Deep sea mining

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Deep sea mining is becoming more popular , increasing the demand for protecting the exploration and then the mining itself. Israeli companies may offer systems that will match the new needs.

Deep sea mining is aimed at exploring rare minerals on the bed of the high seas. The best proof for this trend , is the announcements by Lockheed Martin that it is are starting to explore for rare minerals in the Pacific.

UK Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of the British arm of Lockheed Martin, said that it has obtained a license to prospect for high-value minerals in a 58,000-square-kilometer area of the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico.

According to DEFENSE NEWS the company hopes to use technologies already developed for the aerospace and defense sector to help make the exploitation financially viable.

Developments in space, unmanned aerial vehicles and underwater vehicles for the oil industry have changed the financial dynamics of deep sea mining, said Lockheed Martin UK.

Fueled by increasing prices for raw materials, the company hopes to extract tennis ball-sized nodules of copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese, as well as rare earth minerals that sit on the seabed around four kilometers below the surface.

The British company is targeting a combination of remotely operated or autonomous underwater vehicles, pumps, suction and riser pipes to extract the minerals.

A Canadian-based company, Nautilus Minerals, already is working on a project to extract minerals using remotely piloted machines from an area of the sea near Papua New Guinea.

Lockheed Martin officials here said the precious metals extracted would also be of interest to the company itself for its aerospace, communications and defense activities.