Manganese nodule
Encyclopedia
Polymetallic nodules, also called manganese nodules, are rock concretions on the sea
bottom formed of concentric layers of iron
and manganese
hydroxide
s around a core. The core may be microscopically small and is sometimes completely transformed into manganese minerals by crystallization
. When visible to the naked eye, it can be a small test (shell) of a microfossil (radiolarian or foraminifer
), a phosphatized shark tooth
, basalt
debris or even fragments of earlier nodules.
Nodules vary in size from tiny particles visible only under a microscope
to large pellets more than 20 centimetres (8 in) across. However, most nodules are between 5 and 10 cm (2 and 3.9 in) in diameter, about the size of potato
es. Their surface is generally smooth, sometimes rough, mammilated (knobby) or otherwise irregular. The bottom, buried in sediment, is generally rougher than the top.
phenomena – on the order of a centimeter over several million years. Several processes are involved in the formation of nodules, including the precipitation
of metals from seawater (hydrogenous), the remobilization of manganese in the water column (diagenetic), the derivation of metals from hot spring
s associated with volcanic activity
(hydrothermal), the decomposition of basaltic debris by seawater (halmyrolitic) and the precipitation of metal hydroxides through the activity of microorganisms (biogenic). Several of these processes may operate concurrently or they may follow one another during the formation of a nodule.
The chemical composition of nodules varies according to the kind of manganese minerals and the size and characteristics of the core. Those of greatest economic interest contain manganese
(27-30 %), nickel
(1.25-1.5 %), copper
(1-1.4 %) and cobalt
(0.2-0.25 %). Other constituents include iron
(6 %), silicon
(5%) and aluminium
(3%), with lesser amounts of calcium
, sodium
, magnesium
, potassium
, titanium
and barium
, along with hydrogen
and oxygen
.
sediment, often partly or completely buried. They vary greatly in abundance, in some cases touching one another and covering more than 70% of the sea floor. The total amount of polymetallic nodules on the sea floor was estimated at 500 billion tons by Alan A. Archer of the London Geological Museum
in 1981. They can occur at any depth, even in lakes, but the highest concentrations have been found on vast abyssal plain
s in the deep ocean between 4000 and 6000 m (13,123.4 and 19,685 ft).
Polymetallic nodules were discovered in 1868 in the Kara Sea
, in the Arctic Ocean
of Siberia
. During the scientific expeditions of the HMS Challenger
(1872-76), they were found to occur in most oceans of the world. Nodules of economic interest have been found in three areas: the north central Pacific Ocean
, the Peru Basin in the southeast Pacific, and the center of the north Indian Ocean
. The most promising of these deposits in terms of nodule abundance and metal concentration occur in the Clipperton Fracture Zone
of the eastern equatorial Pacific between Hawaii
and Central America
.
, Canada
, the United Kingdom
, the Federal Republic of Germany
, Belgium
, the Netherlands
, Italy
, Japan
and two groups of private companies and agencies from France
and Japan. There were also three publicly sponsored entities from the Soviet Union
, India
and China
.
In the mid-seventies, a $70-million international joint venture succeeded in collecting multi-ton quantities of manganese
nodules from the abyssal plains (18,000 feet, 5.5 km + depth) of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean
. Significant quantities of nickel
(the primary target) as well as copper
and cobalt
were subsequently extracted from this "ore" using both pyro and hydro methods. In the course of this 8-year project, a number of ancillary developments evolved, including the use of near-bottom towed side-scan sonar
array to assay the nodule population density on the abyssal silt whilst simultaneously performing a sub-bottom profile with a derived, vertically-oriented, low-frequency acoustic beam.
The technology and experience developed during the course of this project were never commercialized because the last two decades of the 20th century saw an excess of nickel
production. The estimated $3.5-billion (1978 US dollars) investment to implement commercialization was an additional factor. Sumitomo Metal Mining continues to maintain a small (place-keeping) organization in this field.
and the establishment (1994) of the International Seabed Authority
, with responsibility for controlling all deep-sea mining in international areas. The first legislative achievement of this intergovernmental organization was the adoption (2000) of regulations for prospecting and exploration for polymetallic nodules, with special provisions to protect the marine environment from any adverse effects. The Authority followed this up (2001-2002) by signing 15-year contracts with seven private and public entities, giving them exclusive rights to explore for nodules in specified tracts of the seabed, each 75,000 square kilometers in size. The United States, whose companies were among the key actors in the earlier period of exploration, remains outside this compact as a non-party to the Law of the Sea Convention.
