Deep Sea Mining

00:00:03:02 - 00:00:24:01

Chris Keefer

Welcome back to Decouple. Today I'm joined by returning guests, although it has been a very long time. Dr. Seaver, Wang Seaver, you are a oceanographer. You're also going to get you to kind of do your own little introduction here about your work at the Breakthrough Institute. And I'll let you give your title. We are going to be chatting about deep sea mining.

00:00:24:01 - 00:00:40:21

Chris Keefer

And this is an issue that I have been fascinated by for over a year and I've been trying to find the right person to talk to. And for whatever reason, that's been really difficult. I've been bugging my friends over at the Australian, the Minerals Council of Australia, and they weren't able to come up with any real good names for me.

00:00:40:23 - 00:00:57:05

Chris Keefer

I saw you put an article out recently on this very topic and then I remembered that, yeah, you are a ocean scientist. I'm blundering through your introduction. So yeah, take 60 seconds to tell us who you are and why you love the ocean. And you're. I stumbled across this topic.

00:00:57:06 - 00:01:25:10

Dr. Seaver Wang

Yes. Thanks so much for having me again, Chris. It's good to be back. So, yeah, I'm Seaver Wang. I am co-director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Breakthrough Institute. So as as Chris mentioned, my background is originally in oceanography. I was an ocean biogeochem arrest and and an ocean microbial ecologist. I studied the interaction between surface ocean plankton and the carbon and nitrogen cycles.

00:01:25:12 - 00:01:56:11

Dr. Seaver Wang

And so I so so as Chris mentioned, you know, I came to this topic from a very interesting angle. I came to it originally. I was actually an opponent of deep sea mining, even as recently as as three or four years ago. But as I as I learned, as I learned more particularly about how we actually source metals and materials on land, I came to look at the at the topic from from a different angle.

00:01:56:13 - 00:02:23:02

Dr. Seaver Wang

So my current work at the Breakthrough Institute is on supply chains for clean energy technologies. We do a lot of our work on on mining, on or processing, on metal smelting and on manufacturing basically how do we get all of the the electric vehicle batteries or wind turbines or copper, copper for transformers that we think we're going to need for the energy transition.

00:02:23:04 - 00:02:47:13

Dr. Seaver Wang

And so particularly in the process of doing that work, I have come to understand sort of the environmental footprint of extraction sort of as it as it is currently the status quo, the the sort of the conventional approaches for mining. And after learning more about deep sea mining and weighing the impacts, I've come to sort of change my mind on the topic, actually.

00:02:47:15 - 00:03:04:17

Chris Keefer

Well, you know, strong opinions loosely held and was at John Maynard Keynes. When the facts change, I changed my mind. What do you do, sir? So, yeah, I always love I mean, this isn't like a conversion story, you know, it's all on the road to Damascus or anything, But I do love that I love when people can be flexible in their thinking.

00:03:04:19 - 00:03:24:15

Chris Keefer

So, yes, I mean, I think very similar things are drawing me towards this technology, but I'm far less informed than you are. So maybe first off, though, let's frame it. I mean, terrestrial mining's pretty intense stuff. You know, we're using a lot of explosives to blow up a lot of rock and we're blowing up more and more of that rock because the grades are dropping.

00:03:24:16 - 00:03:50:06

Chris Keefer

And we need to therefore process more of that base rock, remove more overburden, crush it up. I mean, it's interesting. I was talking to Ed Conway recently, his great book, The Material World, where he really, you know, goes behind. I always kind of use this metaphor of the grocery store. He goes behind the shop aisle to see how the sausage gets made and he follows, you know, sand, steel, lithium, a number of different sort of material inputs through their supply chains.

00:03:50:06 - 00:04:09:22

Chris Keefer

And it's absolutely fascinating. Check out the interview we just did a few weeks ago with him. But yeah, I mean, he goes through how copper or grades, for instance, and like the the Bronze Age, you know, you could find deposits that were like 20% copper and they've dropped to sort of 6% in 1900 and I think 1% in the year 2000 and 0.6% now.

00:04:09:22 - 00:04:27:13

Chris Keefer

And you know, there may be enough minerals available. I'm not sure how that's, you know, in terms of reserves and resources, but we got to use a lot more energy to crush them up even finer and extract these declining order. So the idea that there's these nice little nodules of fairly high purity or down there seems exciting. But yeah, sorry, I went on a diatribe.

00:04:27:18 - 00:04:45:04

Chris Keefer

Tell me a little bit more, though, about your thoughts that you know and how kind of I don't to say dirty and nasty terrestrial mining is. But yeah, I mean, those are those are value laden words. But but lead me through your little journey of conversion and what you've looked at in terms of of terrestrial mining, that that makes the deep sea stuff would look not so bad.

00:04:45:04 - 00:04:47:11

Chris Keefer

And then we'll talk about what exactly deep sea is.

00:04:47:13 - 00:05:13:05

Dr. Seaver Wang

Yes. Yes. So and that's and that's a very important follow up question, what deep sea mining actually is, because I think that's often where a lot of people sort of jump to assumptions about about what they think it is and maybe are often surprised to sort of learn what it actually what it actually would entail. But conventional mining is typically so.

00:05:13:07 - 00:05:38:23

Dr. Seaver Wang

So typically, the way you get metals in are as it is, is you if the deposits are close to the surface, you do a surface mine. So you know, some sometimes called an open pit mine, you remove a lot of overburden to get to the ore body and then you remove that and then you remove successive layers of of the target deposit.

00:05:39:01 - 00:06:06:11

Dr. Seaver Wang

Or if the deposit is much deeper than you, you do underground, you do underground mining, you drop mine shafts and then you actually tunnel into those rock layers deep underground, sometimes several kilometers even underground. And so I want to avoid casting terrestrial mining too much, as, you know, abhorrent or horrible, because the fact of the matter is that it is actually the foundation of industrial civilization.

