Deep Sea Mining Exposed: Inside the Fight to Save the Ocean's Last Frontier

0:00 Is deep-sea mining sustainable? Not from an environmental impact, I think we know the answer to that, but from an economical impact. Can people make money from deep-sea mining? We're gonna talk about the environment, the economics, all about deep-sea mining today, and we're gonna be talking about the importance of the deep sea with my guest today, Matthew Gianni. He is the co-founder and political and policy advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition out of Europe. He's here to talk to us about how he got started in the environmental world, going from a deep sea trawling off the coast of California, to landing a job at Greenpeace, to now co-founding the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, and working for over 30 years in this business to be able to bring you some conservation of the deep sea.

0:45 So we're gonna talk about the importance of the deep sea, the environment, and what are the latest updates from the International Seabed Authority meeting that just happened in July. It's the second meeting they do of the two meetings this year. It was happening in Kingston, Jamaica, and there's some really interesting things that came out of that meeting. So we're gonna talk about it on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. This is the place where you get your ocean news and updates every Monday to Friday, every weekday. If you enjoy that kinda stuff, why don't you hit that follow button right now on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss Monday's episode, and all the way through Friday. We have some great episodes coming up, some great topics. Next week, it's either fisheries or we're gonna be talking about plastic pollution and microfiber. So, you never know what you're gonna get on these episodes.

1:27 So stay tuned, follow, and let's talk Matthew Gianni. Matthew was an amazing guest. He is a lot of fun to be able to discuss it. It's the first time I've met him, but having the conversation, I believe we could have talked for three more hours at least. And we'll have him back on to talk more updates on not only deep-sea mining, which is a big, big issue right now, but also we're gonna talk about deep sea and why it's important, and all the different animals that come out from there that we all love, and some people call monsters, but I think call, like, aliens and cool things, and just cool adaptations to the deep sea is what we're gonna see over the future. But deep-sea mining is right at the forefront of a lot of news that's happening, not only from the International Seabed Authority, which is the governing authority from the UN that looks after setting the regulations of if deep-sea mining is actually gonna happen, whether it's gonna happen, and we got some really interesting economic updates on this, not only environmental updates, and also movement towards moratorium.

2:16 So we're gonna hear that from Matthew. But also, like, we've seen a big push from the US government, the Trump administration, that wants to do deep-sea mining. We've talked about it on the podcast before. There's been some public inquiries or some public comment periods that have been ignored, and then the size of the area that they're gonna mine or potentially mine have doubled, if not tripled. The metals companies involved. We're gonna talk all about that today and how that's influencing deep-sea mining, and maybe it's just not gonna happen at all. So, we're gonna hear that from Matthew. So here's the interview from Matthew Gianni, co-founder and political and policy advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. Enjoy the interview, and I'll talk to you after. Hey, Matthew. Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about deep sea conservation?

2:59 Hi, Andrew. Yes, very much so. Thanks for having me on. You bet. I'm excited for this because, uh, we're gonna be focusing a lot on the deep sea today. Obviously, you're from the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. We'll talk about that in a second. But we're gonna also talk about some updates from the International Seabed Authority meeting that happened in Kingston, Jamaica recently this, this past summer. Uh, and so we're gonna get an update on where everything is at. Uh, but I-- what I really wanna focus on too is, is obviously getting to know, uh, yourself, Matthew, but also just what's in the deep sea. What can we expect? You've been working on this for more than 20 years, uh, through the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and, and I s- I think a lot of, a lot of us really don't know what's down there, and I think we think, a lot of us think it's like a barren sea.

3:43 You know? Like, there's nothing down there and there's nothing to worry about with whether you're extracting, whether you're trawling, you know. These are things that we have to be careful of and make sure that people know that it's, there's an abundant sea life. Maybe not as abundant as a coral reef, but sometimes there are coral reefs. So we're gonna get into all of that today, uh, and I'm excited to do so. But Matthew, before we get into that, why don't you just let us know who you are and what you do? Well, I'm a co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. It's a coalition of over 140 organizations, uh, looking at working, uh, of, including environmental organizations, some human rights organizations, uh, coastal fishers organizations, and others, uh, that are interested in conserving and protecting, uh, deep ocean ecosystems.

