All you need to know about Deep Sea Mining
A longread by Josefa Beyer, Nico Czaja, Friedrich Enders and Anna Groß
What comes to mind when you think of the deep sea? A pitch-black world with freezing temperatures and creatures as if from another planet , glowing in the dark? Or huge machines trawling the ocean floor, lighting up the abyss with their massive spotlights?
While the deep sea may seem like one of the last places on Earth untouched by humans, this may soon change. A growing push to mine the seabed for valuable minerals might turn this remote wilderness into the next battleground for industrial exploitation.
This article aims to provide an overview of everything you need to know about deep‑sea mining (DSM). We explore seven key questions:
- What is DSM?
- Whose interests are at stake?
- Who governs the seabed and its resources?
- Who’s benefitting?
- What’s the role of Germany?
- What’s the role of the US?
- Where are we at?
At this point, it is unclear how this story may end: will countries soon start plowing the ocean floor for economic gains, or will it remain untouched?
What is Deep Sea Mining?
Put simply, DSM is the process of extracting minerals from the deep seabed. Three different types of minerals are currently being explored: 1) seafloor massive sulphides, 2) polymetallic crusts, and 3) polymetallic nodules.
Current industry discussions mainly focus on polymetallic nodules, also known as manganese nodules, as the technology for collecting them is the most advanced among the procedures being under development. These potato-shaped formations are collected from the seafloor using a device akin to a vacuum cleaner that sucks the nodules into a large machine (for a visualization, click here). Some companies are currently testing alternative ways to gather the sought-after nodules, with robotic collectors claimed to be less invasive because they pick up nodules individually, one at a time. The company furthest along with this approach is the US-Canadian start-up Impossible Metals, which plans to test its collector in Germany’s own Pacific licence area in 2027 or 2028. Keep that name in mind: it reappears in the sections on Germany and the US, and the connection between them is not a coincidence.
Yet, regardless of technique, all deep-sea mining operations have one thing in common: They severely impact the marine environment and carry significant risk (more on that later).
But what makes these so-called “potatoes of the deep” so precious to industry stakeholders? It’s that they contain valuable minerals. They mostly consist of manganese, but to a lesser extent also of iron, nickel, copper, titanium and cobalt. All these materials are in-demand resources for the production of weapons, smartphones, electric vehicles, solar cells, medical devices, or for the steel industry. A recent and concerning shift in industry rhetoric by large deep-sea mining players also claims a high demand for these minerals in the arms industry, with the intention of rendering deep-sea mining a question of national security.
Manganese nodules occur worldwide, mostly at depths between 3,000 and 6,000 metres. Their growth rate is incredibly slow – only about a few centimeters in a million years. Thus, larger nodules with a diameter of 15 centimetres can be up to 15 million years old.
Some deep-sea minerals are located at sites within the national jurisdiction of a state, yet most resources – around 81% of known manganese nodules – are estimated to be situated in international waters. The most mineral-rich region, containing an abundance of nodules, is the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Eastern Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico. It covers an area of around five million square kilometres, larger than the European Union.
How it all started
DSM’s origin story, though not widely known, is more reminiscent of a Cold War thriller than the history of an emerging extractive industry. In 1969, a soviet submarine sank in the Pacific Ocean. The US, eager to recover it for the intelligence it might yield, launched a secret operation to locate and retrieve the vessel. This was no easy task, considering the technology required and the political sensitivity of the mission. To conceal the operation, the CIA released a cover story: a billionaire-funded research expedition to discover manganese nodules on the seabed. They even built a custom ship for the job, the “Hughes Glomar Explorer.” After four years of construction, the vessel was ready to “collect nodules” (to recover the submarine). Unfortunately, something went wrong during the salvage operation; the submarine broke apart and only the front section could be recovered – though it did not contain the very thing they were after; however, the idea of deep-sea mining, though fictional and intended as a ruse, had come to stay. (Read the full story here.)
Whose interests are at stake?
A growing global demand for minerals – mostly driven by electrification and the transition to renewable energy technologies – is driving increased interest in extracting and processing them.
What proponents say
Proponents of DSM see immense potential for economic gains and view mining as a necessary precondition for global economic stability and achieving the clean energy transition. However, studies have shown that DSM entails huge economic risks, making it unlikely to ever be profitable.
