27/02/2020 - 1st SESSION OF DEBATES ABOUT MINING OF THE FUTURE: SEABED MINING

Last February 27th we had the chance to do the first session of a new series of activities organized by us: Debates about the Mining of the Future. The main objective of these sessions is to gain knowledge about non-conventional mining, such as seabed mining, mining in the Space (asteroids, planets, etc.) and biomining. A feature that we want to remark about these sessions is that it is a big opportunity for our members to get to improve their management, oral and organizational skills, since they are ones that, in groups of two to three people and voluntarily, organize the presentation of the topic and decide the format of the session. They can choose to do an oral presentation, to show a documentary about the topic, to do an interactive game with the participants in the activity, etc.

This first session was organized by Carlos Ramírez (MSc in Mineral Resources - Universitat de Barcelona) and Àlex García (BSc in Geology - Universitat de Barcelona). They divided the session in two different parts. The first part consisted of an oral presentation, where they got to explain general facts about seabed mining.

They described the main seabed deposits that have been studied (to this day) in order to carry out mining projects on them, such as Seafloor Massive Sulfides, Manganese Nodules and Cobaltiferous-Ferromanganese Crusts. They also explained some disadvantages that Mining Companies must deal with when deciding to mine these types of deposits and shared with us some curiosities about seabed mining.

At the end of their talk, we debated about some interesting topics that the participants were interested in, like the legal problems Mining Companies must deal with, consequences and profitability of mining these deposits, among other things.

We want to thank and congratulate Àlex and Carlos for their participation and their commitment to carry out this activity. Further sessions related with this series of activities will take place in the following months (via online), in which we will get to discuss and debate more about seabed mining, with the participation of specialists, and we will introduce the second main topic of Debates about the Mining of the Future: mining in the space.