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The rare earth oxides are in mud on the seafloor in 18,700 feet of water. The concentration is only 0.66%, which is a lot lower than other known ore bodies on land. Mountain Pass in California is about 8.9% rare earth oxides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minami-Tori-shima#Minami-Tori-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine#...

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Those numbers are from sources in 2013/4, this latest report was done in 2018.

To quote from the 2018 Nature article: "During these cruises, Rare Earth Yttrium-rich mud having a maximum of almost 8,000 ppm of total REY content (ΣREY) was confrmed."

8000 ppm would be 0.8% concentration. Most of the samples are poorer than that.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23948-5.pdf

Thanks for finding the new numbers.

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