Diving to New Depths: How Green Energy Markets Can Push Mining Companies Into the Deep Sea, and Why Nations Must Balance Mineral Exploitation with Marine Conservation

Abstract

The most advanced and promising opportunity for deep-sea mining was underway off the coast of Papua New Guinea. 7 Nautilus Minerals, a Canadian corporation, 8 obtained licenses from Papua New Guinea to mine massive sulfide deposits in the Bismarck Sea. 9 Nautilus planned to launch the world's first deep seabed mining operation, called Solwara 1, in 2019, but announced financial restructuring instead. 10 Essentially, Nautilus planned to use three different robotic machines to conduct its mining operations, each of which are remote controlled, fifty feet in length, and outweigh a blue whale. 11First, an auxiliary cutter grinds down the sea floor to make it level enough for the other machines, a challenge in this volcanic area covered in black smoker chimney stacks. 12Next, the bulk cutter grinds the resulting slurry up into finer material for the collection machine to suck up before sending it up to a surface vessel. 13 Once at the surface, the ore is dewatered and loaded onto other boats for transport into ports and the wastewater is pumped back down to the sea floor. 14 Sitting at a depth of 1,600 meters (about 5,250 feet, or almost a mile under water), the Solwara 1 deposit still offers promises of wealth: estimates calculate over one million tonnes in the deposit, with a 7 percent .org/campaigns/deep-sea_mining/pdfs/Deep-seaMiningFAQ.pdf [https://perma.cc/BA8U-Q8UU] (last visited Oct. 28, 2019). 7Randy W. Tong, It's Time to Get Off the Bench: The U.