4:29 Very nice. Very nice. Now, how did you get interested and involved in just ocean conservation in general? Like, where did that begin? Well, it actually began when I was working as a commercial fisherman, which I did for 10 years. Okay. Uh, including five years as a deep sea trawler man. So we were fishing- Oh off the Central California coast at the time, down to about 1,000 meters, which would be, uh, roughly 3,000 feet deep. Um, and, um, on the basis of that, I ended up, uh, becoming an environmental activist, um, opposing offshore oil development and a major dredge disposal project off the, uh, West Coast of the United States, off the, off the San Francisco area.

5:11 And eventually ended up going to work for Greenpeace International- Hmm … uh, as it started up a international fisheries campaign. And, um, worked through a number of different campaigns, became involved in international policy and, and, and treaty negotiations. Eventually ran the ocean program for Greenpeace International, which is how I ended up here in Amsterdam, where I'm currently based and have been for quite some time. Right. And then left Greenpeace in part to start up a coalition, uh, to try and get an end to deep water trawling, primarily on seamount ecosystems on the high seas through a UN general assembly process. And on the basis of that work, eventually got into the issue of deep seabed mining So what made you go from-- like, what was it that, that you wanted to do more about the deep sea that you couldn't do at, at Greenpeace while managing the ocean program?

6:04 I know they cover a lot of different things. What made you wanna focus on the deep sea in particular? Was it your history of doing deep sea trawling in, in like, uh, when you were a fisher? Well, partly that. Um, uh, I did, uh, the deep sea trawling. It's actually a combination of shelf and, and, and continental slope trawling, uh, for about five years. A highline vessel, we were the top vessel off the Central California coast, probably one of the top 20 off the West Coast of, uh, the US, excluding Alaska- Mm-hmm … in terms of sheer volume of production. But what, uh, amazed me, uh, often enough was all of the stuff that we would bring up from the bottom in the net from the deeper areas where we were trawling. Glass sponges, corals, uh, all kinds of starfish, uh, uh, crabs, et cetera and so forth.

6:50 Um, and most of which was not commercially useful. Um- Mm-hmm … it wasn't, uh… It was, it was stuff we would bring up off the bottom and then just shovel back over the side after we picked- Huh … out the fish that we would, uh, take back into port to sell. Uh, but I think what really got me into the deep sea, uh, uh, issue was… A- and Greenpeace came along with me on this. You know, we- Of course … we, it was a small group of, of, of organizations that actually started the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. But what got me was, um, as I was kinda campaigning on sustainable fisheries with Greenpeace and so forth, I sat in on a, on a, um, a series of debates, uh, about whether, uh, uh, fishing, commercial fishing in this case, could drive species biologically extinct.

7:35 Hmm. And the general view was, or conclusion of these discussions, mostly with scientists, was that yes, fisheries can drive species commercially extinct. In other words, take the populations of commercially valuable fish down to a level at which it's no longer economical to, to continue fishing them. They could, uh, drive species ecologically extinct. In other words, species, uh, that would be depleted to such an extent that it would no longer occupy the same role in the, in the ecosystem- Mm-hmm … but not biologically extinct. Uh, yes, a few marine mammals, uh, had documented, you know, there were documented extinctions of, uh, I think it was the Steller's sea cow in the North- Mm-hmm Pacific and a, and a few other animals, but not fish and other species.

8:18 And then in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, '99, 2000, 2001, I became aware of studies coming out of the South Pacific, uh, Tony Coslow and Karen Garrett-Holmes, I think, um, Bernard Richard de Fourchet, that were-- had looked at bottom trawling on seamounts. Right. Uh, and in particular, a study that, uh, Garrett-Holmes and, uh, Coslow had, uh, had, uh, been involved in, where they looked at, at, at four seamounts off Tasmania that are roughly 1,000 meters in depth. The peaks were about 1,000 meters below the surface. Two had been trawled, two had not been trawled, and they did visual surveys of the two. The two that, uh, the, of the, all four of them, and they found that the ones that hadn't been trawled were teeming with coral cover on the upper- Right … slopes of the peaks.

9:06 But the ones that were, had been trawled, and one of these seamounts had been trawled 600 times and another had been trawled 3,000 times, fishing for a type of fish called orange roughy, and this was documented by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. Yep. Um, they estimated that between 95% and 98% of the, of the coral cover on those seamounts had been- G- were gone. They had been- Yeah … destroyed. Just been gutted. It was rubble. Yeah. And that coupled with Bernard Richard Forges' study, which he was identifying relatively high degrees of endemism in seamount ecosystems. Mm-hmm. And so the conclusion that I took from that was, well, wait a minute now, it is possible if there are endemic species on these seamounts and they're trawled as heavily as they were, uh, uh, the ones off Aus- off, off Australia, which in fact is the case in many parts of the world- Yeah … then they could be driving species extinct.

