PROF. DR. MARK D.

HANNINGTON | EXCELLENCE-AWARD OF THE PETERSEN FOUNDATION, NOVEMBER 2011

MARINE MINERALS –
A RESOURCE FOR THE FUTURE?
Mark D. Hannington
Professor in Marine Mineral Resources
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel

Introduction
The possibility of mining on the seafloor is raising important new questions about the sustainable use of
the oceans. Deposits of copper and zinc at deep-sea hydrothermal vents, manganese nodules, cobalt-rich
crusts, phosphorites, rare earth elements, diamonds, and iron- and titanium-rich sands are just some of the
marine mineral resources that are attracting the attention of countries who wish to secure a new supply
of raw materials and commercial companies who view the oceans for profit. This is both a challenge and
an opportunity for marine science. On one hand, the scientific community has cautioned that commercial
exploration for marine minerals is rushing ahead of the research effort needed to support effective ma-
nagement of the oceans. On the other hand, new opportunities exist for marine science to proceed apace
with industry and to inform it in a way that promotes sustainable development.

A new frontier in marine research

Metal mining is one of the largest sectors of the global economy, with a forecasted value of more than €2 tril-
lion in 2014. Expenditures on mineral exploration are more than €13 billion annually. The increasing demand
for land-based resources and the declining quality of new discoveries is now encouraging the search for alter-
natives, including in the oceans. China, Japan, Korea, Russia, India, France, and Germany, are all actively ex-
ploring for metals in the deep oceans, notably in the Pacific high-grade manganese nodule fields, with the aim
of developing large-scale mining operations in the coming decade. Other countries (Papua New Guinea, Fiji,
Tonga) have leased portions of their EEZs to commercial companies searching for copper, zinc, silver and gold
in seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits. In 2013, the world’s first exploitation license for SMS deposits was
granted by the government of Papua New Guinea in the Bismarck Sea, placing them on the fast track toward
seabed mining and heightening expectations that resource exploitation is imminent. At the same time, major
concerns have been raised in articles in both Nature and Science about the likely environmental impacts. In
the absence of any clear assessment of the economic viability or sustainability of future mining operations,
the debate over marine mineral resources has become increasingly polarized. It is still unclear whether the
numbers and sizes of the deposits would be sufficient to encourage a new deep-sea mining industry. But if it
is feasible, mining of seabed minerals will certainly present new environmental, legal, and technical challenges
for the international community. Among these challenges will be finding the resources that can be developed
without the irreversible consequences that have resulted from other industrial-scale activities in the oceans.

The Petersen Foundation is helping to find solutions to these problems by promoting research partnerships
that combine international expertise in the mining industry with the scientific excellence of Germany’s marine
programs, in particular at the Helmholtz Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel – GEOMAR. Because underwater
metal mining may become a reality within this decade, GEOMAR has taken the decisive step of establishing it-
self as the first major international marine institute with a strategic research focus on seabed mineral resources.
Two fundamental questions are being addressed: what to explore for and is it worth the risk.

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 PROF. DR. MARK D. HANNINGTON | EXCELLENCE-AWARD OF THE PETERSEN FOUNDATION, NOVEMBER 2011

Informed discovery
One focus of our research is on the global distribution of deep-sea hydrothermal vent systems and the possible
magnitude of the global metal supply in SMS deposits. More than 300 sites of high-temperature hydrothermal
venting have been found in the oceans since the discovery of black smokers on the East Pacific Rise, but only
165 of these are sites where metals are accumulating in significant quantities as massive sulphide deposits.
Recent estimates of the total number of deposits in the easily accessible neovolcanic zones of the world’s ridg-
es and volcanic arcs range from 500 to 5000, but the actual numbers are unknown. Even after more than two
decades of intensive research, there is a continuing lack of knowledge concerning the distribution, size, and
composition of these resources. Solving this problem demands not only new technology for exploration but
also new concepts to identify the areas of the oceans with the greatest mineral potential. In the last decade,
we have characterized a wide variety of SMS deposit types in different geological environments of the oceans.
Their mineral endowment is closely linked to the dynamics of the ocean floor and the processes that shape
different parts of the oceanic lithosphere. However, these relationships are still poorly understood – the deep
oceans remain a large a forbidding place to conduct this research.

