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SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A crew of shipmen and scientists prepare for a 46-day journey a thousand miles off the coast of San Diego to study the extraction of precious metals that they believe may lead to a greener future.
In the not too distant future, our streets will be full of electric vehicles, which means we will need lots of batteries.
“The extractive industries like mining must grow 500 to 600 percent annually,” said Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company.
The problem is that the supply of raw materials on land is either drying up or sitting in undeveloped rainforests. In addition, pollution from land mining is astronomical. So where to go next
“We believe the ocean has the answer,” said Barron.
Several times a year, the Metals Company’s researchers and sailors travel 1,100 miles off the coast of San Diego to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, discovered in 1950 by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. There are millions of nodules or rocks on the ocean floor that contain nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese. These are all ingredients in batteries.
“It’s a bit like walking on the ball-strewn golf driving range,” said Barron. “But they are nodules that all contain battery metals.”
No country owns this area of the ocean. Instead, it is ruled by the United Nations and divided into 16 licensed mining zones.
“The remote-controlled vehicle pilots team, the ship, the science, we all work as a team,” said Edward Cassano, CEO of Pelagic Research Services.
Scientists are using robotic vehicles to study the environmental impact of ingesting the tubers and the marine species that live around them.
“You don’t have to drill to get to them. You don’t have to blast like you do with land-based mining,” added Barron.
Barron said ten years after starting his company they are literally just scratching the surface. But he is confident that this will lead to a greener world.
“There are tremendous economic opportunities arising from this industry for the San Diego and California business community,” said Barron.
It is estimated that there are 21 billion tons of tubers in the mining zone, enough to make hundreds of billions of electric car batteries.
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