00:06:06:12 - 00:06:36:17

Dr. Seaver Wang

You go around walking in a modern city and, you know, you've got copper cables in all the circuit boxes next to you. You've got, you know, steel in railings and in in rebar, in reinforcing and reinforcing, you know, steel columns all all around you. So the the entirety of a sort of modern civilization depends upon metals. If we didn't mind metals, we would still be hunter gatherers.

00:06:36:19 - 00:07:19:15

Dr. Seaver Wang

So so recognizing that, you know, there is always we should always be pushing ourselves to, to mine better. And and we have been terrestrial mining has even improved significantly in the last 20 to 40 years, even particularly when you look at metrics that that people that people sometimes don't think about, for example, such as worker safety. That said, at the end of the day, terrestrial terrestrial mining, you're moving large quantities of earth, you know, on the order of tens to hundreds to thousands of kilograms of Earth for every kilogram of metal that you're that you're actually turning into a finished product at the end.

00:07:19:17 - 00:07:57:04

Dr. Seaver Wang

And you're just starving large quantities of Earth's surface, less so for an underground mine. But but, but a significant amount for for a surface mine. And that is essentially clear cutting the surface vegetation. And then because you're you're doing all of this digging, you have to drain an underground mine to make sure it doesn't it doesn't flood. And then you've got these piles of of tailings, which is the the rock that's within the ore body that that isn't actually the valuable product as well as sort of other waste rock like the overburden that you remove that's sitting in piles.

00:07:57:10 - 00:08:20:09

Dr. Seaver Wang

And because it's been deemed sort of dug up into fine material and deposited as large piles, that creates risks for water pollution, because when it rains on those piles, it's more easy because now the surface area of those materials is larger for potentially unpleasant stuff to leach leach around. And, you know, there are controls for all of this.

00:08:20:11 - 00:08:42:15

Dr. Seaver Wang

You know, we line our tailings piles. Now you you sort of have to submit mine plans that take into account the local hydrology to make sure that stuff doesn't get into the water table. But all the same, these these risks are some of these some of these differences are just sort of inherent because at the end of the day, you are digging to get to get these materials.

00:08:42:17 - 00:08:54:09

Dr. Seaver Wang

And then also there's a vast disparity globally in how mining is done, which may mean that standards vary significantly from country to country, which may increase or decrease the relative environmental risk.

00:08:54:11 - 00:09:16:15

Chris Keefer

Right, Right. And I mean, fundamentally, we are terrestrial creatures and sometimes these compete for space. I'm thinking of, you know, not to choose to politicize of an example, but the German open pit lignite mines, which are consuming villages and communities that are being evacuated and historic churches that are being felled. But, you know, I've I've traveled a fair amount in in Central America and South America.

00:09:16:15 - 00:09:39:10

Chris Keefer

And sometimes those conflicts are very real and local farming communities are very impacted. So, yeah, with that in mind, let's talk a little bit about deep sea mining. Why don't you start off with the actual geology of these deposits or even just like, let's get super meta and just talk about how, you know, ores tend to concentrate themselves because it's funny, like they are renewable resources.

00:09:39:10 - 00:09:59:12

Chris Keefer

Like where do these minerals come from? How do they deposit themselves? But the timeframe of their renewal is, you know, hundreds of millions of years. I think in many cases, if you want to go matter there and just in general, how mineral deposits kind of concentrate. But, you know, zooming in on what the hell is going on, on the the deep sea seafloor, I think that's that's kind of the area of fascination.

00:09:59:13 - 00:10:26:11

Dr. Seaver Wang

Sure. Sure. And I'll start by scoping this conversation a bit, because there are actually several types of seafloor mining and we're really only going to be talking about one type here, which is our polymetallic nodules. So there are other kinds of seafloor mining that have been proposed that in many way in some cases they actually look like like conventional mining, but you're just doing it on the seafloor, you know, digging ocean crusts or or lopping off ocean hydrothermal vents to to mine.

00:10:26:11 - 00:11:06:21

Dr. Seaver Wang

And that's not what we're talking about. That would be higher, higher impact kind of work. So what we are talking about are polymetallic nodules and polymetallic nodules are roughly potato sized accretions of of mostly manganese of heavily manganese around 30%, manganese by mass. And then in and then there are smaller quantities of nickel, copper and cobalt in that order that that have accumulated in these nodules and these nodules have accumulated through sort of natural ocean mineral mineralogical and chemical processes like precede, they've accumulated over over tens to hundreds of millions of years into these sort of potato sized rocks.

00:11:06:21 - 00:11:43:15

Dr. Seaver Wang

And it's a natural process you would expect them to to to regrow. But again, on vast geological timescales, I think it is probably fair to say that they are non nonrenewable, particularly on our on our very measly short human timescales. But there's great differences in, in, you know, these polymetallic nodules which are literally just sitting on the sea floor sort of, you know, half buried or even just sitting entirely on top of the seafloor versus ocean crusts or hydrothermal vent minerals that are that are locked in instead of fixed deposits.

00:11:43:17 - 00:12:26:08

Dr. Seaver Wang

The difference being that you can actually go and pick up these nodules. And so what we're more, we're talking about when when it comes to so so-called deep sea mining or dcim, which is really just nodule collection, is sending robotic, remotely operated vehicles down to the seafloor. And then these vehicles will use one of several techniques. Most commonly they're using water jets to actually actually suspend these nodules, sort of mobilize the sediment underneath them and sort of get them to float and then suck these these nodules into the vehicle and then transport them via pumps, hydraulic pump up to a collector vessel on the seafloor.

00:12:26:08 - 00:12:48:01

Dr. Seaver Wang

So you think it's got it. You've got to collect your vessel on the on the sea surface. Sorry, electro vessel on the sea surface. You've got a long pipe leading down to a robotically controlled vehicle. And that's that's it. That's the system. So so you compare that to a land based mine or some of the alternatives for mining techniques which have been discussed, which so far.

