea mining for more than 10 years," which is an interesting point to make. Similarly, this week, as the UK Seabed Resources applies to sweep up Manganese like a broom brushes dust, this has been noted as a "controversial frontier" and quite possibly Lockheed Martin will face rigid opposition. After all, it wouldn't be the first time. My 1981 report continues.

"Lockheed has developed a working prototype for Ocean Minerals company...the bottom-travelling miner collects, washes, and crushes nodules, then pumps the slurry past a flotation block that keeps cables and hoses off the bottom. The biggest impediment to full-scale mining is the unclear status of international law to settle the questions- who has to right to mine the ocean, and for whose benefit?" Even if the "stakes are huge", "the chances of polluting the seas, possibly causing irreversible damage to their life forms and the shores they wash, grow with every offshore discovery". The elements found in plentiful supply might have a high price-tag, but does it really compete with the value of nature?

This will forever be a contentious issue, and I'm sure that until collaboration is sought, delays are inevitable. After all, I turn to an article from March 1998: "No one really knows how to manage an ocean," it claims. "Or even part of one."