Figure 1: Global Distribution of Hydrothermal Vent Fields

To address this challenge, we are testing new concepts of seafloor tectonics and its link to the metallogeny
of the oceans in unexplored regions that are likely to contain the largest and most important deposits. We
are also looking for specific resources with scarce or limited supply that are of vital economic importance to
Germany and its partners (e.g., rare metals for high-technology applications and the “green economy”). Such
targeted resources are expected to become important commodities for exploitation in the oceans, requiring
innovative approaches for their discovery.

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 PROF. DR. MARK D. HANNINGTON | EXCELLENCE-AWARD OF THE PETERSEN FOUNDATION, NOVEMBER 2011

Assessing the global resource potential

Our current modelling suggests that the total accumulation of SMS deposits along the presently active ridg-
es may be on the order of 600 million tonnes, containing about 30 million tonnes of copper and zinc. This is
similar to the amount of metal discovered in Cenozoic massive sulphide deposits mined on land – but is this
sufficient to satisfy the growing global demand for these metals? So far, there is no clear indication that this is
the case. Despite growing commercial interest, there remains considerable uncertainty about the potential for
undiscovered resources in different parts of the oceans. In the last 5 years, we have been testing quantitative
resource assessment techniques to evaluate the global potential of SMS deposits. A number of new meth-
odologies for such assessments can now be brought to bear on marine mineral resources, including remote
predictive mapping and emerging data integration techniques developed for the land-based mining industry.
A particular challenge to address is the potential for resources on parts of the ocean floor far away from the
presently active mid-ocean ridges, and especially under the cover of deep marine sediments. Some studies
suggest that these concealed resources could eclipse the SMS potential of the ridges themselves.

Figure 2: Examples of copper- and zinc-rich massive sulphides from SMS deposits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The brassy mineral chalco-
pyrite (CuFeS2) is the primary ore mineral for copper metal, shown in its final state as copper sheets. The brown mineral sphalerite (ZnS)
is the primary ore mineral for zinc metal, shown in its final state as zinc ingots. The annual production of these metals from ancient SMS
deposits that are mined on land is approximately 1 Mt Cu and 3 Mt Zn.

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 PROF. DR. MARK D. HANNINGTON | EXCELLENCE-AWARD OF THE PETERSEN FOUNDATION, NOVEMBER 2011

Developing the exploration technologies

In the last decade, a new industry has emerged with a focus on the deep-sea exploration and the evaluation
of new discoveries using geophysics (magnetics, electromagnetics, seismics, and gravity), remote sensing, and
deep-sea drilling. These technologies are fundamental tools, not only for finding new resources but also for
assessing the likelihood that they could be exploited – converting discovered resources to potentially mine-
able reserves. With its expertise in marine technology, including deep submergence, ocean drilling, and ma-
rine geophysics, GEOMAR is positioning itself to be a leader in this field. A major focus is the adaptation of a
wide range of search techniques used in land-based mineral exploration to the marine environment. A key
challenge is testing new methods to detect older deposits that may be concealed by sediment and to obtain
meaningful data on their sizes.