The record so far supports that scepticism. In 2019 the Canadian first mover Nautilus Minerals went bankrupt, costing Papua New Guinea an estimated US$120–125 million. In 2025 the Norwegian company Loke Marine Minerals also filed for bankruptcy. Norway halted its first licensing round the same year and postponed all licences until at least 2029. India’s first offshore mining auction attracted not a single bidder, was annulled, and the government has said it does not plan to revive it. The OECD concluded in 2025 that the economic case for DSM is not evident given price volatility, while Planet Tracker estimates that leaving the deep sea alone is worth at least ten times more than mining it, with ecological losses of at least US$465 billion.
More importantly it has become apparent by now that deep sea minerals are not essential for the energy transition, nor for digital technologies or defense systems - even in the face of rising raw material demands. Growth in battery recycling, improved product designs, changes in consumer behaviours, and innovation are alternative ways to approach rising demand, and we have already made considerable progress along those pathways. For example, a large part of the newer generation of batteries used in electric vehicles and for large-scale energy storage – if you follow the narrative, one of the central reasons for the indispensability of DSM – requires little to no cobalt, nickel, and manganese.
This is not a projection. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells, which need no nickel, cobalt or manganese at all, grew to almost 50% of the global battery market by 2024. Sodium-ion and solid-state chemistries could reduce demand further. The metals DSM is meant to supply are losing the market that was supposed to justify mining them.
Conversely, many of the raw materials in demand for the mentioned sectors cannot be extracted through deep-sea mining.
Proponents also argue that DSM would lower the social and environmental harm of terrestrial mining, claiming that a shift to seabeds will lower ecological impacts and even reduce terrestrial mining activities. However, terrestrial mining will likely continue regardless (just like the biodiversity loss and human rights breaches associated with that industry). Scientists have been clear that DSM will not stop or reduce terrestrial mining operations. Particularly considering that terrestrial resources are likely sufficient to meet rising mineral demands, all that DSM will add to the equation is an additional source of environmental degradation.
There are three major private-sector players that dominate the DSM industry: 1) The Metals Company, 2) Impossible Metals, and 3) Lockheed Martin, which re-entered the field most recently. The Metals Company is actively pushing to begin mining operations as soon as possible, with its CEO, Gerard Barron, among the most prominent and aggressive voices in the debate. Apart from these companies, states expressing interest in DSM include China, Russia and the US. However, there are also a lot of actors clearly opposing DSM.
A moratorium
Since the third United Nations Ocean Conference, which took place in June 2025 in Nice, France, 46 countries have declared their support for the call for a pause or moratorium (as of July 2026) – up from four since the previous UNOC in Lisboa 2022.
Among the calls for a moratorium, different categories of “non-use measures” exist. Most states call for a precautionary pause, arguing that we need more time to develop solid exploitation regulations, and until then, appropriate measures should be introduced based on the precautionary approach. Fewer states call for a moratorium, claiming that specific conditions must be set, and until those have been met, no DSM activities can be performed. France is the only country advocating for a ban, meaning a permanent and indefinite prohibition of DSM.
These nations express concerns about commercial DSM, arguing that we need to close existing knowledge gaps about the environmental impacts on, for example, interactions between species and ecosystems, before deciding if mining should go ahead.
Currently, DSM is not allowed for commercial purposes. There is a clear differentiation between exploration and exploitation. Actors are allowed to test mine areas they have a permit for, but currently, no one has the right to pursue mining for exploitation, which is to be governed by a “Mining Code” presently developed by the International Seabed Authority.
In addition to the opposing countries mentioned above, more than 900 scientists and policy expertshave joined the call for a precautionary pause on DSM until its effects are better understood.
The financial sector is moving in the same direction. A 2026 mapping by Seas At Risk and the Deep Sea Mining Campaign found over 80 financial institutions, managing €24 trillion between them, with some form of public policy or statement on DSM; 37 of these explicitly rule out financing, insuring or investing in DSM. Almost half of those exclusion policies were published in 2025 alone. Separately, more than 70 businesses and financial institutions have joined the Business Coalition for a Pause on Deep Sea Mining, among them Apple, Google, BMW, Philips, Samsung and Volvo, and in 2025 a group of 41 financial institutions holding over €3.8 trillion signed a statement asking governments to stop DSM.
This is not the first time a moratorium on DSM has been in place. In 1969, a UN General Assembly “Moratorium Resolution” was adopted, calling on actors to refrain from exploitation activities on the seabed below international waters in light of the pending establishment of an international regime. Negotiations of the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) started 4 years later, in 1973. And even today, the legal regime for DSM is still taking shape.
