Presenter: Seruwaia Vasukiwai Deep Sea Minerals Project Ocean & Islands Programme SOPAC Division of SPC

OUTLINE DEEP SEA MINERALS PROJECT DEEP SEA MINERALS DATA PURPOSE OF THIS MARINE GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS WHAT TYPE OF DATA IS AVAILABLE CHALLENGES CONCLUSION

DEEP SEA MINERALS PROJECT Deep Sea Minerals (DSM)Project is funded by the European Union under the 10 th European Development fund for a period of 4 years DSM project started in 2011 The project has four key result areas: Manganese nodule Seafloor Massive Sulphides Cobalt-rich Crust

1.Development of Regional Legislative and Regulatory Frameworks (RLRF) for offshore minerals exploration and mining 2. Formulation of National policy, legislation and regulation 3. Building national capacities 4. Effective management and monitoring of offshore exploration and mining operations. The project is implemented in fifteen Pacific Island Countries

Deep Sea Minerals Data  Introduce the Japan/SOPAC marine minerals surveys from 1985 to 2005  There were 12 countries surveyed Nauru, Timor Leste and Palau – Not in the survey Palau – CRC – Data sourced from the USGS

. Mineral Resources Stage 1 ( )Stage 2 (2000 – 2005) Phase 1 (85 – 89) Phase 2 (90 – 94) Phase 3 (95 – 99) Phase 1 (00 – 02) Phase 1 (03 – 05) Manganese Nodules Cooks (1985 & 1986) Kiribati (1987 & 1989) Tuvalu (1988) Cooks (1990) Samoa (1990) Kiribati (1991) Cooks (2000)Niue (2003) Cobalt-rich Crusts Kiribati (1987 & 1989) Tuvalu (1988) Samoa (1990) Kiribati (1991) Marshall (1996 & 1998) FSM (1997) Marshall (2002) Kiribati (2003) FSM (2005) Seafloor Massive Sulphides PNG (1992) Solomon (1993) Vanuatu (1994) Tonga (1995) Fiji (1999) Fiji (2001)Fiji (2004) ObjectivesMineral Resource PotentialUpgrade Mineral Resources; Baseline Environment Survey To assess the deep seafloor mineral resource potential in selected areas of the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of twelve PICs Purpose of this marine geological surveys:

04/29/13 What Type of Data is Available – Survey Reports  Survey Reports  Photographs of Manganese Nodules Seafloor Topography Metal Concentration

What Type of Data is Available – GIS Files Cook Islands

HOW THE DATA WILL BE PRESENTED  Regional Marine Minerals Database (RMMD)  Apart from the data we have of the countries, we encourage that if countries have other existing or recently acquired DSM data – if we could have this also projected together with the existing data we already have Link:

Purpose of the RMMD Purpose: Act as a back-up Data Repository System – Maintaining Data Confidentiality One-stop shop for any information relating DSM in the region Progress:  All Deep Sea Minerals Data and Metadata will be part of the RMMD – work in progress  RMMD will be part of a larger data repository system (PACGEO) that is currently being developed in partnership with Geoscience Australia and UNEP/GRID  Up and Running 2014

CHALLENGES The main challenge in Geoferencing these data from different countries is the different UTM’s used by different countries in the Pacific thus making it hard to geoferencing each point as we need to convert it to the standard UTM before projecting/ overlay on to Google earth

Continuation of georeferencing of points for the member Pacific Island Countries Preparing all dataset and data to be transferred to the RMMD in the near future CONCLUSION