It’s not quite Tarzan and the (Lost) City of Gold, but it’s close. Scientist Peter A. Rona of Rutgers University has discovered a metal-rich mound the size and shape of the Houston Astrodome two-and-a-half miles under the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. “It was produced by jets of hot, metal-rich sea water. At least 50,000 years in the making, the mound is composed largely of combinations of the metals copper, iron, zinc, gold and silver” he said. Rona is a sea-floor mineral resources consultant to the United Nations and recently delivered a keynote address at a commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea which provides a “constitution” for management of the oceans. He published an overview of current work entitled “Resources of the Seafloor” in the international journal Science Jan. 31.
Rona, who continues to dive and has logged research expeditions aboard 11 of the world’s 13 deep-diving human-occupied submersible research vessels, said the oceans are no longer considered simply containers for minerals washed off the continents. “Before the discovery of plate tectonics the oceans were thought of as big bathtubs,” he said. “Now we know that the earth’s crust, most of it under the ocean, is cracked into plates that move and allow heat and materials from the earth’s interior to escape. As result we know that most of the minerals on the sea floor probably come from sources under the sea floor.” The public will have an opportunity to view Rona’s undersea work in a giant-screen film to be released later this year, entitled “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea”, produced by the Stephen Low Company and Rutgers University.