Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

and refining of these crusts is more challenging than that of manganese
nodules that lie loose on the seafloor or massive sulphides that form compact
mounds, because the crusts adhere to the hard rock substrate over large areas.
5. Exploration Methods for Marine Minerals
Exploration for a seafloor mineral deposit involves many variations to
achieve two basic objectives:
1) Determine where the mineral deposit is located.
2) Determine physical, chemical and, in cases, biological properties of
the deposit and its seafloor setting.
1) Finding the deposit: The first objective, determination where a
seafloor mineral deposit is located, involves starting the exploration within
the seafloor province where that type of mineral deposit is known to occur,
but at unknown distances from deposits that may be present within that
province. Then apply complementary exploration methods that will sense
diagnostic properties of that type of deposit and its specific setting starting at
some distance from a potential deposit and gradually coming closer, which is,
closing range to the deposit. The systematic exploration strategy to find a
deposit on the seafloor is to progressively close range from far to near
according to the sensitivity to detection of physical and chemical properties of
the deposit (Table 3).
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