00:12:48:06 - 00:13:05:16

Dr. Seaver Wang

I will I suppose the other, the other techniques, you know, ocean crustal mining or hydrothermal vent mining, but the footprint is much smaller. It's it's almost basically like driving driving a little car over the over the surface ocean and picking up what's in the car's path pretty much.

00:13:05:17 - 00:13:33:06

Chris Keefer

Right. Well, let's talk kind of a little more philosophically about humanity's relationship to the ocean, particularly modern humanity, and I guess more of the kind of romantic, modern humanity's conceptions and thoughts about the ocean. Like, I think the frames of reference I have for this, like what other resources do we pull from the ocean while we, you know, we pull fish out of the ocean and we use these, you know, factory trawler ships and probably, you know, over subsidize and over harvest and screw up that renewable resource.

00:13:33:08 - 00:13:54:18

Chris Keefer

The ocean's been used, I guess is like a dumping ground in the past. So let let's talk a little bit about yeah, how I guess particularly like industrial homo sapiens have interacted with the ocean and how we sort of have started to philosophically think about it and how that's become conceptualized into certain laws and treaties, because I understand that right now, this deep sea mining and even legal right.

00:13:54:20 - 00:14:38:10

Dr. Seaver Wang

So the list is long and and quite exhaustive of the ways in which humanity interacts with the ocean currently. So there's, of course, the indirect impacts like climate change, which results in ocean acidification, other changes in ocean chemistry and and ocean physics. There is a nutrient pollution. So because we we use, you know, large amounts of fertilizer on land and because of other sort of nutrient inputs like sewage, for example, the were were introducing a lot of nutrients via rivers into our coastal oceans, which is dramatically changed the biogeochemistry of sort of coastal coastal waters.

00:14:38:12 - 00:15:02:14

Dr. Seaver Wang

And then, you know, there are more, there are more sort of direct economic activities like fishing being being one of the largest ones. We a major one that people don't often think about is just ocean shipping. You know, a large amount of of of large ocean vessels transit the ocean each day transporting, you know, upwards of 95% of of of human trade and commerce.

00:15:02:16 - 00:15:38:11

Dr. Seaver Wang

The and you know, those vessels have impacts like noise, particulate pollution, etc. that have affected the ocean now for well over 150 years at this point there is and because of that commerce actually and this goes back even further to the days of sail, there have actually been impacts as well from introduction of invasive species. You know, stuff hitches a ride on boats and then gets brought to new areas where sometimes it turns out to be very, very well suited to those areas and sort of outcompete the existing organisms there.

00:15:38:13 - 00:16:05:00

Dr. Seaver Wang

You know, invasion is is in many ways a natural process, too, because stuff can raft over logs as well. But humans have sort of accelerated this process inadvertently, even if, you know, even if it happened previously. And then, you know, we actually do modify the seafloor already. You know, we do oil and gas extraction. We lay large amounts of subsurface cables not just for electricity, but also for telecommunications.

00:16:05:02 - 00:16:34:12

Dr. Seaver Wang

You know, and it's worth noting, too, that, you know, the seabed is vast. And so, you know, the impacts of any of those activities oil and gas extraction or laying transatlantic cables or deep sea mining, we're really talking about very, very small, minuscule percentages of the of the seafloor, because the seafloor is vast. It's two thirds of the ocean surface compared to the one third of a sort of land surface area that that we have.

00:16:34:12 - 00:16:50:09

Dr. Seaver Wang

But that's the that's, you know, a quick snapshot and not even not even if it's exhaustive, you know, there's like dynamite mining, coral harvesting, etc.. But humans, humans. And basically the point is humans interact a lot with the ocean already and recognize that yeah.

00:16:50:11 - 00:17:07:06

Chris Keefer

Since that was kind of impacts. And then in terms of resources that we take out, I mean obviously whales was an early one, fish fishing and we've overfished. And when people I think talk about, well you know, it sounds like this is small localized activities, they think about the enormous impacts humanity's had in aggregate on fish stocks, etc..

00:17:07:08 - 00:17:27:02

Chris Keefer

I mean, I guess we also mine a lot of sand from the ocean, I mean, or from, I guess little like islands and reefs and stuff. But I mean, sand, especially construction, where the sand seems to be something of a type commodity in some places. So yeah, I'm sure like so you said it's a small subsection of the ocean surface.

00:17:27:06 - 00:17:41:22

Chris Keefer

Why is it deep? Like do these things not form in shallower continental shelves? Like why do you get these little potato nodules? They sound pretty cool and crazy to me. Why do they form where they do and what what is this widespread across the deep oceans? Because as you said, that's that's a big space.

00:17:42:00 - 00:18:04:22

Dr. Seaver Wang

Yeah. So but so admittedly, my inorganic chemistry is pretty poor. That was my worst ever grade and, and throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. So I don't actually know the precise answer to that. But yeah, I do know that that these deposits are only found at at great depth. So we're talking 3 to 5 kilometers.

00:18:05:02 - 00:18:24:06

Chris Keefer

And in terms of the good sounds, technically challenging. So how far along is this technology? You know, I've heard of like calls to just ban it outright. It reminds me a little bit of geo engineering where there's this tension between like, hey, maybe we're going to need this stuff. We should probably do the science. And then other people saying if we do the science, we're more likely to do it.

00:18:24:07 - 00:18:32:00

Chris Keefer

What's going have unanticipated consequences? So, yeah, I mean, this is like a new frontier. So. So how is that sort of proceeding?

00:18:32:02 - 00:18:55:22

Dr. Seaver Wang

Yeah, so it's new, but it's but like many ideas in mining, it's also old actually. So, so, you know, many innovative new mining techniques, you know, be it sort of, you know, extracting metals using, you know, solution so called solution mining, using using using sort of liquids, pumping liquids into the into rock layers to get metals or deep sea mining.

