Though it seems closer than ever, deep-sea mining has always been driven in part by an abundance of optimism. In his 1974 treatise on The Control of the Sea-Bed, Evan Luard estimated that the pace of exploration and technological development for polymetallic nodule extraction was such that “it will therefore probably only take a few […]
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There is a vast chasm between the reality of maritime law, formed by generations of treaties negotiated at the highest levels of government in the often inscrutably complex language of international diplomacy, and the common belief within civil society that areas beyond national jurisdiction are essentially lawless. Nowhere is this gulf more apparent than within […]
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Maria Bolevich for DSM Observer Dr. Malcolm R. Clark is a principal scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in Wellington, New Zealand, he began his career in the 1980s. “My career started with fisheries stock assessment, and evolved through studying the diversity of deep-sea life and how it is impacted by […]
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PRESS RELEASE The first two national experts selected in the context of the Africa Deep Seabed Resources (ADSR) project joined the ISA Secretariat on 20 January 2020. A total of 10 experts, including 5 women, from different African States, members of ISA and the African Union, will be deployed with the ISA Secretariat in the […]
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One of the small but persistent puzzles of the deep abyssal plain is the question of how polymetallic nodules manage to stay above the sediment. Large nodules form over millions of years as minerals precipitate out of seawater, and yet, despite a light dusting of sediment continuously raining down from the surface, they somehow remain […]
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