Environmental impacts
Less than one thousandth of a percent of the deep seafloor has ever been seen by human eyes or cameras – an area roughly the size of the island of Mallorca, across a habitat that covers more than half the planet. But while many of the intricacies of life in the oceans, particularly in the deep sea, are still unknown, what we do know is that DSM will have irreversible environmental impacts.
The first commercial DSM test was performed in 1970 in the North Atlantic, off the Florida coast. Over 50 years later, the impacts on the ecosystem are still visible, and the scrape marks across more than 43km show no indication of meaningful ecosystem recovery. In the mined locations, there are no nodules left, nor is any biodiversity.
The large-scale environmental impact experiment DISCOL conducted in the southeastern Pacific, specifically designed to examine the impacts of nodule mining, began in 1989 – with participation of Onno Groß, DEEPWAVE’s founder. Parts of a manganese nodule field were disturbed with heavy equipment. Since then, scientists have regularly studied the area up to the present day. The results are clear: Many years after the experiment, the total mass of calcareous organisms in the disturbed area remained 54% lower than that beyond its boundaries. There was also nearly 80% less activity from filter-feeding and suspension-feeding fauna in the area. “Almost 30 years after a comparatively small disturbance just about half of all life forms have returned to the area,” reports Dr. Lidia Lins of the Senckenberg Research Institute.
Now imagine the impact of DSM if it were implemented on a commercial scale across an area larger than the European Union (= the Clarion-Clipperton Zone). It is not pleasant.
While proponents of DSM argue that technological advancements will help minimize damage in the future compared to the technology in place some 50 years ago, damage itself is unavoidable. With the nodules taking millions of years to form, they cannot simply grow back, and the disruption to ocean life processes this entails is significant. This risk can not be overstated. Deep-sea processes are slow, and so are recovery rates of damaged ecosystems: They likely won’t recover within human timescales, if at all.
The list of specific environmental impacts of deep-sea mining is long enough that we’ll have to limit ourselves to a few examples: Little deep sea octopi laying their eggs on sponges that grow exclusively on the nodules, making them essential for their reproduction, may serve as a stand-in for many other organisms that have made the nodule fields their habitat, creating a complex, far-reaching web of interdependencies we barely understand yet. Another environmental impact is the risk of releasing large amounts of carbon that are stored in the seabed. The DSM process could disrupt ocean carbon sequestration, contributing to global warming. While uncertainties about exact consequences remain, “we may be severely underestimating the broader impacts of DSM.”
We already have sufficient scientific evidence to know that impacts will be severe - we just don’t know yet on which scale.
Who governs the seabed and its resources?
Governing deep-sea mining might be an extraordinarily complex task - but it’s an incredibly important one.“The deep sea needs rules”, Leticia Carvalho, Secretary General of the International Seabed Authority, recently emphasized. UN Secretary General António Guterres cautioned “the deep sea cannot become the Wild West.” But how can we make sure it doesn’t?
UNCLOS
The main framework governing the deep sea is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. Almost all recognized sovereign states have ratified it: 169 out of 195 (plus the European Union). It was adopted in 1982 and entered into force in 1994. The Convention has over 320 Articles governing human activities in the ocean. That’s why it’s often called “the constitution for the ocean.” It divides the ocean into different zones in which states have different rights. A rule of thumb applies: The further you move away from the coast, the fewer rights a coastal state has.
A coastal state has sovereignty over its waters and the seabed of up to 12 nautical miles from the coast. These waters are called the territorial sea. Beyond that, it exercises sovereign rights within a 200-nautical-mile zone known as the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), where it has special privileges over natural resources. Past the EEZ lie the high seas – international waters where all states, including landlocked ones, enjoy equal rights under international law.
Beneath the EEZ lies the continental shelf, the underwater extension of a coastal state’s landmass. While it typically overlaps with the EEZ, the continental shelf can legally extend up to 350 nautical miles from the coast - surpassing the EEZ’s boundaries. Beyond this, in turn, lies “the Area” - the region where most DSM activities are to be expected, if legalised. It is defined as the seabed and subsoil of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. In other words, the Area is the seabed below international waters. It is governed by Part XI of UNCLOS, which sets out essential rules for the use of resources in the Area. This part was the subject of intense controversy during UNCLOS negotiations.
