After sitting on the sidelines for nearly 30 years, the United States is preparing to dive into deep-sea mining. While the U.S. has long deferred to laws established by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, earlier this year, the Trump administration declared that it would pursue deep-sea mining in our own waters as well as in the high seas beyond any nation’s borders.
Though the technology to mine the deep seafloor has made a generational advancement over the last decade, the industry itself, which has yet to produce an ounce of commercial ore, remains in its infancy.
The vast expanse of the deep abyssal plains are home to some of the world’s strangest rocks. Called polymetallic nodules, these small, knobby concretions form over millions of years as minerals and metals in seawater slowly accrete around hard objects like shark teeth or diatom tests. Rich in cobalt, nickel, manganese and copper, polymetallic nodules are the primary target of this emerging industry.
Deep-sea mining proponents argue that these nodules offer an alternative to terrestrial mining. Cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a long record of child labor. Nickel mining in the Republic of Indonesia involves the clear-cutting of acres of rainforest.
In contrast, deep-sea mining is presented as a new kind of extractive industry, motivated by environmental values, free of the most dramatic harms of terrestrial mining, and essential for the renewable energy revolution. They claim that the resources of the seafloor are needed to build the batteries for electric vehicles and to meet the metal needs for wind and solar expansion.
Yet the scale of existing proposals and a recent pivot by the industry away from their environmental claims toward national security concerns for critical minerals belies the reality.
At a recent congressional hearing, one mining company CEO argued that the abyssal plain is a desert, devoid of the biodiversity found in tropical reefs and rainforests. Decades of deep-sea exploration tell a different story. Every expedition into the deep ocean reveals new species and, frequently, new ecosystems. The insights into how life can adapt and thrive in the cold, dark, deep places on our planet have led to revolutions in biology, chemistry and medicine. Those discoveries have happened within the 0.001% of the deep seafloor that has been observed.
At least two deep-sea mining applications are wending their way through the federal government, which has yet to formally establish permitting regulations for deep-sea mining. The Metals Company, a Canadian company, seeks to mine the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, located in international waters between Hawaii and Mexico. The international maritime community and the regulator tasked with overseeing this region have declared this effort illegal under international law. The other company, Impossible Metals, seeks to mine within U.S. waters off the coast of American Samoa. It stands on firmer legal footing but lacks the support of the local government and has met with opposition from the people of American Samoa.
The regulations proposed by the Trump administration call for streamlining the commercial mining permit process, allowing these companies to fast track their environmental impact studies and apply directly for commercial mining rights. Meanwhile, the scientific community has sounded the alarm on harms ranging from direct destruction of the seafloor to mining plumes that smother deep-sea creatures to noise that may deafen whales and dolphins.
International regulators have yet to agree upon a set of rules to manage the impacts of deep-sea mining, yet the United States plows ahead, abusing this lack of consensus to advance an industry whose utility and contribution to the renewable revolution remains tenuous. Deep-sea mining is an industry that, though promising, does not have the urgency that justifies abandoning environmental principles in a rush to the seafloor.
Andrew D. Thaler is a deep-sea ecologist, conservation technologist and ocean educator. He is a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest with The OpEd Project.
