Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

With regard to manganese nodules he pointed out that since their
discovery 130 years ago, there has been a significant amount of analyses done
on them. He said that their distribution is probably better known than the
distribution of other resources. With a map, he showed locations where
manganese nodules and crusts have been recovered. He showed that the
Clarion-Clipperton zone is the area with the highest concentration of
recovered samples followed by the central Indian Ocean basin. He pointed
out that they had contoured the published data on abundance and said that
the data could be used to determine the number of nodules that actually occur
within a one-degree grid. He said that on their map, they had highlighted the
areas of greatest concentration this way.
He said that by combining the distribution of nodules in terms of the
weight of nodules per square metre, with the composition of each of the
nodules, maps of the distribution of the cobalt or any other metal per square
metre could be created. He said that the end result is a map containing a
weight per square metre metal representation for nodules. He described this
as an incomplete database that should be used a guideline. He noted that the
actual algorithm used for contouring needs to be carefully examined. He said
that contouring permits quantitative or semi-quantitative estimates of what
may be found within the extended continental shelves. He said that similar
estimates could be made for all of the metals of economic interest to be found
in nodules. Based on these estimates, Dr. Parson said that in terms of dry
weight nodules, the biggest winners in terms of what lies in the extended
continental shelves are the United States, Brazil, Antarctica, Argentina, Japan,
South Africa, Canada and India. He said that for these countries, estimates of
the metal tonnage in nodules on the extended continental shelf range from
1.86 to 0.4 billion tonnes
With respect to estimates of the gas hydrate potential within the
extended continental shelves, starting with Dr. Desa’s presentation he made
the following observations as to criteria for occurrence: a particular
pressure/temperature stability, water depths ranging between 500 and 3,500
and an adequate amount of biogenic gas in the sediments. Dr. Parson said
however that in the absence of suitable technology that would allow these
resources to be extracted even when they occurred close to land made
estimates of this resource tenuous. He pointed out there is a pilot
INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 757