The
mostly submerged New Zealand
sub-continent has a complex geological history and an active oceanographic
regime that provides opportunities and challenges for offshore mineral
exploration. Known deposits include polymetallic Fe-Mn nodules and crusts,
polymetallic massive sulfides, phosphatic nodules, titanomagnetitie ironsands
and placer gold deposits. Currently exploration interest is high with some 3.5
per cent of the EEZ under prospecting permit or application.

Article 76 of the
UNCLOS convention allows coastal states to have sovereign rights over areas of
the seafloor that are natural prolongations of the landmass that constitute
submerged parts of the continental margin as extended continental shelf.
New
Zealand has substantial areas of elevated
ridges and plateaux beyond the 200 M EEZ that form extended continental shelf.
New
Zealand has nearly completed a ten year, $44.4
M programme to define its outer extended continental shelf. New
Zealand will lodge its outer limits of the
extended continental shelf with the UN-appointed Commission on the Limits of the
Continental Shelf in 2006, which if accepted, will enclose ~1.8 million
km2 beyond the existing EEZ. Ocean Survey 20/20 is a follow-on marine
mapping programme to underpin resource exploration and environmental management
of the EEZ and extended continental shelf.