FTA: “The team of experts conducted a survey from April 24 to June 9 over 100 seabed sites on the ocean floor off Minami-Torishima Island, nearly 2,000 kilomete

FTA: “The team of experts conducted a survey from April 24 to June 9 over 100 seabed sites on the ocean floor off Minami-Torishima Island, nearly 2,000 kilometers southeast of Tokyo, using mining equipment and a remotely operated underwater vehicle at depths of 5,200 to 5,700 meters. As a result, the group confirmed the presence of a dense field of about 230 million tons of easily extractable manganese deposits in the form of fist-sized nodules spread over an area of approximately 10,000 square kilometers.” So, that’s 2.3×10¹¹ kg on 10¹⁰ m² or 23kg/m² “Based on the analysis of nodule samples, the foundation estimates that the deposits contain approximately 610,000 tons of cobalt, enough to meet Japan’s demand for the metal for more than 75 years, and 740,000 tons of nickel, enough to meet demand for more than 11 years”* So, roughly 3/1000 of that is cobalt and 3/1000 is nickel. Total about 150 gram/m². Apparently, digging that up from 5 km depth is “easily extractable” and economically feasible. Looking at https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalprices.php?c=co&u=kg&d=1 https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalprices.php?c=co&u=kg&d=..., cobalt does $24k per kg, nickel $15k. So, question is: can you grab 1000kg of rock from about 7,000 m^2 of ocean floor and process it to get 3kg of cobalt and 3 kg of nickel, worth about $120k? I wouldn’t know, but at scale, that doesn’t look impossible to me.