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This is not how I thought things would go down when I started covering deep-sea mining. I knew that impatience and greed could have unforeseen consequences for life that depends on healthy oceans, including humans. I just didn’t foresee Donald Trump coming back to blow up international negotiations meant to make sure no single government screws up a resource so vital to humanity that it’s been deemed a “common heritage of humankind.”
What might happen if the US rushes to open up the deep sea to mining for the first time? It’s never been done at a large scale before anywhere in the world. I couldn’t tell you with certainty what the consequences would be. That uncertainty — and the speed at which we’re rushing into it — is unsettling.
The ocean happens to be one of the biggest mysteries still left to solve. The surface of the Moon is better mapped than the seafloor. Scientists are finding thousands of new species that have never been documented before. And researchers are squabbling over the veracity and origin of “dark oxygen,” which was recently described rising from the abyss in a controversial study that could potentially upend our notions of how life first evolved on Earth.
Before we even get a chance to wrap our heads around what’s down there — or what could happen if we disturb it — startups could soon begin mining the deep sea with President Trump’s blessing.
The Trump administration has stunned the world with a slew of actions meant to open up the high seas to commercial mining. It’s already reviewing an application by a Canadian company for a mining permit; its approval could amount to a rubber stamp to circumvent international law.
It’s all being done in the name of securing materials used in lithium-ion batteries. We’re all tethered to our rechargeable devices, right? And if you want more solar and wind farms and electric vehicles, you’re going to need the minerals to make the batteries for those things, the argument goes.
The prospect of deep-sea mining made headlines in 2021, after the island nation of Nauru sponsored The Metals Company (TMC) in a campaign to become the first operation to mine the deep sea for polymetallic nodules full of nickel, cobalt, manganese, and other minerals used in rechargeable batteries. Nauru triggered an obscure annex to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), setting off a scramble to develop regulations — an international “mining code” — before any operation could start.
The International Seabed Authority (ISA), established by the same convention, has been wrangling with those rules ever since. There are so many tricky questions to answer, like who pays for the damage if there’s some kind of an accident that causes widespread environmental and economic fallout?
More than 160 nations — some 80 percent of the world’s countries but not the United States — have ratified the convention that governs how the ocean and its resources are used. The convention codified practices meant to limit fights that probably stem back to time immemorial over who gets to do what where. Even countries that have yet to ratify the agreement have generally followed suit. The ISA credits the convention with establishing order and minimizing territorial disputes, although power grabs over contested waters still create serious conflicts today. The ISA also asserts that UNCLOS prohibits “unilateral exploitation of resources that belong to no single [government] but to all of humanity,” whether or not a country is party to the convention.
Now, more than 30 countries are pushing for a ban or moratorium on deep-sea mining as a growing chorus of researchers and environmental advocates argue that it would be irresponsible to start mining while there’s still so little known about the deep sea. The cascading effects on marine life and the people who depend on it are hard to predict. But initial research suggests that mining equipment, sediment plumes, and noise would harm marine life — and that damage could be irreversible.
On the other hand, companies that want to start deep-sea mining say we already know what that damage can look like on land — from deforestation to community displacement and alleged child labor along mineral supply chains. Surely, they say, offshoring that resource extraction won’t be as bad.
Now, The Metals Company has found a more powerful government ally in Trump, who has been obsessing over mining as a purported way to counter China’s dominance in critical mineral supply chains. He signed an executive order in April that aimed to fast-track seabed mining in US and international waters. The action essentially amounts to saying “to hell with the international mining code, we can unilaterally authorize mining.”
In response, the ISA moved to investigate whether companies are violating contracts by trying to mine the deep sea unilaterally — which could put TMC’s existing ISA exploration permits in jeopardy (they’d need separate approvals to actually exploit resources they find). The Metals Company didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Verge.
I’m an island girl. I love looking out over the ocean and seeing no end, wondering what’s out there and marveling at how the water connects us all. I’m just hoping we don’t have to relearn that lesson the hard way if the consequences of deep-sea mining start washing ashore.
- Prospective deep-sea miners, including TMC, are eyeing a region between Hawaii and Mexico called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where up to 90 percent of species recently collected for study are thought to be completely new to science.
- There are a few different types of potential sources for battery minerals along the seafloor:
- Polymetallic nodules that TMC calls “batteries in a rock,” thought to be easier to pluck off the seafloor than exploiting other sources. Trump keeps one such nodule on the resolute desk, TMC chairman and CEO Gerard Barron said during a House Natural Resources Committee oversight hearing in April.
- Hydrothermal vents, which The Verge made a video about in 2019.
- Crusts rich in cobalt along underwater mountains and ridges.
- The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition argues that recycling and technological advances away from lithium-ion batteries toward potential alternatives, including lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and sodium-ion batteries, would eliminate the need for deep-sea mining.
- The Verge covered news in April about The Metals Company applying for a permit from the Trump administration to start commercially mining in international waters.
- This research paper describes the discovery of dark oxygen, which faces skepticism from some other scientists and The Metals Company that initially funded the research.
- Noise from deep-sea mining could be equivalent to or even louder than a rock concert, which could pose risks to nearby marine life, a 2022 study found.
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