[SEMCO] Deep Sea Floor Mining Is Subject of Morss Colloquium at WHOI

[Andrew Daly]

**
*Precious Metals from Deep-Sea Vents
*
*5th Elisabeth and Henry Morss Jr. Colloquium on
Deep-sea mining: A reality for science and society in the 21st century*
***
*Scientists, policymakers, environmentalists, and industry 
representatives will gather this Thursday at the Woods Hole 
Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to discuss the issue of mining precious 
metals from the seafloor.  *A public colloquium, which will feature 
keynote addresses from leading voices on the subject and a panel 
discussion, will be held on Thursday, April 2, from 2 to 5 p.m. in 
WHOI's Redfield Auditorium, Woods Hole, MA*. *The event, the 5th 
Elisabeth and Henry Morss Jr. Colloquium, is free and open to the public 
and will also be broadcast in real time on the Web.
*
The Morss Colloquium will broadcast in real time on the Web at 
http://www.whoi.edu/workshops/deepseamining.

Recent proposals for seafloor mining have centered on massive sulfide 
deposits---rich in copper, gold, silver, and zinc---that are found at 
deep-sea hydrothermal vent systems.

Vent systems are part of the planet's plumbing system and form in places 
where there is volcanic activity, such as along Mid-Ocean Ridges. Water 
seeps into cracked seafloor and is heated by hot, and sometimes molten 
rock deep in the ocean crust. The hot fluid becomes buoyant, rises 
rapidly back to the seafloor, and gushes out of the vent openings at 
temperatures as high as 400°C. This hydrothermal fluid carries with it 
dissolved metals and other chemicals from deep beneath the ocean floor, 
but, at just below the seabed, these metals can precipitate to form 
seafloor massive sulfide (SMS) deposits.

"Scientists are still in the early stages of studying these SMS 
deposits, but the active vent sites that generate them can often also 
play host to species and ecosystems that were previously unknown to 
science," said Maurice Tivey, a senior scientist at WHOI. "The new 
frontier of deep-sea exploration and mining raises questions about the 
sustainable use of these resources and potential environmental impacts. 
This colloquium represents an invaluable---and extremely 
timely---opportunity to discuss all of the various scientific, 
political, legal, and economic implications of mining with the people 
most knowledgeable about it."

Working with the Census of Marine Life's ChEss (Chemosynthetic 
Ecosystems) project, InterRidge, Ridge 2000, and the Deep Ocean 
Exploration Institute at WHOI, Tivey and colleagues have organized a 
scientific workshop that has attracted more than 100 participants from 
20 countries to explore the subject. During the workshop, which will be 
held the day before the public event, scientists and students of all 
disciplines will exchange ideas and research results arising from 
investigations of hydrothermal vent systems and the seafloor deposits 
that form around them.

"The enthusiastic response of the international community to this 
meeting highlights sea floor mining as an issue of important global 
implications," said Jian Lin, a WHOI geophysicist and InterRidge Chair.

The public colloquium will provide a summary of the previous day's workshop.

Commercial sea floor mining is already being planned offshore Papua New 
Guinea, and in May, the International Seabed Authority, which implements 
the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, will finalize its rules opening 
up the high seas to these activities.  The U.S. currently has not 
ratified the Law of the Sea convention.

Among the speakers at this week's colloquium is Nii Allotey Odunton, the 
Secretary-General for the International Seabed Authority, which will 
oversee the regulation of the world's seafloor resources. Also speaking 
are Caitlyn Antrim, the executive director for the Rule of Law Committee 
for the Oceans, Rod Eggert, the division director for economics and 
business at the Colorado School of Mines, and Maurice Tivey, a geologist 
at WHOI who studies these unique deep sea environments. They will be 
joined by Samantha Smith, environmental manager of Nautilus Minerals 
Inc., Sabine Christiansen of the World Wildlife Fund, and Chris German, 
a WHOI geochemist who is co-chair of ChEss and InterRidge, for a panel 
discussion and Q&A with the audience.

"The issue of deep-sea mining of SMS is of global importance, connected 
to the global economy, society, and the conservation of unique marine 
life," said German. "Before these unique environments are altered by 
industrial processes, we scientists hope to gain and exchange as much 
information as we can about the formation, preservation, and 
distribution of SMS deposits to determine the gaps in our scientific 
knowledge."

*CONTACT*:  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
                       Media Relations Office
                       508-289-3340
                       media at whoi.edu


/The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, independent 
organization in Falmouth, Mass., dedicated to marine research, 
engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a 
recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary 
mission is to understand the oceans and their interaction with the Earth 
as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the oceans' role 
in the changing global environment./
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.whoi.edu/pipermail/semco/attachments/20090331/ea70b3c9/attachment.htm