The potential emergence of an ocean mining industry to exploit seafloor massive sulfides could present opportunities for oceanographic science to facilitate seafloor mineral development in ways that lessen environmental harms.

The commodity price boom that emerged in 2004 has proved far more persevering than its predecessors of 1950 and 1973. Some analysts have suggested that it may represent the start of a "supercycle" caused by the voracious raw materials demand from China and other emerging economies, with prices...