Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

CHAPTER 1
METALLOGENESIS OF MARINE MINERAL RESOURCES
Dr. Peter A. Rona, Professor, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Department of Geological
Sciences, Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States of America
1. Introduction
Our vision of marine mineral resources is expanding rapidly as our
knowledge of the ocean advances. Ocean basins were regarded as passive
containers of the ocean until the advent of the theory of plate tectonics in the
1960's. According to the view of the ocean basins as passive containers,
marine metal and non-metal non-fuel mineral deposits were considered to be
primarily derived from the erosion of continental rocks and carried into the
ocean by rivers in solid (sediment) or dissolved phases. This view adequately
explained the marine minerals known at that time. These minerals comprised
beach deposits and placer deposits of various heavy minerals containing
metals and non-metals of terrigeneous origin, that is, derived from erosion of
continental rocks and transported into the ocean primarily by rivers (Table 1;
Figure 1). River input is also considered to be an adequate source of dissolved
metals to form manganese nodules and crusts, phosphorites, and other types
of authigenic deposits (Table 1), that is, those mineral deposits precipitated
from elements dissolved in seawater.
INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 69