Mika McKinnon for DSM Observer Is Brazil’s offshore Rio Grande Rise the shreds of a former continent, or a bulge of restless volcanism? What seems a fussy niche debate for geologists has big consequences for deep-sea mining rights. It takes more than water to make an ocean and more than land goes into defining a […]
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One of the most significant discussions in deep-sea mining is happening not a the International Seabed Authority, but in the offices of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York. The CLCS is responsible for assessing outer continental shelf claims, those portions of a nation’s continental […]
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It was a cool week in Kingston as representatives from member states, observers, NGOs, and other stakeholders gathered at the International Seabed Authority to continue the quarter-century-long process of guiding mineral extraction in the high seas towards production. Discussions were broad in vision, focused in scope, and soberingly detailed. While everything from the percentage points […]
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The Rio Grande Rise is an almost completely unstudied, geologically intriguing, ecologically mysterious, potential lost continent in the deep south Atlantic. And it also hosts dense cobalt-rich crusts. The Rio Grande Rise is a region of deep-ocean seamounts roughly the area of Iceland in the southwestern Atlantic. It lies west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge off […]
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