Common Heritage of Humankind & how UNCLOS came about
To understand the interests at stake in the DSM debate, it is essential to examine how UNCLOS was developed. While discussions about how to govern the ocean can be traced back to the 17th century and beyond (with the principle of the “freedom of the high seas” first articulated in 1609), negotiations of UNCLOS began in 1958 when the first of three negotiation rounds took place. During the third round (in 1973-1974), states sought to ensure the participation of developing countries and established the concept of the Area and its resources belonging to all of us – the global community.
This principle can be found in Article 136 of the convention and states that the Area and its resources are the common heritage of humankind (the original text says mankind, but let’s stick to humankind). When President Macron says, “The ocean is not for sale. We’re talking about a common shared good," this statement is referring to Article 136 – this references a solid legal basis.
The principle envisioned a system of collective management of seabed resources, shared equally, and preserved for future generations, not appropriated, and used for peaceful purposes only. It must benefit humankind as a whole, being “a catalyst for economic redistribution” and giving special consideration to developing countries.
In the post-colonial era, newly independent developing nations were assured that future seabed exploitation would help bridge the inequality gap between the Global North and South. However, these promises were scaled back when some industrialized states (especially the US) refused to ratify UNCLOS due to provisions in Part XI (“the Area”). This has led to re-negotiations and the adoption of the 1994 Implementing Agreement. In this Agreement, the interests of developing states were undermined: The new agreement removed the obligation to enable developing countries to explore and exploit deep-sea resources on their own, which has significantly shifted the distribution of benefits of the common heritage of humankind principle - to the detriment of developing states.
To date, the US has only signed UNCLOS, not ratified it. Thus, they are not legally bound by the convention. Nevertheless, they still follow most of its provisions as they regard UNCLOS as so-called customary international law.
Protection of the marine environment
In addition to establishing the principle of common heritage of humankind, another important provision of UNCLOS is the prevention principle as part of the general obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment (UNCLOS Article 194). This provision is mirrored in Article 145 of the agreement governing the Area. Article 145 in summary asks states to prevent significant harm caused by human activities that are likely to result in deleterious effects.
However, there is no universally agreed threshold for what classifies as “significant harm”.
An essential legal concept rooted in the prevention principle is the so-called precautionary approach, which wisely asks not only to prevent the damage we anticipate but also the damage we don’t know. This approach applies to situations of high uncertainty and potential high risks. It’s a “better safe than sorry” approach and is central to arguments for restricting DSM.
However, UNCLOS itself does not contain the precautionary approach. It is part of other important treaties established under UNCLOS, such as the Fish Stocks Agreement or the Convention on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ).
Contrary to the prevention principle, it has also not (yet) been officially categorized as customary international law. This means that it does not apply universally to all states but only to those states that have ratified the instruments that contain it. Still, the precautionary approach is present in the declaration of a regional sea convention (OSPAR), many ISA documents and drafts of the Mining Code, and it was noted by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) that it is an “integral part of the general obligation of due diligence.” Therefore, in the context of DSM, the precautionary approach is an essential part of protecting marine environments from the impacts of deep-sea mining, it already applies to many situations, and there are solid legal arguments for its further recognition and application as a binding standard of conduct for states and contractors involved in deep-sea mining.
There is a broader point here about what precaution is for. As legal scholar Gustavo Leite Neves da Luz argues,the deep-sea mining debate is sliding from forecast to entitlement: because minerals are wanted, the reasoning goes, the seabed must be opened. Wanting something has never been a legal basis for taking it, and no projection about future markets suspends the duties that Part XI imposes today. What worries him is less the prospect of mining outpacing regulation than the reverse – regulation rushing to completion because everyone involved has already decided how the story ends. Precaution exists to interrupt exactly that. It preserves an institution’s ability to refuse, or to wait, or to demand better evidence before deciding at all. Strip that ability away and the ISA would still hold meetings, publish texts and issue decisions, without regulating anything: it would be, in Leite’s phrase, “administering inevitability.”
The International Seabed Authority
UNCLOS led to the establishment of three new institutions: 1. the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (located in the same city as DEEPWAVE: Hamburg), 2. the Commission for the Delimitation of the Outer Continental Shelf, and 3. the International Seabed Authority (ISA). The latter is of utmost importance to DSM, as it was established to regulate mining activities in the Area, including exploration and exploitation.
Based in Kingston, Jamaica, the ISA is tasked with organizing, regulating, and controlling all mineral-related activities in the Area. The authority is also tasked with ensuring that activities in the Area are being carried out to benefit humankind as a whole. This regulatory process creates a conflict of interest since the ISA acts as both a promoter and a regulator of DSM. It has the role to govern the exploitation of deep-sea resources, but also to protect and preserve the marine environment.
