MINERAL RESOURCES OF THE DEEP SEABED

MONDAY, JUNE 18, 1973

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MINERALS, MATERIALS AND FUELS OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS, Washington, D.C. The committee met at 2 p.m., in room 3110, Dirksen Office Building, Hon. Lee Metcalf, presiding.

Present: Senators Metcalf (presiding) and Hansen.

Also present: Jerry T. Verkler, staff director; William J. Van Ness, chief counsel; Mike Harvey, special counsel; Harrison Loesch, minority counsel; Merrill W. Englund, special committee assistant for Outer Continental Shelf; and David P. Stang, deputy director, national fuels and energy study.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LEE METCALF, A SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MONTANA

Senator METCALF. The subcommittee will be in order.

Today we resume hearings on S. 1134, the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, and it is a pleasure today to welcome spokesmen for the environmental groups.

You will recall that when I was chairman of the Special Subcommittee on the Outer Continental Shelf we scheduled a hearing for May 13, 1970, to hear witnesses representing the interests of what was then called "conservation." That was before conservationists became environmentalists.

We had no witnesses, but statements were submitted by, among others: Charles H. Callison, executive vice president of the National Audubon Society; Thomas L. Kimball, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation, and Richard H. Stroud, executive vice president of the Sport Fishing Institute.

I am glad to know that in the intervening 3 years the environmentalists have been able to turn their attention to this complex subject. I welcome you here and am sure you will make a valuable contribution to the work of this committee.

Before I turn the proceeding over to you, Mr. Sullivan, I want to make it clear that our concern is with harvesting needed natural resources, while at the same time protecting our environment.

There is no international law limiting the freedom to mine the deep seabed. The United States is seeking international agreement. It is possible that such an agreement will come out of United Nations sessions scheduled for this winter in New York and in Chile next year.

It may be that interim legislation is necessary, to guide U.S. nationals, some of whom are nearing readiness to mine the seabed. S. 1134 could be such legislation.

It was drafted by the American Mining Congress at my invitation during hearings of the Special Subcommittee on the Outer Continental Shelf. It is the only piece of legislation on this subject before us. I am not committed to this particular bill, nor to any special part of it. The purpose of the hearings is to expose this bill to the full debate which is needed to assess its strengths and its weaknesses.

When mining industry witnesses appeared before this subcommittee last month, I asked them a series of questions about environmental protection. You were furnished with copies of the replies. These included the allegation that the area to be mined is "biologically barren" and that "the impact of deepsea nodule mining on biological processes will probably be minimal".

I hope you, or at least a member of your panel will address himself to my three-part question No. 6 to the American Mining Congress and to the reply.

I also hope that you have statistics or studies to back up your statements and that you will share them with this committee, which shares your concern about our environment.

And, of course, should you have suggestions for amendments to this bill, or legislative proposals of your own, we want them.

Today we have the honor to have before us a very prestigious panel: Mr. Carl Sullivan, executive secretary of the Sport Fishing Institute, Washington, D.C. As I understand it he is chairman now; Miss Nancy Matisoff, environmental associate, The Izaak Walton League of America; Mr. Richard Frank of the Center for Law and Social Policy; Dr. Donald Zinn, Professor of Zoology, University of Rhode Island, and Mr. Richard Geyer, Head of the Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University.

Are you going to testify as a panel, Mr. Sullivan, or as individuals? Mr. SULLIVAN. We are going to testify as individuals.

Senator METCALF. All right, Mr. Sullivan. You may begin, sir. Mr. SULLIVAN. If we may, Senator, I will begin and then we will finish from left to right across the table.

Senator HANSEN. Mr. Chairman, if it is not inappropriate, I would like to ask that there might be included into the record two articles: one, taken from Business Week, the issue of June 16th under the industry section titled "Now Howard Hughes Mines the Ocean Floor," and another article, which is actually chapter 3 of the Underseas Technology Handbook for 1973 entitled "Mining of Mineral Recovery".

I think they are both relevant to a better understanding of the complex issue before us, and I will ask that they be put into the record. Senator METCALF. Thank you very much, Senator Hansen.

I think they are very timely. Which reminds me that there is an article in the Cornell Law Review on "Exploitation of Seabed Mineral Resources," in the March 1973 issue. I think it is an excellent exposition on some of the problems raised.

Unless there is objection, it will be incorporated in the hearing record immediately after the hearings today.

And I have a letter from the American Petroleum Institute, where the chairman of the ad hoc committee on mineral resources beneath the seas has suggested at the end of last year's statement on S. 1134— then it was S. 2801-that it be continued. And as far as that organization is concerned, nothing has changed in the year that has elapsed. I would just have reference to that, that this is a statement they filed. Senator HANSEN. Mr. Chairman, if you would prefer, I certainly do not think it is necessary that the two articles that I asked for inclusion in the record precede the testimony of the witnesses. I think following that would be a better way.