00:18:55:22 - 00:19:37:15

Dr. Seaver Wang

These ideas actually often date back to the the sixties and seventies. We were aware of the existence of manganese modules even, I believe, you know, in the in the mid 20th century. And it's been so so these materials have been coveted for a long time. But as might be expected, it only very recently sort of with advances in particularly with advances in sort of remotely operated vehicles that have made it more feasible economically to to actually think about collecting these rocks at commercially speaking and sort of economic costs.

00:19:37:17 - 00:19:46:17

Dr. Seaver Wang

So so that so the true sort of industrial interest is really only more recent. Within the last 20 years or so. I'd say.

00:19:46:19 - 00:20:09:08

Chris Keefer

As you describe briefly, you know, this kind of robot that goes around vacuum cleaning these things up, shunting them to the surface where there's this vessel I was wondering if you can go into that in a little more detail so people can understand also what people are saying The impacts would be what are the environmental harms of stirring up this deep seafloor or how kind of ecologically diverse or valuable is it?

00:20:09:08 - 00:20:26:18

Chris Keefer

I mean, again, this is turning into sort of human value propositions, but people tend to like weird and exotic environments and biodiversity and things like that. So is this just like a dead barren space far from any any light and energy flows, or is there a lot going on down in nodule land?

00:20:26:20 - 00:21:04:00

Dr. Seaver Wang

Sure, yeah. Lots of questions there. I'll start with the second with the second half term. You know you you talk about people are really evaluating sort of you know exotic sort of extreme environments. And I might actually challenge that proposition a bit because having worked on even surface ocean plankton for five years, my take away really from from from all of that work was that very few lay people actually care about plankton and surface ocean plankton are actually important, but deep ocean deep ocean organisms are, you know, realistically speaking, infinitely less important than surface ocean microbes.

00:21:04:00 - 00:21:34:04

Dr. Seaver Wang

I mean, surface ocean microbes are actually very important. But this is a very barren landscape we're talking about of via the vessel, sea floor, where, you know, there isn't a single scrap of light down down there. Much of the ocean, basically, aside from a few auto troughs, a few sort of organisms that can make their own energy through very the the the entirety of that ecosystem subsists essentially off of the detritus that flows down from the surface ocean.

00:21:34:06 - 00:22:00:03

Dr. Seaver Wang

And it's very, very little. And a biomass down there, living biomass down there in the deep ocean. And on the abyssal seafloor, we're talking like ten grams of living biomass per square meter compared to say 20 to 40 kilograms of of of living life in like a temperate tropical forest on land. So orders of magnitude, many orders of magnitude difference in the richness of biomass.

00:22:00:05 - 00:22:30:14

Dr. Seaver Wang

Now, that being said, we have to be sort of clear eyed about what the the impacts of deep sea mining would actually be. So certainly anything in the path of the collector vehicle, the the the collector vehicle is expected to disturb approximately the the upper 6 to 8 centimeters of sediment. And you know, it's going to subject anything caught, you know, on the surface or buried to that depth to, you know, large differences and large differences in pressure.

00:22:30:14 - 00:22:51:10

Dr. Seaver Wang

It's going to sort of rip them out of their environment. And so, you know, the real operating assumption is, is that those vehicles are going to kill anything that's caught up within the collect the path of the harvester. Now, that isn't any different from, you know, bulldozers that are bulldozing, you know, Indonesian rainforest for a nickel mine for conventional nickel mine today.

00:22:51:12 - 00:23:27:19

Dr. Seaver Wang

But but it is an impact and we have to be clear eyed about that the other impacts. So so you know, the the electric vehicle is also sucking up a lot of sediment with the nodules as it's doing this. And the sediment is going to be ejected from the back of the vehicle just at the ocean's surface. And there are concerns that this creates a plume, a plume of sort of fine suspended sediments and that that plume could travel a great distance horizontally or vertically and sort of rain down as snow on the seafloor or there are organisms down on the seafloor that, for example, use filters to feed like sea level sea lilies.

00:23:27:19 - 00:23:46:15

Dr. Seaver Wang

They're trying to catch particles. And the concern is that they might be catching a lot of the sediment as well, and that might negatively impact them. Or if the sediment plume is even thick enough, it could bury seafloor life. And then the final impacts that people are concerned about are noise, as the nodules are sort of rattling up and getting pumped up to the to the surface vessel.

00:23:46:17 - 00:23:53:19

Dr. Seaver Wang

And also there are there are minor impacts like light, for example, from the collector vehicles in this area that's pitch dark.

00:23:53:21 - 00:24:00:13

Chris Keefer

And just to clarify, that plume is happening out the back end of the vehicle or it's up at the surface near the surface collector ship.

00:24:00:15 - 00:24:34:15

Dr. Seaver Wang

So that's a that's an incisive question. So there is a plume at the out the back of the vehicle. But then, of course, as the nodules are pumped up to the to the surface vessel, there are there is some sediment that's transported up as well. So currently the direction in which draft regulations seem to be leaning is that they will require these these operators to return that that that water, that excess water and and remaining sediment back down to near near the ocean seafloor seafloor, if not at the ocean seafloor.

00:24:34:17 - 00:24:48:18

Dr. Seaver Wang

So it'll be returned at a depth of like three or four kilometers down as well. And that that that plume of returned water and fine sediment is going to be a lot more dilute in terms of sediment than the plume coming out, the collector vessel.

00:24:48:20 - 00:25:21:02

Chris Keefer

So you hear or I've heard anyway, that there's sort of deserts in the ocean where there's just no fertilizer there. Not you know, there's an excess of of of fertile ingredients coming mostly from, I guess our ammonia production and down are riverbeds. And I think it's called make alluvial dust off of glaciers and things like that. What a little bit of sediment be good in these areas too, like, you know, might might blanket some deep ocean life, but it might also fertilize some of the more active upper parts of of the ocean, which which could benefit.

