Rapid Reconnaissance Sampling of Hard Mineral Deposits on the Seabed

随着世界沿海国和岛国纷纷划设200海里近海专属经济区，深海海洋矿产资源潜力日益受到关注。美国和其他几个国家目前正在开展各种项目，以评估国家管辖范围内存在的潜在深海海底矿产资源。从固结的海底矿床中收集露头样品对于矿床特征是必不可少的，但在现有技术下，这是一个繁琐和不准确的过程。疏浚仍然是唯一常用的方法，但众所周知，它不精确，而且倾向于收集突出和松散的岩石，而不是具有代表性的就地材料。这里提出的项目有可能用一种基于无系绳自由落体取样器的精确、快速和公正的方法取代对硬海底矿藏进行侦察调查的疏浚。

The resource potential of deep-water marine minerals has been brought into focus with the establishment of 200-mile offshore Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) by the world's coastal and island nations. A variety of programs is currently underway in the United States and several other nations for evaluating the potential deep seabed mineral resources that exist within national jurisdictions. Collection of outcrop samples from consolidated seabed mineral deposits is essential for deposit characterization but is a tedious and inaccurate process with presently available technology. Dredging, which is still the only common method, is notoriously imprecise and biased toward collection of protruding and loose rocks rather than representative in-place material. The project proposed here has the potential to replace dredging for reconnaissance surveys of hard seabed mineral deposits with a precise, rapid and unbiased method based upon an untethered free-fall sampler.