Next10 and exploiting the oceans

The Next 10 Years: Exploiting the oceans

What is this technology?

Again this is not a single technology but a convergence of many interconnected technologies and processes.

What will happen?

Man has been dipping his toe in the world's oceans for hundreds of years but is now venturing into the deepest depths using devices more akin to those we send into outer space.

Deep sea exploration will continue - of that there is little doubt.  With 70% of our world covered by water we still know so little about what is out there in the blue beyond.

Miracle cures from the ocean?

The creatures we find in the most inhospitable places hold secrets that science can use to create curative compounds, thermally improved and pressure resistant materials.

The ability to reach the deep ocean floor will open up opportunities to mine precious metals, harvest fossil fuel deposits to replenish or dwindling supplies.

Commercial and scientific organisations will come together to construct deep sea laboratories and mining facilities.  Workers will be expected to live for extensive periods at the bottom of the oceans, protected by the strongest structures that man has ever built.

How will this impact society?

Underwater laboratory

Exploitation of this last great frontier will present myriad ethical issues for governments of the world.  Who owns the deep sea, what international protection can be used to ensure that big business is not allowed to rape the sea in the way that fishing fleets have?

The study of the strange creatures that are still to be discovered in the deep ocean may reveal answers to how organic life can overcome the odds and survive in the coldest, darkest, bone-crushingly pressurised parts of our world.

What supports this prediction?

The race to the bottom of the world

Creatures from the deep (Te Ara encylopaedia)

The Aquarius underwater laboratory (NOAA)