A company by the name of Kennecott Copper had explored the potential profits in manganese nodule mining and found that it wasn't worth the cost. Other than the environmental issues and the fact that the profits had to be shared, there was not any cheap way to get the manganese nodules off the sea floor.
In the meantime, interest in the extraction of nodules had waned. Three factors were largely responsible: the difficulty and expense of developing and operating mining technology that could economically remove the nodules from depths of five or six kilometers and transport them to the ocean surface, the high taxes the international community would charge for the mining, and the continuing availability of the key minerals from land-based sources at market prices. The commercial extraction of polymetallic nodules is not considered likely to occur during the next two decades.
creatures, or suspension of sediment, which can smother filter feeder
s.
Sea
A sea generally refers to a large body of salt water, but the term is used in other contexts as well. Most commonly, it means a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, and is commonly used as a synonym for ocean...
bottom formed of concentric layers of iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
and manganese
Manganese
Manganese is a chemical element, designated by the symbol Mn. It has the atomic number 25. It is found as a free element in nature , and in many minerals...
hydroxide
Hydroxide
Hydroxide is a diatomic anion with chemical formula OH−. It consists of an oxygen and a hydrogen atom held together by a covalent bond, and carrying a negative electric charge. It is an important but usually minor constituent of water. It functions as a base, as a ligand, a nucleophile, and a...
s around a core. The core may be microscopically small and is sometimes completely transformed into manganese minerals by crystallization
Crystallization
Crystallization is the process of formation of solid crystals precipitating from a solution, melt or more rarely deposited directly from a gas. Crystallization is also a chemical solid–liquid separation technique, in which mass transfer of a solute from the liquid solution to a pure solid...
. When visible to the naked eye, it can be a small test (shell) of a microfossil (radiolarian or foraminifer
Foraminifera
The Foraminifera , or forams for short, are a large group of amoeboid protists which are among the commonest plankton species. They have reticulating pseudopods, fine strands of cytoplasm that branch and merge to form a dynamic net...
), a phosphatized shark tooth
Shark tooth
A shark tooth is one of the numerous teeth of a shark. Sharks continually shed their teeth, and some Carcharhiniformes shed approximately 35,000 teeth in a lifetime. In some geological formations, shark's teeth are a common fossil...
, basalt
Basalt
Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...
debris or even fragments of earlier nodules.
Microscope
A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy...
to large pellets more than 20 centimetres (8 in) across. However, most nodules are between 5 and 10 cm (2 and 3.9 in) in diameter, about the size of potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
es. Their surface is generally smooth, sometimes rough, mammilated (knobby) or otherwise irregular. The bottom, buried in sediment, is generally rougher than the top.
Growth and composition
Nodule growth is one of the slowest of all geologicalGeology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
phenomena – on the order of a centimeter over several million years. Several processes are involved in the formation of nodules, including the precipitation
Precipitation (chemistry)
Precipitation is the formation of a solid in a solution or inside anothersolid during a chemical reaction or by diffusion in a solid. When the reaction occurs in a liquid, the solid formed is called the precipitate, or when compacted by a centrifuge, a pellet. The liquid remaining above the solid...
of metals from seawater (hydrogenous), the remobilization of manganese in the water column (diagenetic), the derivation of metals from hot spring
Hot spring
A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth.-Definitions:...
s associated with volcanic activity
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
(hydrothermal), the decomposition of basaltic debris by seawater (halmyrolitic) and the precipitation of metal hydroxides through the activity of microorganisms (biogenic). Several of these processes may operate concurrently or they may follow one another during the formation of a nodule.
Manganese
Manganese is a chemical element, designated by the symbol Mn. It has the atomic number 25. It is found as a free element in nature , and in many minerals...
(27-30 %), nickel
Nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...
(1.25-1.5 %), copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
(1-1.4 %) and cobalt
Cobalt
Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....