Understanding metals in the marine environment

Most seafloor mineral resources are products of the enormous exchange of mass and energy between the
oceans and the underlying crust. This exchange is an integral part of the global geochemical budgets of most
elements. However, key questions remain concerning metal distribution in the crust, elemental fluxes associ-
ated with different types of volcanism and different styles of hydrothermal activity, and mass accumulation
rates of metals on the seafloor. Very little information is available on the sources, sinks and transport path-
ways for metals in the marine environment – knowledge that is essential for future resource discovery and
resource management. Detailed mineralogical and geochemical inventories of most types of marine mineral
deposits are severely lacking in comparison to land-based ore deposits. This knowledge gap has so far limited
our understanding of the formation of the deposits and also prevented detailed models of metal recovery or
potential environmental impacts of mining. Our research on the mineralogy and chemistry of the deposits
underpins increasingly sophisticated geoenvironmental models that are designed to predict the behaviour of
metals during long-term exposure on the seafloor and provide mitigation strategies for the release of metals
by mining, including possible links to biogeochemical cycles in the oceans. For example, little is known about
what role microbes might play in sequestering or releasing trace metals to the marine environment or whether
inactive or buried deposits may be oases for microbial life because of the large redox gradients established
during seafloor weathering of sulphides.

Exploring the past for resources of the future

Almost all of the world’s iron and manganese resources on land, more than 50% of the world’s zinc and lead,
and a significant proportion of the world’s copper, silver, gold and other metals were originally deposited in an-
cient oceans, some as much as 3.5 billion years ago. For many explorers, the discovery of new mineral resourc-
es in the oceans is fundamentally driven by knowledge of these ancient ore deposits, recognizing that many of
the most important ore deposits now mined on land were originally formed in a submarine environment, and
so similar occurrences should be present in today’s oceans. If fossil deposits are any indication, considerable
resources might be found in some deposits that are much larger than those currently known. More than 80%
of the metal mined from massive sulphide deposits on land comes from a small number of giant deposits.
However, new research is needed to establish the link between the geology of the ocean floor and the possi-
bility of similar-sized deposits in so-far underexplored settings. Examining the past to guide the exploration of
today’s oceans has already led us to the discovery of unexpected new resources, including the first submarine
epithermal gold deposit in eastern Papua New Guinea and the first mercury-depositing seafloor vents off New
Zealand. This research has changed current thinking about the diversity of mineral deposit types in the oceans
and has opened the door to other possible discoveries beyond the mid-ocean ridges and active volcanic arcs.
Some deposit types that are well known in the geological record, such as clastic sediment-hosted gold depos-
its and carbonate-hosted lead-zinc-silver deposits, should be expected in the oceans but have not yet been
found. Identifying these deposits will not only lead to potentially new marine resources but may also lead to
the discovery of important new niches for deep marine life.

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 PROF. DR. MARK D. HANNINGTON | EXCELLENCE-AWARD OF THE PETERSEN FOUNDATION, NOVEMBER 2011

Figure 3: Black Smokers are ore

factories of the deep sea. At the
bottom of the sea, in a depth of
several thousand metres, black
smokers bring up valuable raw
materials from inside the earth.
Their metre-high vents seem to
give off smoke like underwater
industrial chimneys. Highly specia-
lised creatures thrive around these
hot springs. Can they be explored
in an environmentally sound way?
Would it be worthwhile?

The next steps

Although it may be technically feasible to mine SMS deposits and other marine minerals in the near future, any
exploitation of these resources will have to compete economically with the remaining land-based deposits
and, at the same time, overcome any technical and environmental challenges that seabed mining will present.
Not surprisingly, these challenges are likely to have many parallels with past development of other non-living,
as well as living, resources of the sea. The energy sector, which made its first tentative foray into the offshore
in the 1940s, overcame remarkable technological barriers to the point where now a third of the world’s oil and
half of the natural gas is produced from the oceans – some wells are being drilled in water as deep as 2900 m.
But other uses of the oceans have been less to boast about. Global fisheries, for example, are threatened with
collapse even before a full census of marine life is complete. For mineral resources, there are clearly similar risks
that decisions regarding development will be made in the absence of critical knowledge about the numbe4rs
of deposits, how and where they form, and the fate of metals that may be released to the marine environment
during mining – aspects that are poorly understood even at a qualitative level. The need for these assessments
is now more acute as large investments are being made to secure the resources with a view to future develop-
ment and as governments try to establish the regulatory framework for resource exploitation in both territorial
and international waters. A serious effort to understand the potential benefits and the risks associated with
deep-sea mining may be our chance to get the science right before the development goes wrong.