9:55 Yeah. And in fact, uh, i- including species, uh, that, uh, had not yet been discovered by science or was not yet- Mm-hmm … that were not yet known to science. And this is something that I subsequently heard Fred Grassle say from Rutgers University, a well-known deep sea biologist, mostly, uh, uh, um, studying sediments in the deep ocean, where he basically said, I think it was in 1992, he said, "We may be losing species on seamounts from bottom, uh, because of bottom trawling that we haven't even yet discovered." And so I thought, I mean, for me it was twofold. One was, this is an outrage and we should do something to try to stop this. Yeah. And number two, the, the, the, the fact was that at the time, at least on the fisheries on the high seas, uh, the countries that were allowing their vessels to go out and do this were the champions of, of high seas fisheries sustainability.

10:49 Countries like Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, and, and a number of countries from the European Union, Norway, et cetera. They were all trawling on these areas on the high seas. And I thought, you know, and, and this is against the law. I had been involved in treaty negotiations in the mid-1990s, which should have put an end to this type of fishing, but didn't. Uh, and so decided together with colleagues, let's take this campaign to the United Nations General Assembly and see if we can get them to basically force these countries to have to reconsider what they're doing and ultimately stop the, stop the damage. Yeah. And it's, it's really interesting too, 'cause seamounts, from my understanding, are like a, a high biodiverse area in general. And to, to see the studies where they compare the two seamounts and understand that there are species that, like you said, we haven't even, probably haven't even discovered yet or, or endemic that we know they're endemic to these seamounts, could be gone and we could be losing these species at a rate that we just don't, we can't, we can't even fathom at this point, because a lot of times, uh, whether they're in the boundaries of the EEZ or outside the boundaries in the high seas, there's just not enough monitoring programs to, to, to monitor all these, all these seamounts.

11:58 Well, that and, and not enough baseline information in the first place- Yeah. Exactly … in order to realize what you've lost, uh, because you've studied it before, before it was actually exploited. Yeah. And, you know, the same is true in, in many cases, uh, of, of deep seabed mining. It's not yet taken hold, but similar types of, of issues there, where the baseline information is so thin and all of the other sorts of information you need to understand what the impact of deep seabed mining will be. Connectivity among species, uh, the structure of ecosystems, the life history characteristics of, of, of species in the deep sea. How, how long do they live? Yeah. How do they reproduce?

12:38 Right. What do they look like when they're young, you know, in the, in the larvae form? What are their vulnerabilities to, uh, heavy metals that might be released into the environment from deep seabed mining? Or noise and light, um, in areas where there is none. Um- Mm-hmm … and you think of, for example, these extraordinary creatures that live in the water column 2 m- 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 meters depth that are bioluminescent. You know? Yeah. They, they, they generate light in order to attract prey, to attract m- uh, uh, uh, mates, to find, you know, others of their species to… et cetera and so forth. And then if you start shining a lot of light on them, these species, it's, it's, it could impact their, you know, their, their, their, their viability.

13:23 Yeah. No, absolutely. Um, there's, there seems to be, uh, like a, a obviously, uh A focus right now on, on the deep sea, right, these days. And, and that deep sea is more around, you kind of mentioned a little bit, deep sea mining. And before we get into sort of the, the nuances of deep sea mining, you know, there, there's been this talk of, of, of that there's really not, not really that much on the bottom. You know, there's- … you know, there's not much geomorphology. It's just sand. There might be some worms, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Uh, we know that's not true, right, from, from a lot of the exploration that's been done.

14:04 But we also know that very little of the deep sea compared to the, it's all of its surface area has actually been, um, you know, been monitored, including like the, in the water column of the deep part of the sea, you know, not just the, the, the bottom. Um- Oh, how can you explain, when, when somebody comes to you and, and then they may not know much about the deep sea and they're interested and they ask you like, "Why should we care about the deep sea?" What answer do you give them? I know it's a general question. There's probably a lot that you could go into, but what's the general answer that you pretty much give in that respect? Well, I, for me it's, you, you can come at it from different angles and sometimes, you know, I tr- I try to a- a- adapt a response to what I understand to be the interest of the person that's asking the question.