(0.2-0.25 %). Other constituents include iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
(6 %), silicon
Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...
(5%) and aluminium
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....
(3%), with lesser amounts of calcium
Calcium
Calcium is the chemical element with the symbol Ca and atomic number 20. It has an atomic mass of 40.078 amu. Calcium is a soft gray alkaline earth metal, and is the fifth-most-abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust...
, sodium
Sodium
Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal and is a member of the alkali metals; its only stable isotope is 23Na. It is an abundant element that exists in numerous minerals, most commonly as sodium chloride...
, magnesium
Magnesium
Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg, atomic number 12, and common oxidation number +2. It is an alkaline earth metal and the eighth most abundant element in the Earth's crust and ninth in the known universe as a whole...
, potassium
Potassium
Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K and atomic number 19. Elemental potassium is a soft silvery-white alkali metal that oxidizes rapidly in air and is very reactive with water, generating sufficient heat to ignite the hydrogen emitted in the reaction.Potassium and sodium are...
, titanium
Titanium
Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It has a low density and is a strong, lustrous, corrosion-resistant transition metal with a silver color....
and barium
Barium
Barium is a chemical element with the symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in Group 2, a soft silvery metallic alkaline earth metal. Barium is never found in nature in its pure form due to its reactivity with air. Its oxide is historically known as baryta but it reacts with...
, along with hydrogen
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...
and oxygen
Oxygen
Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...
.
Occurrence
Nodules lie on the seabedSeabed
The seabed is the bottom of the ocean.- Ocean structure :Most of the oceans have a common structure, created by common physical phenomena, mainly from tectonic movement, and sediment from various sources...
sediment, often partly or completely buried. They vary greatly in abundance, in some cases touching one another and covering more than 70% of the sea floor. The total amount of polymetallic nodules on the sea floor was estimated at 500 billion tons by Alan A. Archer of the London Geological Museum
Geological Museum
The Geological Museum is one of the oldest single science museums in the world and now part of the Natural History Museum in London...
in 1981. They can occur at any depth, even in lakes, but the highest concentrations have been found on vast abyssal plain
Abyssal plain
An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between 3000 and 6000 metres. Lying generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains cover more than 50% of the Earth’s surface. They are among the flattest, smoothest...
s in the deep ocean between 4000 and 6000 m (13,123.4 and 19,685 ft).
Polymetallic nodules were discovered in 1868 in the Kara Sea
Kara Sea
The Kara Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya....
, in the Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...
of Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. During the scientific expeditions of the HMS Challenger
HMS Challenger (1858)
HMS Challenger was a steam-assisted Royal Navy Pearl-class corvette launched on 13 February 1858 at the Woolwich Dockyard. She was the flagship of the Australia Station between 1866 and 1870....
(1872-76), they were found to occur in most oceans of the world. Nodules of economic interest have been found in three areas: the north central Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
, the Peru Basin in the southeast Pacific, and the center of the north Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
. The most promising of these deposits in terms of nodule abundance and metal concentration occur in the Clipperton Fracture Zone
Clipperton Fracture Zone
The Clipperton Fracture Zone is a geological submarine fracture zone of the Pacific Ocean, with a length of some 4500 miles . It is one of the five major lineations of the northern Pacific floor, south of the Clarion Fracture Zone, discovered by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1950...
of the eastern equatorial Pacific between Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
and Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
.
Mining
Interest in the potential exploitation of polymetallic nodules generated a great deal of activity among prospective mining consortia in the 1960s and 1970s. Almost half a billion dollars was invested in identifying potential deposits and in research and development of technology for mining and processing nodules. These initial undertakings were carried out primarily by four multinational consortia composed of companies from the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, the Federal Republic of Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and two groups of private companies and agencies from France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Japan. There were also three publicly sponsored entities from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
.
In the mid-seventies, a $70-million international joint venture succeeded in collecting multi-ton quantities of manganese
Manganese
Manganese is a chemical element, designated by the symbol Mn. It has the atomic number 25. It is found as a free element in nature , and in many minerals...
nodules from the abyssal plains (18,000 feet, 5.5 km + depth) of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
. Significant quantities of nickel
Nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...
