Tag Archives: sea pangolin

Mining the Seabed: By hook or by crook

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The Trump administration is reportedly considering an executive order that would accelerate deep-sea mining in international waters by allowing companies to bypass a United Nations-backed review process. The order would affirm the United States’ right to extract critical minerals from the ocean floor, enabling companies to seek permits directly from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The International Seabed Authority (ISA), established in 1982 under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)—which the U.S. has not ratified—has spent years developing regulations for deep-sea mining.  In 2021, the island nation of Nauru sponsored Canada’s The Metals Company (TMC) to begin deep-sea mining, forcing the ISA to draft rules before any company could start extracting minerals in international waters. The 36-member ISA council has since met repeatedly to finalize regulations. In March 2025, officials gathered in Jamaica to review hundreds of proposed amendments to a 256-page draft mining code, but the session ended without a resolution.

Frustrated by the ISA’s slow progress, TMC in March 2025 formally urged the Trump administration to issue deep-sea mining permits, arguing that “commercial industry is not welcome at the ISA.” “The Authority is being influenced by a faction of States allied with environmental NGOs who see the deep-sea mining industry as their ‘last green trophy,’” TMC chairman and chief executive, Gerard Barron. “They have worked tirelessly to continuously delay the adoption of the Exploitation Regulations with the explicit intent of killing commercial industry.”

Governments interested in developing deep-sea mining within their territorial waters — typically 200 nautical miles from shore — include the Cook Islands, Norway and Japan.

Proponents of seabed mining contend that its environmental impact is lower than land-based extraction. Critics warn that the long-term consequences remain uncertain and advocate for further research before large-scale operations begin.

Excerpt from Cecilia Jamasmie, Trump eyes executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining, Mining.com, Apr. 1, 2025

Mining the Ocean: the Fate of Sea Pangolin

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A snail that lives near hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor east of Madagascar has become the first deep-sea animal to be declared endangered because of the threat of mining.  The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) added the scaly-foot snail (Chrysomallon squamiferum) to its Red List of endangered species on 18 July, 2019 — amid a rush of companies applying for exploratory mining licenses…. The scaly-foot snail is found at only three hydrothermal vents in the Indian Ocean.  Two of those three vents are currently under mining exploration licences,…Even one exploratory mining foray into this habitat could destroy a population of these snails by damaging the vents or smothering the animals under clouds of sediment..

Full-scale mining of the deep seabed can’t begin in international waters until the International Seabed Authority (ISA) — a United Nations agency tasked with regulating sea-bed mining — finalizes a code of conduct, which it hopes to do by 2020….The biggest challenge to determining whether the scaly-foot snail warranted inclusion on the Red List was figuring out how to assess the extinction risk for animals that live in one of the weirdest habitats on Earth…

When the IUCN considers whether to include an organism on the Red List, researchers examine several factors that could contribute to its extinction. They include the size of a species’ range and how fragmented its habitat is…The IUCN settled on two criteria to assess the extinction risk for deep-sea species: the number of vents where they’re found, and the threat of mining.   In addition to the scaly-foot snail, the researchers are assessing at least 14 more hydrothermal vent species for possible inclusion on the Red List.

Excerpts from Ocean Snail is First Animal to be Officially Endangered by Deep-Sea Mining, Nature, July 22, 2019

On Sea Pangolins see YouTube video