Minami Torishima (also known as Southern Bird Island and Marcus Island) is a Japanese coral island, triangular in shape, isolated in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. It hosts a weather station and an airstrip and is uninhabited except for military forces used by the Japanese military as a surveillance station.
Recently, its exclusive economic zone has gained strategic interest, especially for the United States, Japan, and China, due to its deep reserves of strategic mineral elements (such as erbium, gadolinium, and dysprosium) which are vital components for human-use tools, with China particularly dominating their global production.
If successful, the project will likely require billions of dollars in investments over more than a decade to produce rare earth elements at a cost about three times higher than extracting them on land in China, according to private sector estimates.
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