While DSM has long been subject to controversy (and deep-sea minerals have been known since the 1870s), it became a particularly contentious topic in 2021. In that year, the Pacific island state Nauru triggered the so-called “two-year rule”. This rule, which was set out in the 1994 Implementation Agreement, gives the ISA 2 years to adopt its first set of exploitation regulations for DSM - called “the Mining Code.” If not, Nauru would have the right to apply for exploitation permits at the ISA. This deadline has passed in 2023. Up until today, there is no such Mining Code yet – but Nauru hasn’t applied for permits yet either.
Who’s benefiting?
“This is colonialism by another name – economic imperialism – where multinational mining companies prioritize profits over the well-being of our people and ecosystems.” These are words from the president of Palau, HE Surangel S. Whipps Jr.
Such statements raise an important question: how can benefits derived from our common resources be fairly distributed?
Pacific island states
Palau and several other island states are leading calls for a moratorium, citing risks to biodiversity, fisheries, and cultural heritage. As the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is located in the Pacific, these islands will be disproportionately affected by ocean degradation, but at the same time, benefit the least from resource extraction. Palau, which has been a colonized state until 1994, argues that a moratorium is necessary to “protect our shared ocean from a new form of colonialism.” The country explains that this neocolonialism is visible in the DSM industry, targeting the Pacific islands’ resources and turning their regions into experimental sites for untested technologies. Palau stresses that while mining companies extract wealth from the seabed, the voices of local communities remain unheard and they are left to bear the environmental and social consequences. Therefore, the country argues that all states have the responsibility to uphold the common heritage of humankind principle and safeguard it against the risks of degrading the seabed for the benefit of only a few.
And those with no vote at all
Palau and Nauru are sovereign states making constrained choices. In the US territories, the constraint is more fundamental: the decision is not theirs to make.
In July 2026 the newly formed Marine Minerals Administration in the US Department of the Interior published a proposed leasing notice covering more than 18 million acres of seabed off American Samoa, with an auction scheduled for 19 November. Around 70,000 public comments opposing offshore mineral extraction had already been submitted. Under the applicable regulation, the Governor of American Samoa has 60 days to review and comment before a final notice can be issued; the decision itself rests in Washington, where the territory has no vote.
The economic exposure is concentrated too. Tuna accounts for the overwhelming majority of American Samoa’s exports, and sediment plumes from mining would put that fishery at risk. The government’s own environmental assessment acknowledges how little is known about these waters, their seamounts, their species and the submerged cultural sites they may contain.
The common heritage of humankind principle does not apply here, because these are national waters. That is precisely the point. Where the principle applies, it is weak; where it does not, there is nothing at all.
Benefit sharing
According to Article 140 in UNCLOS, the ISA shall provide for the equitable sharing of financial and other economic benefits derived from activities in the Area. In summary, this implies that if any actor benefits from selling manganese nodules, those benefits must be shared equitably among all states. This promise - the prospect of economic benefit - was crucial in maintaining the involvement of developing states in UNCLOS negotiations. However, it is unclear if the benefits of DSM can actually be redistributed. A redistribution would presuppose that mining is economically profitable, which is unclear and too early to say due to unknown effects on ecosystem services. Some studies already assume that DSM is not profitable at all. Also, the redistribution scheme is not yet robust enough, leaving significant uncertainties about the actual benefits that developing sponsoring states could receive.
Let’s summarise: An economically vulnerable state permits and sponsors foreign extraction in exchange for limited and uncertain short-term benefits while bearing the long-term environmental and reputational risks due to being located right in the “hotspot mining area” in the Pacific. While Nauru is exposing itself voluntarily to these impacts, it is driven by a severe economic crisis that is a direct consequence of colonialism and seemingly does not leave it with any other options. This dynamic reflects a modern form of exploitation that –although legal and aligned with UNCLOS – mirrors the structural inequalities of historical colonialism, underscoring the need to pay particular attention to geopolitical realities and the historical context in order to understand states’ positions.
Within this context, corporate interests are setting the agenda – whether capitalising on industrialized states that seek to become more influential or on post-colonial states striving for long-overdue economic independence. While the motivations of these states may be similar, they have completely different departure points – and there’s a very powerful argument to be made for emphasizing the particularly devious role of the former colonial powers: Not only are they responsible for extracting their former colonies’ basis for economic independence, they’re also the main drivers behind the climate and biodiversity crises, which are poised to hit developing countries much harder.
