Exploration Contracts

The Beginning

Modern oceanography began as a field of science just about 150 years ago, in the late 19th century. The first scientific expedition to explore the world’s oceans and the seafloor was the Challenger Expedition, from 1872 to 1876, on board the British three-masted warship HMS Challenger. Among the Challenger Expedition’s discoveries was one of the deepest parts of the ocean — the Marianas Trench in the Western Pacific, where the seafloor is more than 8 km deep. The expedition also revealed the first broad outline of the shape of the ocean basin, including a rise in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, now known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In addition, scientists compiled the first systematic plots of ocean currents and temperatures.

The first discovery of polymetallic nodules also took place during this historic voyage of Challenger. On 7 March 1873, the dredge hauled up on its deck ‘several peculiar black oval bodies which were composed of almost pure manganese oxide.’ But it was not until a century later that economic interest in the deep-ocean polymetallic nodules was developed, which subsequently led to the formation of consortia in Germany, the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Belgium, Italy, among others, in the 1960s and 1970s. These consortia aimed to develop resource assessments and extraction technologies for polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the central Pacific Ocean.

With the entry into force of UNCLOS in 1994 and the establishment of ISA in 1994, exploration activities for mineral resources in the Area began to be regulated under exploration contracts. Originally, exploration activities were predominantly undertaken by national agencies until 2010, when private companies became involved, and a polymetallic-nodule-mining industry was born.