(the primary target) as well as copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
and cobalt
Cobalt
Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....
were subsequently extracted from this "ore" using both pyro and hydro methods. In the course of this 8-year project, a number of ancillary developments evolved, including the use of near-bottom towed side-scan sonar
Side-scan sonar
Side-scan sonar is a category of sonar system that is used to efficiently create an image of large areas of the sea floor...
array to assay the nodule population density on the abyssal silt whilst simultaneously performing a sub-bottom profile with a derived, vertically-oriented, low-frequency acoustic beam.
The technology and experience developed during the course of this project were never commercialized because the last two decades of the 20th century saw an excess of nickel
Nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...
production. The estimated $3.5-billion (1978 US dollars) investment to implement commercialization was an additional factor. Sumitomo Metal Mining continues to maintain a small (place-keeping) organization in this field.
Legal developments
The promise of nodule exploitation was one of the main factors that led developing nations to propose that the deep seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction should be treated as a “common heritage of mankind”, with proceeds to be shared between those who developed this resource and the rest of the international community. This initiative eventually resulted in the adoption (1982) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the SeaUnited Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea , also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea treaty, is the international agreement that resulted from the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea , which took place from 1973 through 1982...
and the establishment (1994) of the International Seabed Authority
International Seabed Authority
The International Seabed Authority is an intergovernmental body based in Kingston, Jamaica, that was established to organize and control all mineral-related activities in the international seabed area beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, an area underlying most of the world’s oceans...
, with responsibility for controlling all deep-sea mining in international areas. The first legislative achievement of this intergovernmental organization was the adoption (2000) of regulations for prospecting and exploration for polymetallic nodules, with special provisions to protect the marine environment from any adverse effects. The Authority followed this up (2001-2002) by signing 15-year contracts with seven private and public entities, giving them exclusive rights to explore for nodules in specified tracts of the seabed, each 75,000 square kilometers in size. The United States, whose companies were among the key actors in the earlier period of exploration, remains outside this compact as a non-party to the Law of the Sea Convention.
A company by the name of Kennecott Copper had explored the potential profits in manganese nodule mining and found that it wasn't worth the cost. Other than the environmental issues and the fact that the profits had to be shared, there was not any cheap way to get the manganese nodules off the sea floor.
In the meantime, interest in the extraction of nodules had waned. Three factors were largely responsible: the difficulty and expense of developing and operating mining technology that could economically remove the nodules from depths of five or six kilometers and transport them to the ocean surface, the high taxes the international community would charge for the mining, and the continuing availability of the key minerals from land-based sources at market prices. The commercial extraction of polymetallic nodules is not considered likely to occur during the next two decades.
Environmental Impacts
Nodule mining could affect tens of thousands of square kilometers of deep sea ecosystems. Nodule regrowth takes decades to millions of years and that would make such mining an unsustainable and nonrenewable practice. Humans have little knowledge of the vast number of deep-sea species that occur and their biology, making predictions about the effects of mining extremely uncertain. Thus, nodule mining could cause habitat alteration, direct mortality of benthicBenthos
Benthos is the community of organisms which live on, in, or near the seabed, also known as the benthic zone. This community lives in or near marine sedimentary environments, from tidal pools along the foreshore, out to the continental shelf, and then down to the abyssal depths.Many organisms...
creatures, or suspension of sediment, which can smother filter feeder
Filter feeder
Filter feeders are animals that feed by straining suspended matter and food particles from water, typically by passing the water over a specialized filtering structure. Some animals that use this method of feeding are clams, krill, sponges, baleen whales, and many fish and some sharks. Some birds,...
s.
See also
- International Seabed AuthorityInternational Seabed AuthorityThe International Seabed Authority is an intergovernmental body based in Kingston, Jamaica, that was established to organize and control all mineral-related activities in the international seabed area beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, an area underlying most of the world’s oceans...
- Project JenniferProject Jennifer"AZORIAN" was the code name for a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the Pacific Ocean floor in the summer of 1974, using the purpose-built ship Hughes Glomar Explorer...
- USNS Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193)USNS Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193)GSF Explorer, formerly USNS Glomar Explorer , is a deep-sea drillship platform initially built for the United States Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Division secret operation Project Azorian to recover the sunken Soviet submarine, K-129, lost in April 1968.The cultural impact of...