Thus, despite the initial decolonial aspirations embedded in the common heritage of humankind principle, DSM risks reproducing the very colonial patterns that UNCLOS sought to dismantle. Should commercial mining go ahead, the ISA’s task to ensure that the benefit-sharing of Article 140 actually becomes a reality is firmly set to be an uphill battle.
What’s the role of Germany?
It is easy to read the DSM story as one about Canadian start-ups and American executive orders. Germany appears in it as a voice for restraint: since November 2022 the federal government has officially called for a precautionary pause, and at the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice, Environment Minister Carsten Schneider restated it, noting that hardly any country invests as much in deep-sea research as Germany.
Both halves of that sentence are true. However, a two-part Greenpeace investigation published in July 2026 shows how that might not be entirely a good thing.
Germany holds two ISA exploration licences – for manganese nodules in the Pacific and for massive sulphides in the Indian Ocean – both administered by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), which reports to the economics ministry. The BGR has spent around €175 million exploring them. Alongside genuine environmental research, that work has identified prospective mining sites and tested processing methods. The institute told Greenpeace that some of its resource data has “considerable economic value” and might be sold to an investor to offset exploration costs. It also argues that a mining test would build the confidence industry and investors need, and is pursuing one such test in the Pacific with the start-up Impossible Metals, now scheduled for 2027 or 2028.
Research funding points the same way. Greenpeace identified 22 publicly funded projects connected to deep-sea mining over the past decade. Under the economics ministry’s maritime research programme alone, some €70 million went to projects that either target deep-sea mining or name it as a possible application – roughly two thirds of it to private companies. The research ministry, which funds the more basic science, states that it has “at no point funded marine mining.”
The clearest case is the “Deep Sea Sampling” programme, which aims to develop what it calls a minimally invasive technology for extracting seafloor massive sulphides – “the green copper of the deep sea,” in the project’s own words. Its centrepiece is a cutting system from Bauer Maschinen GmbH, adapted for use at depth. A drilling campaign in the Indian Ocean is planned for 2027, and a project brochure envisages pilot mining between 2029 and 2032. The BGR, an adviser in the first phase, became a full partner in the second – which is what allowed confidential data from Germany’s licence area to be shared with the consortium.
None of this means Germany is about to mine. It means that a decade of public money has built the patents, equipment and expertise a mining industry would need, and that some of it is already being marketed abroad. A German-Saudi consortium is currently preparing to mine metalliferous muds in the Red Sea, in national waters where the ISA has no say – and it relies on Bauer’s cutting technology and on the publicly developed MeBo drill. A promotional video for its Saudi partner shows the cutter complete with the German project logo. Even if Germany never permits commercial mining in its own licence areas, several German companies are now well positioned to support the industry’s expansion elsewhere.
What’s the role of the US?
On April 24, 2025, U.S. President Trump signed Executive Order 14285 titled “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources” in order to speed up deep-sea mining permits in both US and international waters. Several actors, such as the EU, describe this move as a violation of international law. However, bearing in mind the US’ position in UNCLOS negotiations regarding Part XI “the Area” and their rejection to becoming a party to the Convention, these developments don’t come as a surprise: “Rather than a shock new twist, EO 14285 is better viewed with a sense of déjà vu” (take a look at the UNCLOS negotiations described above).
Two US laws are relevant in this regard: 1. the 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act(applies also to resources in the Area) and 2. the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (only for resources in waters of national jurisdiction).
Now, the Canadian deep-sea mining firm The Metals Company (TMC) is pushing for extraction to begin as soon as possible. Less than a week after President Trump signed the Executive Order, The Metals Company applied for two exploration and one exploitation permit with US authorities. The latter targets commercial mining in parts of the Clarion-Clipperton zone, in an area of 25,160 square kilometers.
In January 2026, NOAA issued a final rule streamlining the permitting process, allowing companies to apply for exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits simultaneously, compressing what was previously a multi-stage process. TMC USA filed a consolidated application under this new framework the following day, expanding the area it seeks to mine commercially from around 25,000 to roughly 65,000 square kilometres. NOAA found the application substantially compliant in March 2026, fully compliant on 1 May, and certified it on 26 May – three procedural milestones in under five months, clearing the way for the application to advance through the agency’s formal review.
These proceedings imply that the US could just ignore the ISA’s permit system and go ahead and create its own system. Prospectively, this could result in geopolitical conflicts in case of geographic overlap between competing claims: issued by the US for the US, and issued by the ISA for another state. However, within national jurisdiction, the US is legally allowed to press ahead – only if they started mining within the international waters of the Area, they’d act contrary to international law.
