Minami-Torishima island

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Context:

• Researchers have found around 230 million metric tons of minerals crucial to making electric car batteries on the seabed off a remote island around 1,200 miles from Tokyo.

Details:

• The seabed around Minami-Torishima island contains around 610,000 metric tons of cobalt and 740,000 metric tons of nickel.
• The cache of manganese nodules lying 5,000 meters below the ocean surface contains enough cobalt to supply Japan for around 75 years.
• It also contains more than a decade's worth of the country's annual nickel consumption
• Both minerals are crucial components of electric vehicle batteries, and the transition to EVs has sparked a global race to secure sources of the precious metals.

Minami-Torishima island

• Also known as Marcus Island, is an isolated Japanese coral atoll in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, located some 1,848 km (998 nmi; 1,148 mi) southeast of Tokyo.
• The shape of the island is close to an equilateral triangle.
• It's formed by a raised coral reef, which is about 2 km on each side and 6 km around.
• It is located in the transitional zone between tropical and subtropical climates and it has an oceanic climate with an average annual temperature of around 25.6 °C.
• The exclusive economic zone based on the baseline of the Minami torishima Island is some 430,000 km2, larger than Japan’s land area.

Source:

https://www.businessinsider.in/thelife/news/japan-found-enough-minerals-off-a-remote-pacific-island-to-fuel-its-ev-plans-for-over-a-decade/articleshow/111264533.cms