The Next Gold Rush Will Be 5,000 Feet Under the Sea, With Robot Drones (vice.com)

merbs writes: In Papua New Guinea, one well-financed, first-mover company is about to pioneer deep sea mining. And that will mean dispatching a fleet of giant remote-operated robotic miners 5,000 feet below the surface to harvest the riches scattered across ocean floor. These mammoth underwater vehicles look like they've been hauled off the set of a sci-fi film—think Avatar meets The Abyss. And they'll be dredging up copper, gold, and other valuable minerals, far beneath the gaze of human eyes.

Comments

Re:That will go well

[gurps_npc]

Normal gold mining is known for using vile chemicals (mercury, cyanide) to seperate out small percentages (1%) of gold from non-gold. Deep sea gold mining avoids this problem. They go to hot vents where the gold is much higher percentages. So they don;t use mercury or cyanide.

They do however involve large transportation of materials up from the sea bed, most of which is released to float down.

The risks are radically different than land based mining and relatively unknown.

But I am a firm believer in diversification of risk. I'd rather have some coal and some nuclear, rather than just one, as the risks are different.

Similarly, undersea gold mining is worth a pilot project or two to see how it affects the local ecology.

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[Tim the Gecko]

When I was a kid I read about manganese nodule mining on the sea floor. It later turned out that it was Project Azorian, where the nodules were a cover story for a CIA-funded attempt to lift a Soviet sub from the sea floor.