Senator METCALF. Yes. As you wish.

[The material submitted by Senators Metcalf and Hansen will be printed at the end of today's hearing.]

Senator METCALF. I think it is awfully important, however, to indicate that the business community is going forward no matter what we do or how we get around on this important question.

Mr. Sullivan, we have delayed you a few minutes. We are delighted to have you here. If you will start off we will be glad to hear you.

STATEMENT OF CARL R. SULLIVAN, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, SPORT FISHING INSTITUTE

Mr. SULLIVAN. Thank you Senator Metcalf.

Senator Metcalf and Senator Hansen, we are pleased to be able to testify on the deepsea mining bill. The panel that you see here has prepared for its testimony totally independent ideas. We have exchanged some information, but basically the policy or the position we have taken is representative of each one's own organization.

I will start with my presentation representing the views of my organization and then, perhaps, the panel will proceed from my left across the table.

I am Carl Sullivan. I am Executive Secretary of the Sport Fishing Institute, which is a fish conservation organization. I am also speaking today for the Wildlife Management Institute, a similarly-organized wildlife group with whom we cooperate closely.

I would like to begin with discussion of this bill by saying that I think it is a little too broad. As the language of this bill states it would also permit mining underneath the surface of the deep seabed. And though we cannot conceive of a shaft mine or of an open-faced, open-pit mine in the bottom of the deep seabed, I could not conceive of a vehicle or a spaceship in orbit either, and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

And so it is obvious from initial testimony and from accounts in the other bill in the House that this bill is aimed at mining the manganese nodules in the deep seabed. It seems to us that it should be narrowed some to preclude the other type of deep seabed mining which might have blasting involved, or exposure of toxic materials under the deep seabed, which don't seem now to be in issue. When and if they are, a second hearing with environmental-type concerns might be held.

Beyond that limit, my remarks to the discussion of the environmental implications of mining these manganese nodules located in the deep seabed will be my focusing point.

As we see it, Senator, there are four basic areas that are potentially involved with this deep seabed mining. One is the flora and the animal life on the floor of the deep sea ocean; the second is the water—not only in the column of water that is being mined but the water surrounding the ships that are part of the operation; the third is the refining area, wherever that may be, and the last implication is what is the effect that this deepsea mining might have on existing exploration in mining for metals that are being sought in this particular case. Now, beginning with the deep seabed floor, it is obvious that the floor of the deep seabed has very, very small biological life. Dr. Oswald Roels estimated that the floor of the deep ocean has 0.02 pound of animal life per acre. A similar report by Oceanographer magazine gives about the same figure.

Now this is tiny, indeed, compared to the 8,000 to 40,000 pounds per acre of biological life that is found in areas of the ocean floor closer to the shore. Even if Dr. Roels had made a mistake in the order of magnitude of a hundred, it would still be miniscule compared to the amount of life of the shallow waters.

Obviously, it seems that the deepsea vacuuming or dredging or whatever would probably destroy the limited amount of life that it encounters down there. We don't have any comparable figures from other areas to know whether it would recover, but I have checked a report from the Chesapeake Bay by Dr. H. T. Pfitzenmeyer, who did a 3-year study on dredging clams out of Chesapeake Bay, which might be somewhat similar, of course, in shallow water.

And this report showed that in 4 to 12 months of the clam dredging operations that the clams had returned to their former abundance.

So it is our view that the damage to the bottom of the deep seabed by the actual mining operations will be minimal, and that it will

recover.

Secondary of concern is the water itself. I think most people know that the very deep waters of the ocean are extremely rich in the nutrients required for plant life-phosphates, nitrates, silicates, and other things that are found in abundance.

The most productive part of the ocean are those areas where the water is brought to the surface, naturally, as a result of wind action and so forth. An outstanding example is the Humboldt Current, off the west coast of South America, which is fabulously productive.

As nutrient-rich water comes to the surface it is stimulated by the light from the sun, and the great blossom of phytoplankton and the zooplankton comes and the animal life that follows.

It seems that it might be possible that if a vacuum operation would bring a lot of the deep seabed water to the surface, that it might generate quite a lot of phytoplankton, and change the environment in that area-possibly for the better.

Amos, Garside, Haines, and Roels did a study of just that type of operation. They found that where this happened the water had to provide 10 percent of the surface water before a measureable effect took place. In their studies only 3 percent of that amount of water required to generate plant growth actually got there.

The water did come to the surface. It stayed within the top 10 meters but it did not reach the concentration required to have a meas