14:53 Of course. But basically, um, one of the key issues for me at least, um, that, that, that frankly astounds me is that we're in a, and I hate to use the word crisis. I mean, it's crisis, crisis, crisis everywhere you look. Mm-hmm. You know, especially in the newspapers. Yeah. But, you know, even the G7 countries have put out communiques saying we have a biodiversity crisis. We have a triple planetary crisis of, of biodiversity loss, climate change, and marine pollution. Yeah. Uh, sorry, pollution generally. Yeah. Uh, and, and when you think about how much has been lost, I mean- Mm-hmm … there are, there are scientists who basically say we are arguably living through a sixth mass extinction event on the planet.

15:36 Um, the first being, uh, the… Now I should know this, uh, actually. I mean, the most famous extinction was roughly 65 million years ago is when the dinosaurs- Yeah went extinct. But before that there was the Permian, there was the End Triassic, and then there were the, it was the, uh, I think it was the End-Or- D- O- Ordovician, uh- Right … mass extinction events. And this one is being caused by us, the humans on the planet. And I just think that why would we go into a whole new frontier of the planet and risk destroying so much for so little in return, i.e., uh, a handful, well, relatively small amounts of metals that you can get from deep sea bed mining based on all the information we have now.

16:22 Um, uh, a- and, and, and, and lose, uh, you know, r- put, put a whole new frontier of, of, of the Earth that has been largely untouched, uh, at risk of a mass extinction event. Uh, so that's one way to answer it. But the other-- there are others. There are, you know, for example, um, the deep ocean, uh, according to, for example, the UN's World Ocean Assessment, uh, drives planetary processes. Um- Mm-hmm … uh, it, uh, and, and, and we don't understand fully how that works, what those connections are. But if we start messing with the deep sea, we might, uh, end up with a whole range of unintended consequences.

17:03 The most important- Yeah … of course, is the ocean, as we know, is the world's-- is, is by far the largest natural carbon sink. Yes. Um, something like 25% of the greenhouse gases that we pump into the atmosphere get absorbed, the CO2 gets absorbed in the ocean. Without that natural buffer, we would be in serious trouble today. We're already heading in toward, you know, serious- Mm-hmm … difficult territory. And there are some, uh, real concerns that, uh, deep seabed mining could somehow diminish or, uh, the, the, the capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2, maybe in small may- ways, maybe in bigger ways. Uh, we don't know. And, uh, my understanding of that concern lies mostly in relation to the mesopelagic zone, which is one of the main vectors for taking carbon out of the surface waters and basically sequestering it for large peri- long periods of time into the deep sea.

17:58 Right. And the, the plume flows that would be generated, the discharge flows that would be generated from the mining ships on the surface bringing up this material from the bottom and then dumping out the wastewater and the excess, uh, uh, bits and pieces of the so-called mining fines, uh, as well as the sediment that would come up with that, um, could impact, uh, the, the capacity of the mesopelagic zone to basically get that carbon out of surface waters, get it down below the 1,000 to 2,000-meter depth range, and basically lock it away for- Mm-hmm uh, a, a few hundred, uh, centuries to thousands of years. And so there is a concern. The other thing is, you know, there's, there's, there's so much we, we, we still don't know about the deep sea.

18:40 I mean, you probably heard, uh, this was back in, uh, 2024. I, I, I worked with this guy, Andrew Sweetman. Mm-hmm. Discovery of, of, of dark oxygen. Yes. That the manganese nodules, which is the primary ore of interest to the deep seabed mining industry. Right. Um, and these lie on the deep abyssal plains, which in fact aren't quite plains. They are-- There's, there's quite a range of topography down there. Um, these are areas of the oceans that sit at 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 meters depth, um, all the way down at, at the bottom end of the so-called continental slopes. And, um, his-- he's basically found that, uh, the, the nodules might be producing oxygen Um, and the not clear how this, is it microbial activity on these nodules?

