Subsea Minerals for Dummies

ocean floor minerals

We think that the hardest questions to answer aren't the ones that require the most thought or the ones that require the most knowledge; the hardest questions to answer are the ones that just don't make a lick of sense. The websites formerly known as eHow.com were well known for providing answers that didn't make any sense to questions that didn't make any sense. A case in point is "List of Minerals Found Under the Sea Bed," which Krista Lee Childers attempted to provide at Sciencing.com.

Like many such open-ended questions, this one is probably related to some middle-schooler's homework. We say it's "open-ended" because almost every term is open to interpretation. Did the OQ want to know about offshore oil? seafloor mining operations? underwater mining operations? the composition of oceanic crust? Really: who knows...
Although we think it's the least likely option, Childers chose to assume the OQ wanted to know the composition of oceanic crust. Unfortunately, she did a crappy job. Had she done a good job, we wouldn't be here... but we are. Here are a few of the reasons why:

"Minerals found under the seabed include gabbro, basalt, serpentine, peridotite, olivine and ore minerals from VMS."

Sorry, Krista, gabbro, basalt, and peridotite aren't minerals; they're igneous rocks.

"The ocean floor itself is made of mafic rocks, the crystallized matter from silicate magma."

Uhhh, yeah: clumsy, but right-ish. It might have been instructive to note that mafic magma is relatively poor in silica... or not. Krista went on to regurgitate some basic information about gabbro and basalt, including such interesting information as, "Basalt is the most extrusive igneous rock..." Sorry, Krista Lee, extrusive is like pregnant; half of a binary set.

Krista Lee then blathered for a while about serpentine and olivine, including such scintillating prose as, "Olivine... is a silicate mineral, which are [sic] common rock formers." Finally, Childers babbled semi-coherently about volcanic massive sulfides and "black smokers," including the revelation that the deposits are precipitated on the ocean floor... not "under the sea bed," then, are they?

When you come right down to it, though, with the exception of olivine and serpentine, Krista pretty much ignored what's available in the rocks under the sea bed, including hydrocarbons and a few metallic minerals. Oh, well...

We often shudder when we see journalism majors like Childers attempting to translate even eight-grade science into... into whatever it is they're writing about. Whatever the case, we sure find a lot of them qualifying (like Krista Lee) for a Dumbass of the Day award!

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