Mining companies are hoping that 2025 will be the year they can finally start harvesting valuable minerals from the ocean floor.
For over two decades, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UN-affiliated body charged with regulating deep-sea mining in international waters, has been unable to finalise a code for the harvesting of minerals found on the ocean floor. With negotiations remaining deadlocked, the impasse could see states going ahead without a global agreement.
The vast deposits are in the form of potato-sized nodules containing metals such as cobalt and manganese, critical components in electric car batteries and other devices.
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±á´Ç·É±đ±ą±đ°ů,Ěý and many members of the scientific community oppose mining because they believe the risks to understudied ecosystems are too great. In July, those concerns were backed up by the surprise discovery that the metallic nodules produce oxygen, suggesting they may have a vital role in deep-sea ecosystems.
“We simply don’t know enough about the deep sea,” says at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. “We don’t know enough about the seabed. We don’t know what the nodules are doing.”
While an expansion of mining is needed to provide green technology to help tackle the climate emergency, sufficient deposits exist on land in ore deposits and waste, says at the University of Exeter, UK. “Beyond the unpredictable risks, there’s the broader question of whether we should exploit a pristine environmental frontier when it may not be necessary,” he says.
Opponents of deep-sea mining believe their cause has been bolstered by the election in August of a new secretary-general of the ISA, Brazilian oceanographer .
Bozzi says Carvalho is seen as holding strong views on approaching deep-sea mining cautiously. “Carvalho comes in with an entirely new approach,” he says. “She’s an oceanographer for a start, so she’s got the science. She was overwhelmingly voted in, and the mandate now is for transparency and for a code prior to any licences being issued.”
Norway was intending to become the first country to start mining seafloor minerals in its own waters, with plans to . However, the plans when the Socialist Left party threatened to block the government’s budget.
The Metals Company, a leading proponent of deep-sea mining based in Canada, is vowing to submit its application to the ISA on 27 June 2025. The company remains hopeful the ISA will finalise its mining code in the coming year. “2025 promises to be a landmark year for the deep-sea mining industry,” says at TMC.
TMC plans to collect nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean, a region covering 4.5 million square kilometres and with depths of 4000 to 5500 metres.
Usher says its application in the Pacific is “underpinned by environmental impact data gathered during the course of 22 offshore research campaigns” and that “polymetallic nodules can be collected from the abyssal seafloor without serious harm to the marine environment”.
The company’s operations will begin in an area of the CCZ known as Nori-D area, which is the planet’s largest source of battery metals, says Usher.
Robotic collectors will travel across the seafloor and gather nodules by blowing a jet of seawater across the top of them to channel them into the vehicle. The nodules will then be lifted up a 4-kilometre pipe on compressed air bubbles to a surface vessel, where they will be transferred to a bulk carrier for processing on land.
Winds of change
It seems unlikely, but not impossible, that the international community will come to an agreement in 2025 about the ground rules for deep-sea mining.
Meanwhile, the frustration of industry is growing and miners are buoyed by the political winds of change – especially a new US president who is expected to be in their corner. “Post-election momentum is expected to accelerate deep-sea mineral initiatives, with nodule supporters [expected to be appointed] in key roles with influence on the ISA including UN ambassador and secretary of state,” says Usher.
Bozzi fears that an ongoing stalemate at the ISA will increase the risk of nations acting unilaterally. “Power may win in the end,” says Bozzi. “We have plenty of examples of countries exploiting the oceans unilaterally for their own purposes at the moment, so it’s not something you can rule out.”
He expects more countries to apply to the UN to extend their continental shelf, giving them the right to exploit a larger area of the seabed. “Applications are going to increase markedly, and the South China Sea to some extent is an example of that where not only China but all of the littoral states are proposing arguments for an extension of their continental shelf,” he says.
