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  • Commentary
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Subsea mining moves closer to shore

Mining the deep seabed is fraught with challenges. Untapped mineral potential under the shallow, more accessible continental shelf could add a new dimension to offshore mining and help meet future mineral demand.

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Figure 1: Global ocean mineral resources.

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Acknowledgements

This Commentary stems from a workshop sponsored by the International Futures Program of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. The authors thank B. Stevens (OECD) for the encouragement to organize the event and to contribute to the OECD report on The Future of the Ocean Economy in 2030. Data included here are part of a compilation funded by the European Commission under call FWC MARE/2012/06-SCE2013/04. M.H. is supported by the Helmholtz Excellence Initiative and by a Discovery Grant of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Correspondence to Mark Hannington.

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Hannington, M., Petersen, S. & Krätschell, A. Subsea mining moves closer to shore. Nature Geosci 10, 158–159 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2897

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