South of the Campbell Plateau, where powerful bottom currents sweep the sea floor, nodules form a large resource of manganese, iron, copper, nickel and cobalt. Phosphate nodules occur along the Chatham Rise, and north of New Zealand there are manganese crusts and massive sulfides. Potentially they are a valuable resource, but in the 2000s mining technology and world prices for these metals did not make mining feasible or economic.
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Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Source: NIWA – National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (data); GNS Science (base map)
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