269 



materials must also be mentioned; the most important of these are manf<anese 

 nodules. 



The beach and sea water resources of continental shelves have been exploited 

 for hundreds, indeed many thousands, of years for the extraction of salt, sand, 

 travel and other useful products. The chemical composition of water has long 

 been known. I remember learning in school, about fort.v years ago, that a cubic 

 mile of sea water contained so many million tons of salt, of compounds of 

 calcium, magnesium and potassium, so much bromine and so many tons of other 

 minerals, including sixty-five tons of silver and twenty-five tons of gold. I ha<l 

 visions of discovering a successful method of extracting a portion of all this 

 wealth, visions which apparently were shared by the German Government after 

 the First World War when it outfitted a vessel, the Meteor, to investigate 

 whether it was possible to find a cheap method of obtaining gold from sea water 

 to pay war reparations. Unfortunatel.v, it was found that the cost of extraction 

 far exceeded the amount of gold recovered, and the Meteor returned with much 

 scientific information but little gold. 



An economic method of extracting gold and silver from sea water has not 

 yet been found, but in-solution mining — that is, the process of recovering re- 

 sources by extracting them from sea-water — is acquiring ever increasing im- 

 portance in unexpected fields. I do not refer so much to the mining of salt, 

 bromine, compounds of potassium, calcium, magnesium or iodine or to the 

 possibilities of mining other minerals, as to the development of an advanced 

 technology for the cheap extraction of fresh water from sea watei- which gives 

 us the promise of making deserts bloom and the possibility of supplying the 

 water needs of nuiltiplying urban populations. 



In contrast to iu-solution mining, on-bottom mining — that is, the process of 

 recovering resources lying on the ocean floor — is quite recent and may l)e said 

 to date substantially from the end of the Second World War. It involves three 

 stages: exploration, the mining operations themselves and transportation to 

 markets. Photography and dredging have up to the present been the principal 

 methods of undertaking exploration and have enabled us to obtain a good 

 knowledge of the on-bottom mineral resources of large areas of the sea beds 

 of the continental shelves of many countries. The recent construction of special- 

 ized submersibles will enable us to expand our knowledge more rapidly and 

 conveniently. Principal on-bottom minerals mined at the present time on con- 

 tinental shelves, usually by mean.s of bucket ladder, hydraulic or grab bucket 

 dredges, include tin off Thailand, Indonesia and Mala.vsia, diamonds off South 

 Africa, phosphorite off California, and so on. 



Sunken treasures are among the more romantic things sought for in the 

 shallow waters of continental shelves. Their economic value is sometimes con- 

 siderable : within the last few months the treasure, worth an estimated !^y> 

 million, carried by Admiral Shovell's fleet, was discovered near the Scilly Islands 

 and the hulk of a Netherlands ship transporting some half million dollars worth 

 of bullion was also discovered. 



It may also be convenient to refer briefly at this stage to the archeological 

 treasures lying on continental shelves and on the ocean floor. I have seen an 

 apparently authoritative statement to the effect that there would appear to be 

 more objects of archeological interest lying on the bottom of the Mediterranean 

 than exist in the museums of Greece, Italy, France and Spain combined. There 

 must be some basis for the statement since the French Government has con- 

 structed a submersible, the Archeonaut, specially designed for underse;is archeo- 

 logical exploration. In addition, the Archeonaut will have the important scientific 

 mission of systematically studying for the first time in history the submerged 

 quaternary beaches and their prehistoric inha))itants. 



Sub-bottom mining involves the recovei-y of minerals existing under the floor 

 of the sea bed, and may involve either the exploitation of vein deposits or of 

 minerals such as petroleum, gas and sulphur. Vein deposits, exploited by driving 

 shafts and tunnels from adjoining land, are now mined, among other places, 

 off Finland and Newfoundland for iron and near .Japan, England and Canada 

 for coal. In view of the limited extent of known undersea vein deposits of metal- 

 lic ores and the inconvenience and comparatively high cost of their exploitation, 

 they would not appear to possess much potential significance for v.orld produc- 

 tion. Quite the contrary is the case for petroleum, natural gas and, to a sonu - 

 what lesser extent, sulphur. 



Although off-shore mining of petroleum dates from 1899, production did not 

 become of real economic significance i;ntil after the Second World War. The 

 rapid progress n)ade both in evaluation and in the exploitation of offshore petro- 



