Chinese submersible explores Indian Ocean for precious metals

China's unmanned submersible Qianlong No 2 has succesfully completed its first exploration in the southwest Indian Ocean early this month looking for sulfide deposits and precious metals, scientists said today.
The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) with a length of 3.5 metres, was independently designed by Chinese scientists and can dive to a depth of 4,500 metres, Liu Jian, chief designer of Qianlong No 2 was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
It dived 16 times during the exploration from December 16, 2015 to March 4, 2016 in the southwest Indian Ocean.
Its work covered 218 square kilometres with the maximum depth of over 3.2 kilometre, Liu said.

The AUV explored sea areas rich in sulfide deposits that contain various metals, detected deep-sea terrain as well as photographed sulfide, basalt and marine organisms,he said.
The success of the trial exploration of Qianlong No.2 in the Indian Ocean has proved that the AUV can be put into practice in deep-sea mineral resource investigation since it can adapt to the complex terrain in the ocean and finish underwater tasks smoothly, Liu said.
In 2014 China has pressed another submersible Jiaolong which reported to have discovered deposits of copper, zinc and precious metals.
China has already secured contracts to explore Indian Ocean for polymetallic sulphide ore and its research vessel has discovered two hydrothermal areas and four hydrothermal anomaly areas in southwest Indian Ocean.