Spotted jellyfish on a night dive in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. They get their color from a symbiotic relationship with algae in their tissues.
Photograph by Cristina Mittermeier
All life on Earth came from the deep.
In the lightless pressure of the primordial ocean, near hydrothermal vents billowing with minerals, the building blocks of biology first stirred to life. Over eons, some creatures began to push beyond the waves. Fins became limbs, and gills gave way to lungs.
Meanwhile, through a slow and delicate alchemy of the seabed, apple-sized clusters full of cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese began to take form. As megaannum passed, the nodules grew an average of just 1–2 millimeters per million years while life on Earth bloomed, diverged, and evolved around them.
On land, an upright ape emerged, and eventually returned to the waters from which it came, crafting tools, naming stars, and sailing toward horizons. It voyaged across oceans, gave names to those oceans, and mapped their tides and surfaces with awe.
Today, that innovative postural species has returned to the ocean’s cradle in pursuit of its metals. Emboldened by President Donald Trump, mining companies are now seeking permission to extract from thousands of square kilometers of the seafloor. In doing so, they’re bypassing global decision-making bodies that have protected the oceans for decades.
In April, Trump signed an executive order pushing federal agencies to fast-track domestic deep-sea mining, sparking alarm among scientists and diplomats. No commercial-scale deep-sea mining has ever taken place, and although some scientists argue that deep-sea resources could help meet the world’s urgent demand for the critical minerals required for a greener planet, others view it as a sidestep of global consensus and cooperative governance. There’s no telling what the environmental cost could be. With less than 0.001% of the deep sea floor explored, an area approximately the size of Rhode Island, critics warn that decisions to excavate the benthos are premature.
“The gist is that we really don’t know anything about the deep sea yet,” said Jamie Goncalves, a marine biologist with the conservation group, SeaLegacy. “It’s super risky, and we really don’t know what’s going to come of it if we start tearing apart this ecosystem.”
In 1982, global leaders gathered in Montego Bay, Jamaica to sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The ambitious document established rules for everything from fishing rights to territorial waters, and, crucially, the governance of the deep seafloor. It recognized that the ocean’s vast, mineral-rich abyss beyond national jurisdictions belonged not to any one country but to all of humanity. The seabed, as well as its resources, it declared, is “the common heritage of mankind, the exploration and exploitation of which shall be carried out for the benefit of mankind as a whole, irrespective of the geographical location.”
To steward this shared legacy, UNCLOS created the International Seabed Authority and charged it with regulating mineral-related activities in international waters. The ISA was tasked with developing a mining code that would balance environmental protections with the equitable sharing of deep-sea resources. Embedded in the ISA’s mission is the same striking principle from UNCLOS: that any exploitation of the deep should be done “for the benefit of mankind as a whole.”
To date, 168 parties—including China, Russia, most Pacific Island nations, and all EU member states—have ratified UNCLOS and participate in the ISA framework. The most notable outlier is the U.S., which has signed but never ratified the treaty.
“Studies like this are showing, again and again, that we don’t know enough about these ecosystems. And we really need to understand them before we move forward [with mining]. Mining should be on page 794, and we’re still on page 3.”
Dr. Andrew Sweetman
seafloor ecologist, Scottish Association for Marine Science
Under ISA rules, private companies cannot mine the deep sea without the backing of a nation-state sponsor—someone to hold legal responsibility and enforce environmental compliance. But nations can approve mining in their own territorial waters, up to about 200 nautical miles from shore. That’s the area Trump’s executive order targets. It calls for rapidly exploring the U.S.’s territorial waters and supporting other countries in following suit. If implemented, it could open a market for deep-sea minerals that bypasses the cooperative governance structure implemented decades ago.
On April 29, five days after Trump’s executive order, the Metals Company applied to extract minerals from about 25,000 square kilometers of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which lies between Hawai’i and Mexico. A few weeks later, the Interior Department announced that it was reviewing a request from Impossible Metals to mine off the coast of American Samoa. The company previously requested access to roughly 75,000 square kilometers of that seabed.
These two companies, along with the Trump administration, are leading efforts to commercialize the seafloor, said Mark Haver, a policy advisor for the youth-led nonprofit, Sustainable Ocean Alliance. Haver noted that with the Metals Company, the U.S. has instead backed a deep-sea mining startup facing significant financial instability—including scrutiny from the SEC, three near-delistings from NASDAQ, and growing investor concerns.
