| Sea (15) |  |
| Sea life (1) | |
| Sea water (8) | |
| Seabed (14) | |
and a deep-seabed-mining consultant. The venture could add#40#billion (US$60#billion) to the UK economy over the next 30#years,
Cameron s government sponsored Lockheed s claim to the 58,000-square-kilometre potential mining site through the company s subsidiary UK Seabed Resources in London.
The International Seabed Authority in Kingston Jamaica, which granted the exploration rights, has granted also claims in the region to several other countries,
Polymetallic nodules form over thousands of years on the sea floor, through processes that are still not fully understood;
and the founder of Seaminr, a seabed-mining consultancy in Urbanna, Virginia. PAUL JACKMAN/NATUREHARVESTING nodules is technically easier than mining the mineral-rich remnants of non-active hydrothermal vents on the sea floor,
a proposal that has garnered also attention (see Nature 447,246-247; 2007). ) Nodules rest unattached, and often visible, in seafloor sediments,
so obtaining them would not entail grinding up rocky seafloor crust. Lockheed has released not specific plans,
but the general scheme for harvesting uses a device that moves along the sea floor, vacuuming or raking up nodules.
The equipment would grind down the nodules to create a slurry that would be pumped to ships
A study at a nodule plain off Peru found that seafloor communities showed limited recovery after disturbance
) Craig Smith, a deep-sea biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will lead an initial assessment of seafloor life for Lockheed s project, gathering baseline data for the potential harvest zone
cable can be deposited on the seafloor in straight lines, or in meandering, coiling patterns. f the boat is sailing slower than the rate of the cable,
as a ship sails, the height of the ocean floor relative to the surface is changing all the time,
The three (now five) underwater biospheres were anchored to the seafloor and filled with air. Then, shelves were installed
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