But aside from creating legal conflicts: how likely is unilateral deep-sea mining outside national jurisdiction actually to happen? Let’s assume the US starts mining in international waters without exploitation regulations in place. In principle, every party involved – vessels, financing bodies, buyers of the minerals – would have to come from states that are not a party to UNCLOS, which leaves a very short list: Turkey, Venezuela, Peru, Israel. On paper, that alone should make the whole enterprise unworkable.
In practice, the value chain is being assembled anyway, and from precisely those states that are bound by the Convention. What the obligation means is that UNCLOS parties are expected to act against companies under their control that participate in mining outside the ISA framework. Whether they do so is a political question, not an automatic legal effect – and so far, they have not.
Particularly when it comes to refining the collected nodules, the US is dependent on other actors. China is the dominant refiner for 19 of the 20 minerals classified as critical, with an average market share of around 70%, and accounts for roughly 90 percent of global refined output of magnet rare earth elements. The US produces around 10 percent of the world’s rare earths and has almost no domestic refining capacity, exporting much of that material to China for processing.
The rare-earth argument deserves particular scepticism, because it is the newest and loudest. Rare earths occur in polymetallic nodules only as trace by-products, are largely absent from massive sulphides, and are not the economic driver even in cobalt-rich crusts. With one exception – a Japanese project targeting particular deep-sea muds – no deep-sea mining company has built rare-earth extraction into its feasibility studies at all. The bottleneck the US wants to escape is refining capacity, and nothing on the seabed changes that.
Thus, the US is dependent on Chinese refineries, posing a risk to US industries. The Metals Company has no experience in processing minerals, nor does it have the financial means to build such capacity. It took China decades to create it.
While The Metals Company’s rhetoric promotes making the US more independent through “US-made” products, there surely is no supply chain security and thus no independence when the entire processing of metals has to be done outside the country.
Above and beyond that, The Metals Company is a Canadian company only operating a branch of its office in the United States and, with Canada being a signatory party to UNCLOS, this implies they can’t legally forgo on operations in international waters that act contrary to UNCLOS regulations. However, whether Canada’s UNCLOS obligations reach through this corporate structure to bind a US subsidiary is untested in law.
So this whole process leaves significant questions and doubts, and may function more as political theatre than a credible industrial plan.
However, a major US defence company, once thought to have exited the DSM industry, is now involving itself in the discussion again. Lockheed Martin holds two exploration licenses for the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which it plans to access in the future.
Adding further political weight to this framing, the US administration announced “Project Vault” in February 2026, a $10 billion strategic reserve for critical minerals, several of which (nickel, cobalt, manganese) are the target metals in polymetallic nodules.
This signals that DSM has moved from fringe industrial lobbying into formal US economic security planning, a context in which Lockheed Martin’s renewed interest takes on added significance.
To conclude, the economics of The Metals Company “do not add up,” nor does its promise to increase national independence and security. If Lockheed Martin moves beyond discussions about accessing areas where it holds licenses, it will face the same political, economic, and social challenges as The Metals Company. Their only advantage may be that they’re entirely US-based, given that the executive order described above favours US companies. That advantage has grown more concrete since early 2026: NOAA’s streamlined permitting rules, combined with Project Vault’s political backing, mean that the regulatory environment for US-based DSM applicants is now more permissive than at any point in recent history, even if the structural economic and legal obstacles analyzed above remain in place.
The faster route: mining at home
All of that applies to the Area. It does not apply to a second US track, which needs no international legal argument at all: the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, covering US national waters, where American sovereignty is not in dispute.
The American Samoa lease sale described above is the first such process to reach the auction stage. Two leases would open the seabed to exploration and extraction of polymetallic nodules and ferromanganese crusts, near the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. US regulations allow relatively rapid movement from exploration to extraction, which means this route, not the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, is now the most likely path to the world’s first commercial deep-sea mining – ahead of an ISA still negotiating the rules.
The justification is the one that has become standard. Matt Giacona, acting director of the Marine Minerals Administration, framed the sale as a response to Chinese dominance of critical mineral supply, which he called an unacceptable risk to American energy, defence and manufacturing. The same securitised framing that industry introduced into the debate is now the language of a federal agency.
Where are we at?