19:33 Is it, uh, uh, electrolysis, I think it is, you know, where it's breaking hydrogen and oxygen, H2O, you know, water into hydrogen and oxygen. Um, he still has to ground truth or, or again, kind of verify to repeat the, uh, the experiment, uh, or the, the, the, the finding, which he's now in the process of doing with his colleagues. Um, and, um, and the question is, is this really a s- i- is this actually occurring? And if so, does this oxygen production in the deep ocean actually, is it important to the functioning- Yeah … of those ecosystems? Yeah. And to me, again, the extraordinary thing here is, you know, we've been-- the, the, the mining industry has been interested in mining these nodules.

20:15 This is primarily in the Eastern Pacific, uh, just north of the equator, up to about 20 or 30 degrees north, uh, a huge area of about, uh, 1.7 million square miles, 4.5 million square kilometers. The bottom is littered with, with these nodules. Um, but the extraordinary thing is that, that the, that the mining industry or the proto-mining industry has been looking at this area for over 50 years. You know, there were, there were companies out there poking around down there in the '60s, early '70s. Nodules were actually discovered by the Challenger expedition in- Right … in 1974, I believe it was. Um, and only now we're starting to see things like something that could be such a huge, uh, uh, element of the ecology and the, and the, and the biology, uh, of, of that area, uh, only, only now being, being potentially discovered.

21:08 And again, Andrew's clear. He says, "I'm, I'm convinced this is deep oxygen. I've gone through these, these experiments. I've, I've looked at the machinery. It's 10 years, uh, and I'm convinced." But he recognizes he needs to repeat the ex- the, the, the, the finding, the experiments- Yeah … to, to see if that's happening, and then look at the potential for what role that that oxygen plays i- in, in, in the deep ocean ecosystems. So again- So is he doing that, is he doing that now, like currently? That's, that's the experiment that he's, he's doing now or- Yeah, I don't- … when is it gonna- … I don't know if he's-- I think he's going out soon. Um- Yeah … I'm not sure he's out yet. Uh, he's got a grant from the Nippon Foundation in, uh, Japan- Right to go out and look at it. To explore it. And interestingly, the Ni- the Nippon Foundation was kind of, uh, interested in actually mining nodules themselves- Mm … in Japanese waters.

21:56 Um, but apparently have taken a step back, uh, in part because of Andrew's discovery and thinking, "Okay, we, we maybe we need to know a lot more about what's going on down there before we start, you know, exploiting these ecosystems to, uh, to the detriment of, of basically the- Right the, the ecology of these areas and to, to us as humankind if this, uh, mining industry takes off, uh, on a large scale." And the interesting things too is you, I'm sure you're aware of this, but um- Scientists have said, and I'm thinking of a piece that was done by Stephanie Kaiser, uh, Craig Smith from University of Hawaii, and Pedro Martinez, uh, in a special issue of, uh, Marine Biodiversity that ran in 2017, but they basically say up to half of the larger animals, uh, in the deep ocean, the meta- the, the megafauna, the, the, the macrofauna, the metazoan species, are nodule-obligate species, which means they actually depend on the nodules, um, uh, for, for some portion of their life history.

22:57 Uh, and when you remove them, they say it will probably be a, a, it could take millions of years for these animals to come back in these ecosystems because it takes millions of years for these nodules to grow. Yeah. And so you're not just plucking rocks off the bottom, you're actually plucking a living ecosystem with each nodule you bring up, uh, for about half of the species, at least the larger species, the more complex animals that live in the deep ocean. And, and it's something that I think you alluded to earlier, the extraordinary diversity of species in the deep sea is, is, is, is, is, is i- in many respects a, a new discovery only over the last 20 years or so, um, primarily because of interest in mining and mining the nodules.

23:40 Um, uh, the International Seabed Authority, which regulates mining in the international areas of the world's ocean, which is about roughly 50 to 75% of the, uh, well, uh, half to two-thirds of the overall seabed of the oceans- Yeah um, uh, requires two things of a company or a country that wants to get a contract to explore for the mining, uh, potential, mining opportunities. Mm-hmm. Uh, the first, they have to, uh, assess the area, the claim area that they get- Yep … uh, issued through, by, you know, through a contract from the International Seabed Authority, assess the potential of the, of the, the metals or the mineral grades in, in those areas.