“Their investors have looked at the progress being made to enable deep-sea mining to move forward and said: Not enough is happening, and we can’t be sure that we’re getting our money back,” Haver said.
In Haver’s telling, the Metal Company “manipulated the Trump administration into thinking [deep-sea mining] is anti-multilateralism, counter-China, pro-supply chain.” China currently controls more than 70% of global rare earth processing and leads the supply chains for cobalt, lithium, graphite, and other rare earth elements. In an appeal to Trump’s nationalist agenda, Haver said, the Metal Company pitched an executive order accelerating deep-sea mining.
Max Bello, an international ocean policy expert for the Blue Marine Foundation, warned that bypassing multilateral systems—like the U.N.’s consensus-based process—sets a troubling precedent. These global platforms, while imperfect, “help us avoid several potential global conflicts by giving all countries, regardless of power, the same voice and the capacity to break consensus.”
When nations sidestep that structure, he explained, it signals that some believe they “have the power and the right” to make unilateral decisions for all of humanity.
“We’re all on the same, one home planet,” he said. “So jumping ahead like this creates a really bad precedent for how decisions over the future of humanity get made.”
Dr. Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is among the many scientists urging caution in extracting from the seafloor. She said the scientific knowledge needed to mine the deep sea responsibly simply doesn’t exist yet.
“We don’t know what to protect, how resilient these ecosystems are, or what functions could be lost,” she said. This uncertainty, she noted, is one reason why 33 countries have publicly opposed deep-sea mining.
Fundamental discoveries about the benthos are being made every year. Just last year, researchers documented the first evidence of oxygen being produced at the abyssal seafloor, nearly 4,500 meters below the ocean’s surface. The discovery defied previous assumptions that oxygen could only be generated in the ocean via photosynthesis. It suggests that the deep sea could be more life-sustaining than previously thought.
“It was the first discovery of its kind in the deep sea,” said Dr. Andrew Sweetman, lead author of the study and seafloor ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science.
“Studies like this are showing, again and again, that we don’t know enough about these ecosystems. And we really need to understand them before we move forward [with mining],” Sweetman cautioned. “Mining should be on page 794, and we’re still on page 3.”
The damage done to the deep sea by mining might be irreversible, some warn. The apple-sized metallic nodules take millions of years to form and are essential microhabitats for a wide range of deep-sea species such as sponges, sea cucumbers, and brittle stars. A recent report reveals thatdeep-sea mineral extraction could damage biodiversity up to 25 times more than land mining, with restoration costs potentially twice as high as extraction itself.
Although the ISA and mining companies propose restoration as a mitigation strategy, the details remain unclear, and current research indicates that the chances of successful recovery are low. The only restoration method under serious consideration—using artificial clay nodules—is estimated to cost a staggering $5.3 to $5.7 million per square kilometer. And, restoration would do little for the stored carbon that could potentially be released from the seabed into the oceans and atmosphere.
All of this is in pursuit of metals that may become obsolete, said Goncalves. He highlighted that technological shifts in electric vehicle batteries, for example, are reducing demand for the ocean’s metals. The industry is increasingly adopting lithium iron phosphate batteries, which do not require nickel or cobalt. LFP batteries accounted for 40% of the global EV battery market in 2023, up from 30% in 2021.
“The words ‘sustainable’ and ‘mining’ don’t go together—they’re an oxymoron.”
Max Bello
international ocean policy expert, Blue Marine Foundation
Given the boundless risks and uncertainties, environmental advocates, including World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, have called for leaders at this week’s United Nations Ocean Conference to advance progress toward a deep-sea mining moratorium. Eleven countries, including Canada, Peru, and the United Kingdom, have supported a ban or moratorium on deep-sea mining. Companies including Google, BMW, Samsung, and Volvo have, too. The third and supposedly final draft of this year’s UNOC declaration, however, which was seen by Atmos, makes no mention of a moratorium.
“Even developing countries are aware that this is about the future—it is human rights, having healthy and clean ecosystems,” said Bello. Bello’s home country of Chile is the world’s top copper producer and second-largest lithium producer, but land-based mining has poisoned coastal communities, Indigenous peoples, rivers, and oceans. Many worry that mining in the sea could repeat those harms.
“Mining is a very impactful activity no matter where it happens,” Bello said. “The words ‘sustainable’ and ‘mining’ don’t go together—they’re an oxymoron.”
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