Minerals

Minerals

By: Nicole Acosta

Environmental, Economic, Educational and Social Impact

Pros and Cons

• The environmental impact that it has is that it's harming the environment by destroying the ocean floor with the mining. Also, it is endangering the marine environment and animals.
• The economic impact that it has is that for small economies by exploiting these resources they are able to make money and survive. Also, many of the minerals can be used for consumption. For example, salt is a key ingredient in cooking and by harvesting salt beds the economy can grow rapidly.
• The educational impact that it has is that we are able to teach the world the pros and cons of ocean mining. For example, it is a good way to explore the ocean but it's also harming the ocean by destroying the marine environment.
• The social impact that it has is that if contaminated water ends up in a beach it can endanger those who go swimming. They are consuming and risking their life on harmful chemicals that could have been avoided. Also, corrupt companies may endanger the environment or lie to the public in order to keep making money.

Pros:

• Exploitation of resources for small economies
• Exploring new underwater locations
• Construction materials, medicines, insecticides

What can we do with it?

Cons:

• Toxic mines
• Contaminated water
• Pulverized landscape
• Destruction of ocean floor and aquatic habitats
• Interferes with environmental processes
• Endangering aquatic animals.

How does the ocean provide this resource?

• Sands and gravels: often mined for in the United States and are used to protect beaches and reduce the effects of erosion. Marine aggregates are used mainly in the construction industry for building, and for the manufacture of concrete. The UK alone uses 13 million tonnes of sand and gravel each year for construction.
• In Fiji it is important to exploit these minerals carefully for their economy. The demands for rare earth metals for use in industries as ubiquitous as cell phones and computer chips are such that we should carefully consider, in a timely fashion, the sustainable exploitation of seabed minerals.
• Oil: Fuel, plastics, man-made fibres, chemicals (e.g., pain-killers), rubber, fertilsers, etc.

• It is mined for minerals (salt, sand, gravel, and some manganese, copper, nickel, iron, and cobalt can be found in the deep sea) and drilled for crude oil.
• Chemical analyses have demonstrated that sea water contains about 3.5 percent dissolved solids, with more than sixty chemical elements identified.
• Although salt is extracted directly from the oceans in many countries by evaporating the water and leaving the residual salts, most of the nearly 200 million metric tons of salt produced annually is mined from large beds of salt.
• These beds, now deeply buried, were left when waters from ancient oceans evaporated in shallow seas or marginal basins, leaving residual thick beds of salt; the beds were subsequently covered and protected from solution and destruction.
• Black smokers: These metal-rich deposits, ranging from chimneyto pancake-like, form where deeply circulating sea water has dissolved metals from the underlying rocks and issue out onto the cold seafloor along major fractures. The deposits forming today are not being mined because of their remote locations.
• Manganese nodules: Dissolved metal compounds in the sea water precipitate over time around a nucleus of some kind on the sea floor. Expensive to mine.

What is a mineral?

• A mineral is a naturally occurring inorganic solid, with a definite chemical composition, and an ordered atomic arrangement.
• Minerals are naturally occurring
• Minerals are inorganic