Deep Sea Mining: Balancing the Environmental Costs with Economic Gains

Canada is almost ready to stake its claim on an expansive undersea territory in the frigid Arctic region. After years of mapping and more than a hundred million dollars spent on the project, geologist Jacob Verhoef and his team are already finalizing the report for Canada’s claim for new offshore territory which will have to be submitted to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) by the set deadline in December this year. The UNCLOS will be the final arbiter on how much of the Lomonosov Ridge and its 2000 kilometer–long extension, the Alpha Ridge which are vast tracts of unexplored wilderness, can be considered extensions of Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark, and Norway who are also claiming the territory as their own. 

The seemingly maddening rush to own the deep sea prompts the obvious question: Why? Apparently, it holds treasures that the polar nations can’t ignore. Natural hydrothermal vents apparently contain precious metals and minerals like gold, copper, and zinc which, when mined, will yield substantial revenues for the government who can prove ownership to the UNCLOS. It is also said to be rich in oil deposits—a first guess estimate given in 2008 puts the figure at 90 billion barrels.

A larger territory is an obvious advantage for any country. But mining its vast and rich underwater resources is another matter altogether. For starters, deep sea mining is still in its infancy. While it might be easy in theory to map out a plan to harvest the treasures of the deep, the reality is that little is known about actually working in vast underwater territories with geysers spewing out boiling hot liquid laced with minerals, where pressure is infinitely greater than that found on land, and where temperature shifts can vary wildly without any warning. Extensive and very expensive studies have to be carried out to determine just how feasible and profitable the endeavor may be. 

There’s the environmental aspect to consider, too. The Arctic is considered as the world’s final frontier and explorations undertaken to commercialize this unspoiled wilderness is bound to have an effect not only on the flora and fauna that live there but on the rest of the world’s ecological systems as a whole. That life abounds in these undersea habitats is already known. Of far greater concern is how the processes to extract the metals, minerals, and oil in its depths could alter or worse, endanger these communities and the species that call it home. At present, little is known about these creatures of the deep, the role they play in balancing the world’s delicate ecology, and the potential benefits they can give to mankind. Disrupting this ecology without knowing fully the advantages they bring to us may have irreversible consequences that can be detrimental to the human species as a whole.

Any effort to commercialize Canada’s prospective undersea geology—provided the UNCLOS approves its claim—will have to seriously weigh the environmental costs with any potential gains. That’s granting of course that the challenges of mining the sea can be overcome.