24:23 And the second is that they have to collect environmental baseline information, uh, in order to produce an environmental impact assessment if they want to decide to go from exploration to full-scale commercial mining. And that's for making sure that they are not going to impact the environment in and around the area that they're gonna be in, right? That they're gonna work in. Basically, yeah. Yeah. And some of the best information, ironically, has come from, uh, the, the, the contractors. Yeah. Um, so I mean, there is, there is, there is quite a bit of, uh, of research going on in the deep ocean, uh, independent of any commercial interest. And so- Right … for example, I was involved in, uh, well, three European Union-funded deep sea research projects, one of which was looking at the potential for, uh, impact of deep seabed mining, uh, and was the largest publicly, uh, funded Uh, project of its kind in the world at the time, so attracted scientists from around the world to various meetings and so forth.

25:17 Yeah. But, uh, much of it has been produced by the contractors, uh, the companies that want to go mining. Hmm. Com- companies and the, and the countries that have got these exploration contracts with the ISA. And again, I say ironically because the lead company that's been involved in this is one called, uh, The Metals Company. Yeah. Its CEO is a guy named Gerard Barron. Yeah. Um, and he was famously quoted, I think in a Time magazine article that ran in September of 2021, that it's a biological desert down there. In other words, there's basically nothing living, uh, that we need to worry about, and it won't be possible to impact the marine environment because it's a dead environment.

25:58 There's nothing, there's nothing there- Yeah … uh, worth, worth, uh, that's gonna get impacted. Uh, and the reality is the, the, the kind of science… And to The Metals Company's credit, they are allowing the scientists that they contract to come in and do this baseline information to publish their findings, uh, as have some of the other contractors. Uh, there's one called the, uh, the, uh, Global Sea, uh- Seabed Resources, GSR from Belgium, um, uh, a, a number of others. Um, they're, they're kind of coming and going as, as it stands these days. Yeah. But, a- and the science is all pointing to the fact that, whoa, this is a biologically very rich area. There's not a high abundance of animals, uh, but there is an extraordinary diversity of animals, including many, many which we're just discovering for the first time.

26:48 Uh, and, and, and, and, and that is basically stalling the effort to get at least the International Seabed Authority to adopt regulations and start, uh, allowing commercial mining to take place. And- Because- Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead … because the, the, the rules, the regulations, uh, well, I should say the, the actual treaty law under which the International Seabed operates, uh, has a provision that basically says the ISA must ensure the effective protection of the marine environment from harmful effects arising out of seabed mining activities. And what a lot of countries that, that are involved in these negotiations are saying is, "Well, back in the '70s, nobody knew that there was much living down here." You know?

27:36 Right. The assumption was you could protect the, y- uh, protecting the environment would be an easy thing to do because there really wasn't an, much of an environment, a living environment to protect. And now we know the picture is very, very different. Yeah. And so they're saying until we can fully understand what lives down there, how these species interact, how these, uh, uh, uh, ecosystems function, and in addition, what kinds of goods and services do deep sea ecosystems provide us, humankind, uh, in terms of their impacts of, of planetary processes, uh, we're not gonna allow mining. We're not gonna vote for it. Yeah. We're not gonna, we're not gonna agree to it because we simply don't know what the risks are. We know what the risks are.

28:16 We don't know the scale of the risk, and we don't know how bad it's gonna be. Um, and- Now, the interesting thing about this too is, is this has been, it seems like, uh, like these policies were, were there with the ISA for, for quite some time, uh, that you just mentioned, where, you know, you can't harm the, the bottom, you can't harm the deep sea. However, it seemed like just a couple years ago, before there was a change in the chair at the ISA, that things were leaning a little differently. They were leaning more towards exploratory mining, even though the, many of the countries said, "No, we have a moratorium." There seemed to be more countries who were, who were going to it. Uh, the chair at the time, uh, I, I don't remember the, the, the gentleman's name, but he was, he was kind of being Not to say outwardly accused, but allegedly making more deals about mining than, than worrying about the en- the environment.

29:05 And that was a concern to a lot of nonprofit organizations, NGOs, and, and, and the environmental community and scientists and so forth. Um, and then now with the new chair, who's an oceanographer, uh, background as an oceanographer, it seems like these are being more held, uh, a lot closely, you know, to being like, "Hey, let's follow this. Let's make sure that this is what we're gonna be doing." Did you-- Have you noticed that switch as well with this new chair? Well, uh, to be honest with you, Andrew, not really, and that's a big disappointment. Hmm. The previous secretary general was Michael Lodge. Right. Um, he served as secretary general of the International Seabed Authority from 2016 to 2024.

