By Fiona Rotherham
Deep-sea mining is becoming a serious prospect.
Worldwide, the commercial opportunities are being reassessed after scientific research has revealed mineral-rich deposits made by active volcanoes could reap billions of dollars for those who brave the deep.
Like hell on earth, the volcanic vents known as black smokers billow out clouds of mineral-laden fluid at temperatures of 350 degrees or more.
The chemical reaction when this hot fluid hits the cold sea water produces rich metals such as copper, zinc and gold.
The big questions are: how many black smokers are there, how can they be mined, and what are the environmental difficulties.
Another major drawcard is whether samples taken from micro-organisms living in these extreme environments might prove beneficial - perhaps big money-spinners in medical research and biotechnology.
The Government is close to making a decision on granting the first permits for prospecting volcanoes along the seafloor of the Kermadec Ridge. This lies within territorial waters north-east of New Zealand.
An Australian company, Neptune, applied last year for two permits and expects one to be granted shortly.
One covers 30,000 sq km along the southern part of the Kermadec Ridge north of White Island. The other is of more than 70,000 sq km along the ridge towards the Tonga trench.
Neptune was set up last year by Australian geologist turned mining analyst Simon McDonald, who became excited when New Zealand research scientists turned up evidence of six active volcanoes in the southern ridge area.
New Zealand is an attractive place to apply for permits because it is one of the few nations to have legislation in place.
The Continental Shelf Act governing the permits is less than prescriptive - it essentially allows the minister to grant permits as he sees fit.
Only a handful of permits have been issued so far under the act - for investigating phosphate nodules near the Chathams and searching offshore near gold-bearing river beds.
Consultation among a number of Government departments is taking place before the Commerce Ministry's crown minerals division gives the nod to Neptune. If granted, the company would pay $2.25 a square kilometre annual rental.
But Neptune is about to be taken over by Deep Sea Minerals, a private company based in Little Rock, Arkansas.
It is what Mr McDonald and his fellow shareholders hoped for. In a share swap still to be finalised, Neptune's shareholders retain an interest in the venture without the headache of trying to raise the enormous sums needed to finance it.
The majority owner of Deep Sea Minerals, James M. Cairns jun, says his company has the backing of an international mining concern in the United States that does not want to be named at this stage.
All will be revealed, he says, when Deep Sea goes to the US market this year in a planned $US350 million capital raising to finance further undersea exploration. Mr Cairns says his business background is in diamond exploration in North America and South Africa including "seafloor channel mining," where rivers meet the sea.
Deep Sea had conducted a two-year study evaluating seafloor mining deposits. From this, it narrowed down a priority list of seven out of 30.
The list included the Kermadec Ridge area under application.
Deep Sea Minerals has applied for a permit in another hydrothermal volcano area near Fiji.
The Fijian Government has yet to enact legislation covering undersea mining although it has received several overlapping claims.
Interest in the 1970s in bringing up deep sea manganese nodules proved uneconomic.
Countries like Japan, China, South Korea and India have since invested heavily in research and technology for locating and recovering nodules from the seabed. Japan, in particular, has a long-term strategy of being the first ready to mine underwater when world prices make it viable.
The world's first deep sea exploration titles for underwater volcanoes were issued in late 1997 by Papua New Guinea, within territorial waters off its northern coast.
Nautilus Minerals Corporation, PNG-registered and run by Australians, hopes to strike it rich by mining metal deposits first discovered by the Australian-funded science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
The discovery of the rich sulfide deposits sparked renewed international interest in underwater mining.
It is estimated fewer than 1 per cent of the world's submersive volancoes and hydrothermal vents have yet been sampled.
The multinational South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, based in Fiji, is advising countries like Fiji and PNG not to issue undersea exploration licences until they at least have legislation in place for an activity they do not necessarily understand and may not be able to control.
The biggest undersea "strike" so far is believed to have been made by the Japanese Government in its own waters off Tokyo. All of the identified volcanic vents have been found by research expeditions.
In the Papua New Guinea case, the international team of scientists was initially studying how rich landlocked ore deposits like those at Broken Hill and Mt Isa in Australia were originally formed when these sites were under the sea.
Research into the Kermadec ridge site has been under way for the past decade.
The first direct evidence of the black smokers was turned up by scientists from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) while dredging in 1996.
Analysis showed the dredged deposits were rich in copper, lead and zinc.
Cornel de Ronde and Gary Massoth from the Institute of Geographic and Nuclear Sciences (GNS), along with American Ed Baker and Ian Wright of NIWA, have since discovered six volcanoes out of 13 along the ridge are active. They were able to detect the black smoker plumes.
Although the Crown Research Institutes have been set up to make a profit, they cannot take on commercial activity like undersea mining.
The Kiwi scientists are being approached to do similar analysis into hydrothermal vents elsewhere in the world. GNS has been named as the preferred science provider in Neptune's application.
Mr de Ronde and Mr Massoth will accompany the Australian CSIRO in May to investigate volcanic activity on the seafloors off Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
It is thought the minerals pumped out of the black smokers influence the chemical composition of the seawater and biological productivity in these areas.
Some environmentalists and scientists are concerned that mining could ruin the unique environments which allow species like the giant tube worm to flourish.
Deep Sea Minerals sees as much potential in sampling the organisms living in these hot, corrosive environments as in the minerals.
The Continental Shelf Act covers only minerals, not micro-organisms.
Commission chief executive Alfred Simpson said it would be a difficult area to police.
"It is bad enough trying to monitor illegal fishing let alone taking a sample from 2.5km of water depth."
Some experts say the mining industry will follow the oil industry in increasingly tapping undersea deposits. Environmental objectors and the lack of virgin terrain on land make the economics of undersea mining more compelling.
Interested parties are still at the early stage of the prospecting cycle, mapping out territory and assessing worth.
Dr Ray Binns, of the CSIRO, says this activity has boomed worldwide since the Papua New Guinea discovery. The participants are mainly small entrepreneurs, willing to take the high-risk gamble.
"But the big companies are sitting back, watching."
World interest booming in undersea black smokers
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