00:25:21:02 - 00:25:25:10

Chris Keefer

Is there is there a cost benefit analysis here of that?

00:25:25:12 - 00:25:48:08

Dr. Seaver Wang

So I don't think so, because so first off, now that it seems like the mine operators will be required to return this water at great depth, the surface, the surface ocean community would largely, one would think, be unaffected by these activities. And then at depth, this is an environment where nutrients are not the limiting factor. And in fact, the the deep ocean is already very nutrient rich.

00:25:48:10 - 00:26:17:12

Dr. Seaver Wang

And so so think of the deep ocean as where all the decomposition happens. You know, stuff dies or fish poop, and it sinks all the way down to the deep ocean where that stuff then gets decomposed by microbial life, by it, by microorganisms, and by sort of scavengers. And so it gets broken down into its constituent carbon, which which the deep ocean is very rich in carbon as well as as well as nutrients.

00:26:17:13 - 00:26:56:17

Dr. Seaver Wang

The deep ocean is already nutrient rich. And so reintroducing those sediment finds into the deep ocean would not change that. It's other factors like like for like, like for instance, the very, very cold temperatures of the deep ocean which restrict metabolism and even the rich and even sort of because organisms have to be so well adapted to those pressures, to that sort of harsh environment, the trade off, the evolutionary trade offs they had to make to survive, to survive in that environment means they're not going to just sort of like multiply like a half algal bloom what on the surface.

00:26:56:19 - 00:27:13:05

Chris Keefer

Right. Okay. So I'm going to have to take a slight tangential turn here because I was listening to my friend Nate Hagan's podcast and here, sir, somebody is he's a big climate scientist in the UK who advised, I think the Blair government and a few others, and he's passionate about this project and this has nothing to do with deep sea mining.

00:27:13:05 - 00:27:36:05

Chris Keefer

So forgive this receiver and the audience, but it was a cool idea. Basically he talks about how like whale poo is, you know, a massive sort of source of of fertilizer throughout the ocean. And he had this plan as I think, a way to sort of sink carbon because when when whales, I guess take a dump on the ocean, it it's it's a huge source of sort of fertility obviously drops to the bottom as well.

00:27:36:07 - 00:27:54:05

Chris Keefer

But it's sort of trying to emulate that with taking, I think again, like alluvial particle and sediment from Greenland, putting it on rice husks so it would float and sort of have some presence in the upper ocean and serve as a source of, I guess, like a plankton bloom that then would settle down and sink some carbon. This is a total aside.

00:27:54:07 - 00:28:07:14

Chris Keefer

I'm not sure if you know anything about it, but I guess the reason I'm asking you this, because it sounds like, well, if you take this nutrient rich material up from the floor, like why not put it up on the surface where, you know, I guess there's just very little energy flow outside of these thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean.

00:28:07:19 - 00:28:20:00

Chris Keefer

You've got energy and not as much nutrient on the top. Am I just being totally naive Again, in terms of a cost benefit analysis and like, why not put some nutrients up on the ocean surface and maybe they'd be good for climate or for fish stocks or something else.

00:28:20:02 - 00:28:41:14

Dr. Seaver Wang

So you'd have to you'd really have to sort of do the science and figure out whether this makes sense, because particularly if you're bringing deep water nutrients to the surface, you're really going to have to be careful about also bringing up deep, deep, deep ocean carbon and and sort of counteracting the effect, the fertilizing effect that you're you're trying to talk about here, because the deep ocean really is very rich in carbon dioxide.

00:28:41:16 - 00:29:10:10

Dr. Seaver Wang

And so if you're ventilating a large amount of of of deep ocean CO2 to the surface, you might really be you might really be better off just, you know, planting trees instead or, you know, direct doing doing some other sort of carbon removal method. But this general idea of ocean fertilization, you know, for example, if you're taking, you know, alluvial iron or artificial iron and, you know, and nutrients and introducing into the ocean, you know, that wouldn't have the same sort of deep ocean carbon concern that you're talking about.

00:29:10:12 - 00:29:35:04

Dr. Seaver Wang

And this has been thought about for a long time. There's famously an oceanographer called Paul Martin who once said, give me half a tanker of iron and I'll show you an ice age, because the idea was that you could you could, you know, with just a little bit of fertilization catalyzed so much carbon removal that you could actually sort of, you know, reverse the accumulating greenhouse effect completely and sort of drop global temperatures.

00:29:35:06 - 00:29:53:22

Dr. Seaver Wang

Now, subsequent science has suggested that the ocean biogeochemistry is a lot more difficult than that. You don't get as much bang for your buck as you think when you do the back of the envelope, because, you know, ocean ecosystems are complicated. You use a lot of that biomass doesn't sink to the deep ocean, it gets eaten at the surface.

00:29:53:22 - 00:30:15:12

Dr. Seaver Wang

And, you know, viruses and every and everything sort of serves to sort of call the the new accumulated biomass. So, so so ocean fertilization, the effect is often a lot weaker than than sort of people hope for. It's a huge topic and honestly perhaps worth a podcast episode of it's one.

00:30:15:12 - 00:30:16:06

Chris Keefer

100%.

00:30:16:06 - 00:30:28:12

Dr. Seaver Wang

And I could recommend people if you want to talk about this. But yeah, people have thought about this for a long time and, and many people have come away disappointed once they've that they've actually sort of done the experiments.

00:30:28:16 - 00:30:53:00

Chris Keefer

Okay. Right. I thank you for the soldier in there and I will I will follow up on your recommendations. Okay so I mean we're talking manganese, cobalt, nickel. I'm just kind of again, trying to draw some comparisons and I'm probably sounding like I'm this like massive advocate for deep sea mining. I think it's fascinating. It's curious ultimate to me, it seems lower impact than like children in the Congo of working in like slave conditions and very unsafe practices, too.

