Roland, I like your appeal to authority with your "scientific" word use.
Roy has an interesting old document regarding a feasibility study done a long time ago with a similar deposit. It is not a new idea. They didn't have surfers against sewage making a big fuss and there is a whole lot of data about the particle sizes, the milling requirements and the sort of yields they expected from their sampling. I am not interested in sedimentary deposits, it is of interest how things are separated by natural processes...to a surprising degree.
It doesn't take a vast amount of knowledge to realise that the deposits off the Godrevy and those off Trevellas are hugely different in every way. The only realistic way of making sense out of this is to do a fair load of sampling. I imagine this has a specific set of laws concerning it. Perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps sampling is considered not to be invasive. There will be a statute regarding this and if it isn't, it will probably be covered by the broad scope of later legislation.
When it comes down to it, we don't live in some sort of financially sustainable eutopia where we can all grow some potatoes, or make some wooden things and live well, this means that we have to do stuff and in order to sustain what is a high consuming economy, we need to carry out these sorts of activity. Only a total idiot, or someone who is factoring in using another planet's resources would argue this is the case. Since we insist on having this level of population and we all have a right to XYZ in law, it follows that our activities may impinge on other living stuff. Namely the habitats where this is happening....
So, I'm guessing what happens next is we consider the nature of the environment, how special it is and whether we can allow a big sucky tube to ****** it up. Here is where the **** hits the fan. All the yoghurt weavers say "Here is where the lesser spotted stripey whelk lives and they will be turned to dust" and all the capitalist tory pigs say "let's ruin it". Again, I imagine the cost/impact analysis will run up against some major legislation. What will not happen is that a big tooled up boat will show up and do what it wants. This will be dealt with by the nth degree.
I am of the opinion that buggering up a small percentage of habitat is necessary to facilitate the scale of the economy that the country requires. They can change this by making fundamental, structural changes, but the political class will not act, so we have to go back to money making compromises which kill a few starfish and break a few shells.
The whole exercise is hugely regulated and almost paralysed by red tape. The yields are potentially good, but the whole pilot, testing, deposit modelling, environmental this, yada yada that are hugely detailed and expensive. It's not like the days of South Caradon where some men with a wheelbarrow, spade and picks discovered one of the most major copper mines, the investors demand the total integrity of the project. It has all of the crap and pitfalls factored in.
Among the first people to know where a cadmium rich sediment is going to bugger up the greater crested spoonbill are the people who are funding it.
It would also make sense to think about the deposit in the context of history. You only have to look at the surf when it's 20ft and realise there is a lot of shit being moved around. Clearly, there is a set of equilibria where you have a whole load of different sized particles composed of different stuff which are settling at different rates, decomposing at different rates, being mixed and transported at different rates. This would obviously be highly localised in nature. Which again would dictate lots of sampling.
When anyone opens a mine in search of stuff which they can flog to someone for a profit, there will be a load of people saying "You can't disturb that ancient monument" (how the hell did anyone allow people to sink shafts within castle-an-dinas?) "You have horrible water which will kill the oysters". or another myriad of scenarios and the associated legislation which prevents some horrible capitalist pig like Scorrier Williams making a Copperopolis and filling valleys of lambs with poisonous smoke and the sea with sulphuric acid.
I am most certainly not a yoghurt weaver...even though I have a beard and do not care for fashion. A lot of my thinking and economic curiosity is borne out of reading two books, which will shape people's take on "stuff" and the problem we are in.
Namely "The End of Work" (Rifkin) - Basically explains the increase of the state sector in response to unemployment and mechanisation, ultimately resulting in a credit confidence failure and the whole thing shitting itself. Then what the hell happens? Major question. No-one seems to have a plan.
Them "The end of growth" (Heinburg) An expanding population requires growth to facilitate it's wellbeing. Problem is that unsustainable land/energy costs/population/etc means that this is not possible. Hence "getting back to growth" is not an option.
I do read a lot of this stuff, I feel that I have a pretty good grasp of the main (concepts) problems which serious debate, research and action is required, in order to stave off a pretty unpalatable future which is otherwise inevitable. Sadly, the big show which will affect your ability to feed/clothe/shelter your family is not the lesser spotted spoonbill at St Agnes or the fact that someone removed 1% of a bit of your surfing reef, it's the fact that we do not live in some archaic community with enough spuds to go around and if they don't get a grip with the actual economy, the shit will hit the fan in a way which is very nasty for a lot of undeserving (see, I am a lefty really) people.
No amount of charitable donations or nanny state printing money is going to sort this predicament out, nor are bloody windmills. SAS have demonstrated by their one sided debate that they do not understand the seriousness of the economic issues. This is pseudo-religious stupidity in my book.