As of July 2026, there is still no international regulation on commercial deep-sea mining. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) failed to adopt a Mining Code at its 30th Session in July 2025. And in March 2026, the first part of the ISA’s 31st Session once again closed without agreement, with benefit-sharing, liability, and environmental compensation all still unresolved.
Momentum for caution is growing: more than 40 ISA member states now support a moratorium or precautionary pause, while Norway has extended its national pause through 2029.
And yet the danger to the deep sea is arguably greater than at any point before. Because a unilateral US approach aims to bypass ISA altogether.
Moving under the cover of Trump’s April 2025 executive order, The Metals Company has advanced its NOAA application to full compliance status as of May 2026.
If granted, TMC’s permits would become the first commercial deep-sea mining authorization in international waters outside the UN system. Therefore, the danger lies not only in the environmental harm of a single mining project, but also in the precedent: once one country successfully bypasses the ISA, others, specifically China, may conclude that a multilateral approach no longer serves Chinese interests, either. A knock-on effect could effectively collapse the current international consensus that the deep seabed belongs to humanity as a whole.
Looking ahead.
TMC expects a final decision by NOAA on its exploitation permit in the CCZ by early 2027. However, a permit would not mean an immediate start of TMC mining operations. Environmental review, litigation, financing, and operational scale-up remain significant hurdles. The nearer date is 19 November 2026, when the American Samoa lease sale is scheduled. Nothing in international law stands in its way.
This is time the conservation community needs to use to drive the protection of deep-sea ecosystems. And momentum is building.
A growing body of international law points toward conservation. Most importantly, the High Seas Treaty (BBNJ) entered into force in January 2026. This treaty creates binding obligations for environmental impact assessments in areas beyond national jurisdiction and opens a pathway for high-seas Marine Protected Areas that could overlap with future mining zones. The first BBNJ Conference of the Parties will convene in January 2027.
Meanwhile the money continues to move away. Over 80 financial institutions managing €24 trillion now have some form of public policy or statement on deep-sea mining, and 39 of them explicitly exclude financing, insurance or investment; almost half of those exclusions were adopted in 2025 alone. Major automakers and battery manufacturers have made the same commitment on the demand side. In March 2026 the Convention on Migratory Species has moved to include conservation of seamount habitats, volcanic underwater mountains. And the forthcoming EU Ocean Act could make access for minerals mined from the deep sea to European markets increasingly difficult.
At the second part of its 31st session in July 2026, the Council again adjourned without a Mining Code. The more consequential events happened alongside those negotiations.
NORI and TOML, both wholly owned by The Metals Company, had sued the ISA before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, seeking to halt the inquiry into whether contractors supporting unilateral mining had breached their obligations. On 18 July the Tribunal’s Seabed Disputes Chamber refused to suspend the inquiry. Its provisional measures instead require the ISA to follow due process and give the contractors what they need in order to respond. Two days later, the Council extended NORI’s exploration contract, due to expire on 22 July, with the inquiry still unresolved.
So the inquiry survived, and so did the contract. What remains open is the harder question: whether a regulator can enforce its own rules against a contractor that is simultaneously suing it. That question now matters more than any verdict would have.
Conclusion
To conclude, DSM is one of the greatest threats to our ocean, carrying profound social, economic, and environmental risks. The debate is deeply entangled with power dynamics and conflicting national interests. While many actors are calling for a moratorium, the ISA faces a critical challenge: it must ensure that resources serve the benefit of humankind, not the profits of a few companies. For now, as negotiations continue, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
In the meantime, we as actors invested in marine conservation should push one narrative above all others: Yes, there are cute octopi laying eggs exclusively on manganese nodules. Yes, we don’t know the risks of meddling with complex deep sea ecosystems. But these points all put the cart before the horse: We don’t need these resources. Neither for the energy transition, nor for anything else. There is no actual demand for the metals contained in manganese nodules that cannot be served more easily, and with much less financial and environmental risks involved, by what we already have. DSM, alluring as it may seem to some, is a solution in search of a problem.
Let’s close with a quote by Leticia Carvalho, Secretary General of the ISA, with words romantically misattributed to an indigenous people as we tend to do, but not much less true for it: “As the native American Dakota teach, ‘we will be known forever by the tracks we leave.’ Let us ensure that our tracks are based on wisdom and stewardship, not on haste and harm. The deep sea is counting on us all. We must aim for nothing less than to leave tracks worthy of our children’s future.”
Deep-sea mining does not exist yet. We can keep it that way – and make use of a historic chance to avert catastrophe before we bumble right into it for a change.