00:30:53:06 - 00:31:13:01

Chris Keefer

And it seems like most of the world's cobalt is currently sourced from from Congo. So in terms of the specific minerals we're talking about, can you talk about their relevance and also where they're currently sourced and I guess the kind of relative environmental impacts of sourcing them from the deep sea versus the terrestrial environments they're currently mined from?

00:31:13:07 - 00:31:39:01

Dr. Seaver Wang

Sure. Yes. So so we're talking, yeah, manganese, nickel, copper and cobalt. So these these minerals to people who are involved in energy transition, the first thing they think about is batteries. So specifically the the the, the sort of top of the line most energy dense nickel, manganese, cobalt or NMC batteries that are used in in sort of long range electric vehicles.

00:31:39:05 - 00:32:07:00

Dr. Seaver Wang

And that would probably have to be used for a similar sort of energy, high energy density requirements like long range trucking or, you know, electric ocean cargo ships or electric aviation would probably have to use the most energy dense batteries available. So so, so these sort of NMC batteries currently now there are alternative batteries like lithium ion phosphate batteries that do not use nickel, manganese and cobalt.

00:32:07:02 - 00:32:47:18

Dr. Seaver Wang

But those batteries are less energy dense. They are very suitable. They are very they're increasing in popularity, particularly in sort of dense urban South Asia and East Asia, where you don't need to where you don't drive as long distances. You could sort of do with smart smaller cars, etc. And LP the future of Alpha is is going to be bright, but a lot of the sort of sort of industry analysts that are that like Bloomberg New Energy Finance or Fraunhofer are really thinking the NMC still will remain the sort of the plurality of electric vehicle battery chemistries going forward and to at least, you know, 2030, the mid 2030s.

00:32:47:20 - 00:33:13:12

Dr. Seaver Wang

Now I want to also call out that these minerals are not just used in electric vehicles. So many people are not aware of this aspect, even even especially in the in the deep sea mining debate. But nickel and manganese are used in many ubiquitous steel and aluminum alloys and steel and aluminum are very much going to also be metals of decarbonization.

00:33:13:13 - 00:33:37:13

Dr. Seaver Wang

These are going to be used in vast quantities, whether it's to build hydrogen pipelines or nuclear power plants or transmission infrastructure, for which you're also going to need a lot of copper for those substations. So, so so people are people talk about deep sea metals too often as if it's just batteries, but it really is sort of an energy transition implications.

00:33:37:15 - 00:34:02:21

Dr. Seaver Wang

As for where they're sourced currently, most nickel is mine. In Indonesia, most cobalt is mined in and in the Congo with an increasing share of cobalt actually sourced as a byproduct, a byproduct of nickel mining in in Indonesia, most manganese is sourced from South Africa and then copper is more is is a long time commodity that humans have mined at large scales.

00:34:03:02 - 00:34:06:20

Dr. Seaver Wang

And so the copper supply chain is more sort of broadly distributed around the world.

00:34:06:22 - 00:34:34:02

Chris Keefer

What does these deep sea resources I'm trying to think of the scale both of like how how does the scale in terms of actually being a, you know, a sizable percentage of of demand and take potentially take pressure off of terrestrial deposits. But also the scale of the kind of reserves and resources out there? Is this like markedly change the amount of copper we have available in the world for whatever the applications are, we choose to use it for.

00:34:34:04 - 00:35:01:04

Dr. Seaver Wang

So it's funny, you started with copper because copper is actually one example of where currently we think there's way more resources actually in land based resources than in the in the richest sort of nodular area that everyone's excited about. The Clarion Clipperton So, so, so copper is actually one where land based resources are still perhaps the majority, although we know so little about the seafloor that that that that that understanding may well be wrong for manganese in particular.

00:35:01:04 - 00:35:23:23

Dr. Seaver Wang

We know that there's way more on the seafloor on cobalt that is very likely to be the case as well. There's there's likely to be more cobalt in these deep sea nodules than there is on land. And then finally, for nickel, it's about the same. So the currently known natural resources versus currently known terrestrial nickel resources is about the same order of magnitude, not the same order of magnitude, about the same scale.

00:35:24:00 - 00:35:24:16

Dr. Seaver Wang

Yeah.

00:35:24:18 - 00:35:47:16

Chris Keefer

In terms of the overall efficiency of of like or extraction, how does it compare? I mean, these, these sound like little kind of underwater drones and collection ships. What are people's projections of how much this could be scaled, what percentage of cobalt you could shift away from children in Congo towards this very flashy high tech way of extraction?

00:35:47:16 - 00:36:09:23

Dr. Seaver Wang

Yeah, Yeah. I do want to just jump in and say that, you know, like a lot of people and I'm glad that a lot of people are concerned about, you know, child abuse of child labor in the Congo for cobalt. But I do want to call out, you know, the Congolese government and international and sort of with international partners are doing a lot to try and make cobalt, cobalt mining in the Congo better.

00:36:10:04 - 00:36:56:00

Dr. Seaver Wang

So I do just want to call that out for a moment and recognize that, you know, it's not just an unsolvable bad situation. There are a lot of people working very hard to sort of make that mineral ecosystem economy better. But certainly I deep sea mining is projected to be a bit of a game changer potentially. The one thing one thing that's very sort of one thing that's very important to note is that all the all the operators who are proposing to collect nodules are suggesting that they would be much lower cost than a lot of existing production because it's such a more streamlined operation, robots to pipes to ships.

00:36:56:03 - 00:37:18:16

Dr. Seaver Wang

And the ships just go straight to a processing facility onshore. It's a way more streamlined operation than a terrestrial mine where you have to do the mine plan and then you may have to build the mine for two or three years. The mine development phase, maybe maybe two or three years before you even producing metal. And then, you know, you've got these successive stages of getting to each rock layer, etc..

