David Farrar: The case for seabed mining

The Herald reports:

Bright orange, 61m long, and 16m wide, the Anuanua Moana jars against the crystal blue waters of the Cook Islands. Kelvin Passfield hasn't seen the research vessel head out to survey the ocean floor so much recently, but when he does it serves as a bad omen: its work is making the small island nation the new frontier of environmental extraction.

Its survey work is part of the first steps towards seabed mining, a controversial practice where machines trawl up to 6000m below the surface for nickel, manganese and cobalt. These metals are in demand for building electric cars, wind farms and batteries, and advocates argue sea bed mining could speed-up the green transition away from fossil fuels.

They are needed not just to speed up the transition, but to make it possible. You can't make batteries out of plastic. You need metals.

He sees deep sea mining as the latest existential threat to life in the Cook Islands, a group of 15 islands with more than 17,000 inhabitants, and a realm country of new zealand. Cook Islanders have New Zealand passports, and use the New Zealand dollar.

This is hysterical. Mining has an environmental impact, but to call it an existential threat is ridiculous.

The mineral-rich nodules offer a way to boost its revenue, outside of tourism. Odyssey, on its website, claims the region boasts the world's largest collection of polymetallic nodules estimated “at a staggering 6.7 billion tonnes”.

This is huge and if one doesn't mine it here, then it will come from other locations such as the Congo which actually uses child labour.

And while deep sea mining will have an impact on the ecosystem, it is unlikely to be major as they basically just trawl the minerals off the seabed – they don't actually dig or drill. And this occurs kms below the surface. Any environmental impact should be studied and monitored, but you can only that by allowing it in the first place.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.