Following concerns about a plan to 'mine' the seabed for tin close to the Cornish coast, the company behind the scheme have spoken out in a bid to address concerns.

Marine Minerals Limited are applying for a licence to remove millions of tonnes of sediment from North Cornwall’s sea bed as little as 200 meters offshore at some of Cornwall’s beaches, including; St Ives Bay, Porthtowan, St Agnes and Perranporth.

The coastal dredging proposal has been called "massive and potentially devastating", by pressure group Surfers Against Sewage.

Addressing some of the concerns, a spokesman for Marine Minerals Limited said:

Is public consultation about to close?

Consultation by the Marine Management Organisation on our plans for an Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) study – for which we need their permission – closes on Friday 8th February. There will be plenty of opportunity for the public to make their views known within formal public consultation when we apply for a project licence, but that will be at the end of the year at the earliest. We are also planning extensive public consultation of our own later in the year.

Is the proposed project “dredging”?

We don’t think most people would describe what we are planning to do as dredging, and it is certainly not traditional dredging i.e. digging out material, leaving a large scar on the seabed and carrying away the material to land, or dumping it elsewhere on the seabed. We’ve been absolutely clear that, for environmental and practical reasons, traditional dredging is not an option in carrying out the project. Our method will not, unlike traditional dredging extend over vast areas of the seabed in a short time because we will be simultaneously backfilling as we draw up the sand, while filtering out the tin onboard. We will return almost all of the sand back to where it came from. Because the deposit is up to 2.3 metres deep we have to work on the whole depth at any one time and cannot put treated sand back over the top of the resource. The footprint of our operation will therefore be very confined and progress will be slow and methodical and we will work to a predetermined pattern, which will be shared with all the appropriate stakeholders.

Could the scheme be “devastating” as some claim it might be?

We are a Cornish company committed to high levels of environmental performance. We are working hard to minimise our impacts to a level that they will be acceptable to everyone including the statutory authorities, all our neighbors and stakeholders How much sand will MML be removing from the seabed?

We estimate there is 1,000,000,000 tonnes of offshore sand in the coastal area we are considering recovering tin from. Our operation will disturb 0.1% of this, and a tiny proportion of the sand we disturb – the sand with tin attached to it - will be brought ashore. Compared to the effect of storm waves on this coast, our impact will be insignificant.

How close to shore will the recovery vessel be operating?

Most of the time, the vessel will be stationary more than a kilometer from shore. At all times the vessel will be working in about 20 metres of water or more. We have already stated that we will work no closer to shore than 200m out from the lowest low water mark (“chart datum” as it is technically known).

Does the project pose a threat to vital coastal processes, the marine environment, marine wildlife and local surfing resources?

No, we believe absolutely not: we’ve designed our new tin recovery methods precisely to avoid this. There is no hard evidence to support these claims and we would not be pursuing the project if we thought it did. Our EIA will allow us to look at these issues in detail. If there are specific problems, in specific locations, or at specific times, we will investigate ways to avoid, minimise or mitigate them. Such plans will be made public and will be open to scrutiny and consultation in our licence application, which we now expect to make early next year.

Will the project impact on surfing beaches?

We will only ever have one ship, operating in one location. The ship will always, even at low tide, be based beyond any breaking waves, and in very rough weather with large swells will not be able to operate. There will be some visual impact – in other words, people on that beach or immediate coast will be able to see it – and potentially there will be some noise: how much is one of the matters we want to assess carefully in our EIA. Apart from this, there is no evidence yet to suggest that general activities of the public will be impacted by our work, other than the need for a safety exclusion zone, for boats and other craft around the immediate area we will be operating in. Our approach to the EIA is that it will allow us to develop a way of working that creates as little impact as practicable.

With surfing alone bringing £64 million into the Cornish economy and supporting 1,600 full time jobs, should we dread the dredge?

Let us know below, or get in touch with jonathan.millar@packetseries.co.uk.