00:37:18:18 - 00:37:35:06

Dr. Seaver Wang

It's much more involved. So deep sea mining could scale rather quickly and it could also dramatically change these these sort of commodity markets. It could change sort of the cost production curve of cobalt or nickel as we know it.

00:37:35:08 - 00:38:04:01

Chris Keefer

Maybe getting back to I don't know if you can. So you're saying these are these are scalable. This is wouldn't be if this were kind of unleashed from a regulatory perspective, this could be a significant contributor, as you're saying. Not so in copper, but in cobalt, manganese and nickel. Just to confirm that this this is you know, because we hear about and within the energy transition discourse, we constantly hear about these pilot projects, many of which don't have a hope in hell of scaling, but that consume a vast amount of oxygen in terms of the popular discourse and media.

00:38:04:01 - 00:38:16:05

Chris Keefer

So I just want to get a sense, is this one of those things or this has potential, you know, scalability to it, that that will be impactful for extending reserves and again, hopefully minimizing ecological impacts, terrestrial ecosystems?

00:38:16:05 - 00:38:35:20

Dr. Seaver Wang

Yeah, Yeah, yeah. So I'll put some numbers to this. So know a lot of these operators are talking about scaling up within a few years, within just a couple of years to collecting on the order of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of dry nodules. Dry. Well, you know, once they've been, once the water weight has left them per year.

00:38:35:22 - 00:39:15:06

Dr. Seaver Wang

And so you know, if you think about these nodules being composed of like 30% manganese, biomass, and then, you know, around 1% of nickel, nickel and copper, nickel and copper, and then around point 2% cobalt. So you're talking, you know, tens of thousands of tonnes of manganese production per year. That's already the occurrence of one terrestrial mine. And then, you know, on the order of hundreds to thousands of tonnes of, of, of nickel and, and cobalt which would already put them, you know, which are what already put them on the map in terms of, of production of these commodities.

00:39:15:08 - 00:39:40:21

Dr. Seaver Wang

So you know it wouldn't start out as, as you know it's, it wouldn't be as if another another Indonesia is worth of production springs into existence overnight, but they are scaling rapidly enough that you know, it's it's the equivalent of putting new terrestrial mines into operation much, much, much faster than than sort of the existing commodity economy would be able to do so.

00:39:40:23 - 00:40:01:20

Chris Keefer

And that's a major choke point, particularly in terms of permitting. We're saying this might be difficult in terms of existing ocean conventions, but sure as hell ain't easy to build a mine in the United States, for example, right now. And, you know, in terms of working your way through the permissions and whatnot else. So is this happening A is there like an environment in which this is being tested out?

00:40:01:22 - 00:40:16:05

Chris Keefer

Are the regulations such that, you know, I guess similar to a lot of geoengineering research, you just can't even do it. It's all theoretical and being done, you know, but with modeling and things like that or people actually building these robotic vehicles and stepping off a few nodules and feeling it out.

00:40:16:06 - 00:40:52:02

Dr. Seaver Wang

Now, existing international law does permit for small level tests. So there are actually not just not just private, not just private entities, but also government entities, like, for example, Noah has conducted deep sea mining testing in this Clarion Clipperton zone zone of nodules between Hawaii and the United States. And so these are these are full scale. And this in the sense that the vehicle and the rate of nodule collection, etc., are are the same as what you'd be you'd expect in a commercial operation.

00:40:52:07 - 00:41:14:05

Dr. Seaver Wang

It's just not like 12 vehicles down there harvesting at once. It's just one and they're studying the impacts of that one vehicle. But but, you know, essentially they are doing, you know, full scale pilot testing already. So this means that there's actually already hard scientific data that that we're that we can talk about and that we are talking about in terms of informing regulations and debating over how strict regulations can be.

00:41:14:07 - 00:41:40:14

Dr. Seaver Wang

But commercial mining so far is not permitted. And the the International Seabed Authority, which is the international governing body that has the responsibility for overseeing and regulating of seabed economic activities like Nodule collection, is currently in the process of formulating a mining code. They are they are actually already overdue for when they were supposed to to finalize the mining code.

00:41:40:16 - 00:42:05:14

Dr. Seaver Wang

But the expectation is that they're supposed to make significant progress on it by this summer. So so there is a so in terms of, you know, legality, there is actually a pathway towards legality where at some point the International Seabed Authority is supposed to say, okay, these are the standards you have to meet if you want to collect nodules.

00:42:05:16 - 00:42:20:13

Chris Keefer

So are these the kind of only minerals that we're looking at? These nodules sound like kind of a unique phenomenon? Is that the opportunity or, you know, and I guess, as you're saying, this really is kind of a final frontier. We've got some vessels that go down and kind of map out the sea floor, from what I understand.

00:42:20:13 - 00:42:45:00

Chris Keefer

But there's many, many places, I'm guessing certainly no human has ever been close to, But maybe also any submersible is never even close to. Is there like a vast El Dorado or there are other potential? You know what? What are the known knowns? What are the unknown unknowns in terms of what other, you know, resources, minerals we could we could find down in the abyssal layers using the right terminology.

00:42:45:02 - 00:43:17:00

Dr. Seaver Wang

So, so, so so Norway, for example, recently made the news because they are within their own territorial waters, which don't fall under the the boundaries of the the governance of the International Seabed Authority. Norway recently has made moves towards towards Exploratory Sea Seafloor Nodule collection off of Svalbard, which is an island that belongs to Norway's Norwegian soil in the far in the far, far north of Norway.

00:43:17:02 - 00:43:49:10

Dr. Seaver Wang

So there are other nodule areas on the seafloor around the world. Those nodules may differ to minor to moderate degrees in terms of their their their mineral composition. They might have slightly less manganese and slightly more nickel, vice versa. In general, the if we're talking nodules, we're talking these for metals. There have been discussions and sort of there has been some thinking about whether you could get other metals economically out of these nodules, like rare earth metals, for example.

