The vast expanses of the central Pacific seabed being opened up for mining are still largely an unknown, she said. "What are we sacrificing by looking at the deep sea with dollar signs on the few tangible materials that we know are there? We haven't begun to truly explore the ocean before we have started aiming to exploit it."
But the warnings may arrive too late. The price of metals is rising. The ore content of the nodules of copper, manganese, cobalt and rare earths strewn across the ocean floor promise to be 10 times greater than the richest seams on land, making the cost of their retrieval from the extreme depths more attractive to companies.
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