Most of the species on the sea floor are unknown or only newly known to science, such as the Barbie-pig, a sea pig named after its pink colour and tiny “feet”, found in the CCZ by the SMARTEX expedition led by the National Oceanography Centre. Photo ©SMARTEX Project/NERC, 2024
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In the last two weeks of March, representatives form 36 member countries of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UN regulator tasked with protecting marine life in international waters from potential harmful effect of seabed activities, met in Kingston, Jamaica. They left the meeting, once again, without agreeing on exploitation regulations that would govern the prospecting, exploration and any potential mineral extraction from the seabed. The timescale for finalising what is at present a draft, postponed from July 2023 to March 2024, has been pushed out again to July 2025.
Deep-sea mining hopefuls are looking to this “mining code” to let them proceed with scouring for minerals on the sea-bed in the so-called “high seas” – an area that covers over half of the world’s oceans and termed the “common heritage of humankind”. Whether humankind — in its island-nation parts or its whole, is entitled to this heritage more than the oceans’ natural inhabitants, many of which humankind has not yet discovered, is a heated debate. Quite literally heated, in a year of record sea temperatures, if the complex health of the oceans’ ecosystem and their carbon capture capacity turn out to be a more vital heritage and means of capping global warming than the minerals on the seabed.
The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian miner that plans to apply for an exploitation licence to scoop up polymetallic nodules containing battery metals nickel, cobalt and manganese from the seabed in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the southern Pacific estimates that there are enough battery metals within its prospective site to power enough electric cars to replace the entire US car fleet. But CCZ seabed is also teeming with life, most still undiscovered, and some only starting to be named as this Crucible issue went to press. If you have never yet met a Barbie pig, let us, or rather the National Oceanograhy Centre, introduce you (see image, top).
TMC’s exploratory activities in the CZZ, carried out by its subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NoRI) last year using a remote operated vehicle included environmental data gathering requested by the ISA. The company is due to submit its findings on seabed disturbance and ecosystem recovery at the next ISA meeting in July. It has been hoping to apply for an exploitation licence after that meeting, but if it did, it would doing so without a mining code in place.
TMC’s exploration in December met with Greenpeace protests, with some activists boarding TMCs vessel. While TMC succeeded in removing the activists from its vessel, it failed to get an injunction against Greenpeace, as a court upheld the NGO’s right to protest. Calls to evict Greenpeace from the ISA failed. So did Attempts by Nauru, the island nation back-ing TMC’s mining bid, to get ISA to set up protest-free “safety zones” around its vessels or to get the ISA to involve the International Maritime Organisation in planning buffer zones. And while the “consolidated text” of the draft “mining code” included some miners’ proposals, the list of nations calling for moratorium on deep-sea mining (DSM) has grown to 24.
A month before the ISA meeting, the UK, chair of the 77-nation Global Ocean Alliance, and committed to a moratorium on deep-sea mining launched a new science network to examine DSM’s environmental impact. The first SMARTEX expedition to the CCZ, with the NOC joined by the Natural History Museum and the British Geological Survey took place over the following month (hello Barbie-pig and friends).
On the other side of the Atlantic, conversely, two US republican senators launched a bill in support of DSM, citing the need to compete with China (which owns 5 of the 33 exploration licences granted by the ISA). Can this shift the US, which is yet to even ratify the Law of the SEA Treaty? We’ll see. As this went to press, the SEC declined the request by the electric car maker Tesla to omit from its filing a shareholder call to commit to a moratorium on deep-sea mining. Meanwhile a report from NGO Planet Tracker, ominously named “How to lose Half a Trillion” is warning of deep sea mining causing $500bn of potential value loss, outstripping environmental harm caused by land-based mining, On top, several major banks have set up own moratorium — on funding DSM.
By Polina Sparks
Minor Metals Trade Association
