From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun May 11 2003 - 17:45:23 MDT
http://www.boston.com/advertise/orbitz/orbitz1.html
US is seeking new riches with claims to ocean floor
By Beth Daley, Globe Staff, 5/11/2003
he United States is rushing to stake a claim that could be worth billions of
dollars in mineral and biological treasures in the last wild place left on
earth: the deep seabed.
A little-known provision in a decades-old international treaty allows
countries to extend their jurisdiction over ocean floor resources beyond the
current 200-mile limit if they can prove that the underwater portion of their
lands stretches farther out to sea. Many countries' coastlines give way to an
underwater plain that slopes down for miles before hitting the true ocean
floor.
With $3.2 million from Congress, a team at the University of New Hampshire is
leading a massive mapping effort to pinpoint exactly where these boundaries
may be, especially off the coasts of Alaska and the Northeast, two of the
most promising regions.
By one estimation, the United States could reap up to $1.3 trillion in oil,
gas, and mineral reserves, and unknown biological resources, such as deep-sea
corals that hold hope for pharmaceutical products.
''We don't really know exactly what is down there,'' says Larry Mayer,
director of the University of New Hampshire's Center for Coastal and Ocean
Mapping. ''We are confident we can expand the [US jurisdictional] limits.''
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has contracted with two
private research vessels equipped with sophisticated sonar devices to give
more detail about the shape of the sea floor and where the United States is
entitled to stake a claim.
So far, only Russia has submitted a claim to the United Nations agency for
the submerged land rights, but more than a dozen other countries are
preparing scientific reports to make their claims before a 2009 deadline. If
Russia's submission is any indication, however, the proposed boundaries are
likely to translate into nasty international disputes.
Already, that country's claim to more than 600,000 square miles around the
Arctic is being disputed by the United States and four other countries that
say Russia's scientific work has ''major flaws.''
Environmentalists are taking a wait and see attitude on interest in exploring
the sea floor. Some hope international oversight could limit the damage from
activities such as oil drilling; others fear the treaty encourages greater
exploitation.
''I certainly would be concerned about any proposal or any encouragement
about ocean mining until we have a full and clear understanding of the values
of the ocean floor,'' said Dave Allison, a campaign director for Oceana, an
international oceans advocacy group.
For years, countries all but ignored this submerged region outside their
200-mile jurisdictions, stymied by a lack of technology to drill for oil in
thousands of feet of water and a lack of knowledge of exactly what they would
find on the seabed. Now, with better maps and drilling tools, Brazil is
drilling for oil in 6,000 feet of water -- a depth unheard of 15 years ago.
And some believe countries will one day be able to tap into vast amounts of
energy reserves of frozen methane in seabed sediment.
The key legal document in the seabed rush is from a 1982 UN convention that
gave more than 150 coastal nations jurisdiction over the resources from the
ocean floor to the sea's surface 200 nautical miles from their shore. A
provision in this Law of the Sea Treaty also gives these countries
jurisdiction over resources on and under the seabed up to 350 miles from
shore if they can prove that their continental shelves extend there. The
extended area does not include fish or anything else in the water, although
it may include some bottom-reliant species such as scallops.
Existing sonar mapping has given scientists a good general idea of the
topography, but the UNH team is relying on a technique called multibeam sonar
that can cover the sea floor more completely, giving a better picture of its
structure.
In addition to Alaska and an area beyond Georges Bank off New England, claims
might be made near the Blake Plateau off Florida. The UN has a complex
formula for staking a claim to the seabed, requiring details such as sediment
depths and other indicators of where the continental slope hits into the true
sea floor.
Already, however, existing data the UNH team has painstakingly reviewed are
revealing unexpected secrets of the sea floor even off New England, one of
the most studied areas on Earth.
''There are constant surprises,'' says Mayer. ''People always had this idea
of the sea floor as flat and boring, but it's not at all. There are all sorts
of geological features we're seeing, submarine landslides for instance.''
Coastal countries have rights over about 20 percent of the world's ocean in
their 200-mile zones. According to one analysis, about 54 countries may be
able to claim extensions of their continental shelves, accounting for an
additional 5 percent of the world's oceans, making the total area claimed
equal to more than half of the Earth's land surface.
Questions still exist, however. It's unclear what legal standing US claims
will have because it has not yet ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty, although
it abides by its rules.
According to the treaty, countries have 10 years from the time they ratify to
submit their claim. Countries that ratified the treaty more than a decade ago
have been given an extension until 2009. Observers say the United States no
longer has significant objections to the treaty and could ratify it in the
next few years.
Also certain to be debated is exactly what can be taken from the seabed.
While nonliving items such as oil, gas, and minerals are clearly covered, the
law states that living ''sedentary'' species can also be taken, although the
definition can get fuzzy. For example, Icelandic scallops are considered
sedentary by the UN because they can attach themselves to the sea floor, but
Atlantic scallops, which can swim, are not, even though they are essentially
the same shellfish.
Once the UN approves countries' claims, it's up to the nations to settle any
overlapping border disputes. Once the claims are settled, the areas more than
350 miles out to sea may be the next to be debated.
While scientists are beginning to peer into these abyssal sea regions, some
companies are already looking for valuable bacteria and minerals in places
such as deep-sea hydrothermal vents that spew hot water from the Earth's
crust and undersea mountains. A French cosmetic company is already
advertising it is using heat-seeking bacteria from the vents to develop a
sunblock lotion that gives more protection, according to news reports.
''The hope about ocean development is peculiar, subject to myth wedded with
greed,'' says Jack Archer, a retired professor of environmental sciences at
the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a specialist in ocean policy.
''But it's still a great unknown. We don't really know what is out there.''
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