00:43:49:12 - 00:44:13:01

Dr. Seaver Wang

But now we're talking much, much, much smaller proportions of the Niger by weight where that might not be economic or it might be we're not sure yet. So so currently a lot of people are not making any promises about what else you could get out of these nodules. So I think it's fair to say for the most part that this is mostly a conversation around nickel, copper, manganese, cobalt.

00:44:13:03 - 00:44:32:23

Chris Keefer

And just briefly, you mentioned two other forms of deep earth of underwater mining, continental crust and thermal vent mining. And you said that these were kind of no, no for you ethically, morally, scientifically, I'm not sure what just if just briefly, if you can outline what those are, if there are different minerals that are involved, why they're being pursued and why you don't think they're a good idea.

00:44:33:01 - 00:44:56:05

Dr. Seaver Wang

Sure. I'm less well versed on on what's in in those deposits, but my understanding is that it is different. There are there are different metals available, like, for example, platinum group metals or rare earth metals on the and then the you asked for sort of why I'm more hesitant about about those, those would involve sort of actual sort of art.

00:44:56:07 - 00:45:26:00

Dr. Seaver Wang

So particularly for hydrothermal vents those are actually more more ecologically rich areas. Hydrothermal vents are where you are, where are areas of the seafloor where you'll see a lot more sort of biomass and biodiversity. There are these very unique sort of communities that have been built around sort of essentially nuclear reactor. You have you have plants that are living off of these are these these hydrothermal all, you know, geysers underwater with that are rich in minerals.

00:45:26:00 - 00:45:47:11

Dr. Seaver Wang

And you as you essentially have plants that are adapted to to take those minerals and incorporated, incorporate them and grow as biomass. So so these areas are are different than the abyssal seafloor, which arguably speaking is the most common. Certainly is the most common surface area on earth and and much less, much, much less biomass.

00:45:47:11 - 00:46:06:10

Chris Keefer

Rich oak. I mean, I think we've we've really worked through a lot. It's great interviewing because you kind of answer pretty, pretty promptly. And I feel like I've asked questions with too many questions buried in them. So I'll give you an opportunity, just I guess, in wrapping up, maybe maybe just to talk about, you know, you're you said you've changed your mind on this.

00:46:06:12 - 00:46:37:10

Chris Keefer

You're part of a broader discourse on this topic. First off, like who's talking about it? Because if this is just the proponents talking about it, it's going to be kind of biased and balanced in that way. And what does that discourse look like? Are you hopeful that, you know, it's going to not solely the mining activity, but that the discourse is intelligent, that, you know, because I think, you know, again, this is sort of, Jonathan Haiti and of me, but I'm really sort of starting to really appreciate the breadth of political discourse and that we have, you know, libertarians and communists and everything in between.

00:46:37:10 - 00:46:54:09

Chris Keefer

I think we are faced with a new problem like a pandemic, whatever. It's good that we don't all see it through the same political lenses. So I'm glad that there's, you know, people that, you know, oppose everything. I mean, not that they oppose everything. I you know what? I'm trying to get out. It's good to have opponents. It's gets you, you know, red team ideas.

00:46:54:09 - 00:46:59:21

Chris Keefer

So tell me a bit about the discourse about this. And if you think it's a healthy one or not.

00:46:59:23 - 00:47:22:19

Dr. Seaver Wang

Sure. I do think there's a there's a healthy scientific discourse going on on the the the academic literature is on the subject is very is very sort of vigorous. And I think that will do a great deal of good in terms of actually reforming and actually informing the regulatory discussions that are going on at the International Seabed Authority.

00:47:23:00 - 00:47:43:22

Dr. Seaver Wang

The public discourse. I am quite dissatisfied with. I think actually it's often the case that that people come away of reading articles on on, you know, a deep sea mining study or or about deep sea mining, the topic in general and come away without actually having learned that much about the subject. So I think the public discourse could could really serve to benefit.

00:47:44:00 - 00:48:18:00

Dr. Seaver Wang

And, you know, as far as where I where I see the discourse going, you know, whether I'm whether I'm I'm hopeful, I I'm actually somewhat concerned that that we're not talking about this this this, you know, this technology with as much sort of critical thinking, critical thought as it deserves with the ultimate risk that we may be shutting out a technology that could, you know, reduce the the the overall impacts with which we source metals for the energy transition.

00:48:18:02 - 00:48:57:07

Dr. Seaver Wang

But we won't consider it because on the face of it, it sounds horrendous, which I totally understand because that's where I was several years ago. And what really changed my mind was actually finding out how to satisfactory this public discourse was once they actually compared the claims that many opponents were making about how this was going to decimate, you know, tuna fisheries or or, you know, send noise across the oceans for hundreds of kilometers or release toxic metals and then, you know, I read these claims and then I actually read the underlying studies, and I realized that these claims were being completely inflated or in some cases even fabricated by by opponents in ways that

00:48:57:07 - 00:49:31:07

Dr. Seaver Wang

that that directly diverge with the science, even as if as they were sort of screaming, you know, listen to the scientists on deep sea mining. They were sort of making up their own findings to to do so. And that was really a large part of the turning point for me, where I where I sort of realized that a lot of the opposition was not coming from having carefully reviewed the evidence, but was rather coming from more sort of fundamental, fundamental sort of on principle opposition to to this activity, no matter how it is done and, you know, no matter to what scale.

00:49:31:09 - 00:49:44:19

Chris Keefer

We'll see. But I think that was a good summary. And thank you for coming on again. It's been a bit of a quest to find someone to speak about it who's qualified as a good communicator. And I think you tick all those boxes. So thanks for coming on.

00:49:44:20 - 00:49:46:12

Dr. Seaver Wang

Thanks so much, Chris. It was my pleasure.