5. Epilogue

Excerpt

At the time of this writing (2014), it has been almost 20 years since the last of the series of experiments in the nodule fields (BIEs) was conducted. As the time went by, the interest in nodule development waxed and waned, and other deep-sea metalliferous resource types were intermittently attracting attention of the mining and scientific communities. The discovery of abundant metalliferous muds in the Pacific (Kato et al. 2011), a promise of an easier access to cobalt-rich crusts (Schlacher et al. 2013), and the metal resources to be tapped from hydrothermal vent smokers (e.g. massive sulphides; Boschen et al. 2011; Gena 2013; Van Dover 2011), to mention just a few, periodically shifted the limelight of interest from the nodules as the potentially most valuable deep-sea metal repository to other metal “treasure troves”. Invariably, however, the interest returned to the nodules, which—or the promise they offered—even made their way to the popular fiction (Bagley 1984). …