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INTRODUCTION With the introduction of the Law of the Sea Convention by the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and the recognition of the rights of coastal states over specific regions of ocean space, new vistas for development, both nationally and internationally, have been created. From a national standpoint in respect of mineral resources, perhaps the most important regions are the continental margins and the 200 mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ).l In article 56 of the Convention, the relevant rights of the coastal state in the EEZ with regard to mineral exploration and exploitation are given as follows: "In the Exclusive Economic lone, the coastal state has.. sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil " For some nations, the task of fulfilling this responsibility will be immense especially since the area required may be many times their respective land areas. For others, the magnitude of the task at hand is further heightened by the absence of the means to assess the potential for the occurrence of resources in the area, particularly mi nera1 resources.
Of the non-fuel mineral resources with the Exclusive Economic lone, perhaps the group best known and most amenable to relatively proven technology for prospecting and mining are the unconsolidated mineral deposits such as marine placer deposits and sand and gravel. Typical marine placer-forming minerals and their principal commodities of economic interest are native gold, native platinum (including osmium, palladium and other platinum-group metals), cassiterite (tin), chromite (chromium), wolframite (tungsten), rutile and ilmenite (titanium), zircon (Zirconium), monazite (thorium), rare earths such as euxenite and xenotine, and sand and gravel. The frequency with which deposits of each of the above minerals has been discovered, however, varies with the given mineral. While marine mineral placer deposits of rutile and zircon are fairly common, others, such as gold and platinum are quite rare. Moreover, since the probability of finding a given placer mineral deposit is dependent on factors such as the availability of a mineralized area on the adjacent landmass and a mechanism to transport the minerals to the continental shelf, the range of possibilities in different parts of the world is considerable.
The principles of placer concentration are well established in the literature. Techniques for investigating the potential of an offshore area for marine placers have been actively pursued on land also exist for marine deposits but, in many countries, they have not been actively used. In many industrialized countries, interest in some cases appears to be shifting to the polymetallic sulphide deposits within the exclusive economic zone. Why then the need for this paper?
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