Tag Archives: The Metals Company (TMC) mining seabed

Unbelievable! The Astonishing Underworld of Seafloor

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A scientific expedition into a region of the Pacific Ocean named for Hades, Greek god of the underworld, has uncovered an other-worldly ecosystem 30,000 feet deep. “It’s a totally new thing that has not been seen before,” said Dominic Papineau, an exobiologist at China’s State Key Laboratory of Deep-sea Science and Intelligence Technology in Sanya.

Papineau is co-author of a groundbreaking research paper published in the journal Nature, describing the astonishing array of creatures who live in this daunting and dark environment, sustained by chemicals that leach from the ocean floor. Researcher Mengran Du told The Washington Post she wasn’t sure what expect when she descended in a three-person submersible into one of the deepest trenches in the Pacific. What she and others from China’s Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering saw when they got there was, she said, “unbelievable.”

Like skyscrapers, thick clusters of tubeworms with red-tinged tentacles jutted from the ocean floor, phosphorescent snails scaling them like window washers, she said. In between, white bristly creatures wriggled and writhed…

Scientists have long studied organisms that thrive around hydrothermal vents. But those native to areas known as cold seeps — where gases like methane and hydrogen sulfite leach from the seafloor at near-freezing temperatures — have been little studied. 

“Flourishing chemosynthetic communities had long been postulated to exist in the trenches, but this is the first paper that documents their existence below 9 kilometers and at multiple locations,” she said.  The adaptability of organizations in those trenches is a shot in the arm for scientists searching for evidence of life in oceans on other celestial bodies, including Europa, a moon of Jupiter.

Excerpt from Scientists Find New Ecosystem in Deepest Trenches of Pacific Ocean, US News and World Report, Aug. 4, 2025
 

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

The Communist Chinese Party and the Protection of the Ocean Seabed

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A disagreement between deep-sea miner The Metals Company (TMC) and researchers over a new scientific study is threatening efforts to mine the ocean bed for metals critical to supporting the green-energy transition. A study in the journal Nature Geoscience suggested that deep-sea nodules, which contain metals such as nickel critical for electric-vehicle batteries, produce oxygen despite the absence of light at the bottom of the ocean. The researchers making the claim called for further studies into how oxygen is produced on the ocean floor while environmental groups called for a halt to disrupting the seafloor and mining of nodules. TMC and some scientists are questioning the claim and accusing the lead authors of the study of plagiarism… The study comes at a time of troubled waters for the deep-sea mining industry, with political uncertainty and TMC struggling for new sources of investment.

In the U.S., the outlook for the industry has improved recently. On the corporate side, both Tesla and General Motors shareholders have said they wouldn’t back a moratorium on deep-sea mining. Ocean-floor minerals are seen as key to making electric-vehicle batteries because of the presence of cobalt, nickel and manganese in nodules. In Washington in September 2024, a House hearing was held on the subject of deep-sea and critical minerals, as many see the metals found on the ocean floor as important for defense purposes. In a meeting co-chaired by Democrat Kathy Castor of Florida and Republican Robert Wittman of Virginia as part of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Barron made the case for deep-sea nodules to become part of the U.S.’s critical mineral supply chain.

Meanwhile, industry leaders have gathered in the Cook Islands in September 2024 where a conference on deep-sea mining is taking place. The Pacific nation is home to thousands of tons of nodules, which are also rich in copper.

Excerpts from Yusuf Khan, Deep-Sea Mining Hits Crunch Point Amid Academic Battle Over Ocean-Floor Resources, WSJ, Sept 24, 2024