An ambitious project aims to map the entire ocean floor. It could also open it up to mining
In 2005 a US nuclear submarine hit something solid south-east of Guam. "If you go to the deep water, to the deep sea, right up in the centre of the Indian Ocean or the Pacific Ocean, you actually could miss entire mountains." The project, he says, will focus on developing advanced technologies, because light-based mapping tools don't work well in water, and because the type of echo-sounders traditionally used to map the ocean floor are cumbersome. "Potentially every vessel that goes to sea could be equipped with some sort of sounder that could capture water-depth information and send it back to our centre," Dr Lamarche says. Mining interest to date has primarily focused on vacuuming-up "polymetallic nodules" — the apple-sized chunks of mineral-laden earth that are found scattered across the ocean floor.
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