29:45 Um, he lost an election for a third term to Letícia Carvalho, an oceanographer from Brazil, um, who ran a very good campaign. The Brazilians were, were brilliant in terms of doing their- Yeah. It was a surprise, I think, to a lot of people that, that she got it, but everybody was like, "This is great." Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Here, now- Yeah … finally a change. Yeah. Because basically, Michael Lodge was seen as, as heavily promoting deep seabed mining, and, uh, allegedly kind of working with the Metals Company to try to get, um, a, a fast track process to, uh, adopt regulations to allow deep seabed mining. And this was this kind of obscure provision in the Law of the Sea Convention called the two-year rule.

30:26 Technically, it's in the 1994 agreement that amended the, the elements of the Law of the Sea convention. Uh, but basically, the Metals Company needed the country of Nauru, which sponsors it, uh, at the ISA, uh, to trigger a two-year rule so that it could then say to investors, "Hey, we now have a legal pathway to get a mining license, uh, in two years' time, one way or the other." And I won't go into the details of this provision. If you're interested in, it's paragraphs 15-- paragraph 15 of section one of the annex of the 1994 agreement. Look it up. But, uh, but, you know, it, it, it's, it's with- it, it's the kind of the, the treaty law that this, this organization runs under.

31:09 And, um You know, the, um, the, uh, uh, uh, uh, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, uh, Eric Lipton, he's won a Pulitzer Prize. Uh, he's n- uh, well, I won't tell what he's doing now, but, uh, he's-- he, he was one of the guys behind, uh, the exposé on, uh, well, maybe not an exposé, but, uh, the calculations that the Trump administra- that the Trump family has, um, uh, made about $2.2 billion in its first year of office. Uh, but at any rate, he was looking at the ISA. He, he went to the meetings of the ISA, he-- and so forth, and he uncovered somehow a cache of internal memos and documents and so forth, going all the way back to the, uh, early 2000s, if not earlier, of the ISA.

31:53 And his conclusion was, and this is a, an article that he published in, uh, August of 2022, that in actual fact, the predecessors of the Metals Company had illegally obtained information from the ISA Secretariat- Right on where the best areas of nodules resided in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, this area- Yeah … in the Eastern Pacific. I remember hearing that. Um, and, um, you know, he put, he put those documents up online, uh, but separate from The New York Times website, uh, after publishing the article. And you can see some connections there, which, uh, uh, were, uh, less, less, um, how, how would you g- oh, I don't know, less savory, I think, uh- Yeah would be the right word.

32:34 Yeah. It was troubling definitely to be like, look, we're supposed to be, uh, as, you know, uh, Dr. Andrew Thaler, who's a good friend of mine, has, no, you know, he's been involved in deep sea mining since his PhD, like in terms of, of looking at the issue and, and, and wrote a, a editorial of a deep sea magazine, Deep Sea Mining magazine. Mm-hmm. And he said, "This is the chance for us as a human species to do-- if we're gonna do something, to do it right, and to ensure that the protection of this zone that we don't know much about in, in, in, in all relativity here, like we, and we just don't know, that we could probably do it right and do it very carefully. And we have the chance to set, you know, the, the limitations and the restrictions right off the bat." But it seemed like that Uh, Michael Lodge was not doing that.

33:22 It seemed like he was just more like, "Hey, let's just go and let's do this," as you mentioned, you know, leaking some reports and, and things like that. And that, that, that's, that's definitely concerning, right? Yeah, it was. It was. And, you know, the whole, uh, process of negotiating the regulations which needed to be in place in order to allow mining to begin went into hyperdrive when Nauru triggered the two-year rule on behalf of the Metals Company. And eventually, countries rebelled after two years of three meetings, hundreds of pages of draft regulations, thousands of brackets, meaning the text that's not yet been agreed but been- Yeah proposed. Um, and after about two years of this, countries just said, "Enough is enough. We can't d- we can't maintain this pace. We don't have the capacity to do this," et cetera.

34:11 It's extremely complex. Mm-hmm. And fundamentally, uh, there are some serious kind of, you know, concerns such as, yes, you know, we need to understand this ecosystem before we can possibly, these areas, uh, slated for mining, before we can possibly regulate them to prevent damage to the marine environment. Um, and we just don't have that understanding. And that was, that, that, that kind of unders- that, that kind of sense of, of where things were at kind of crossed the political groups and the- Yeah … various kind of coalitions, uh, as it were, uh, within the negotiating process of the ISA. Uh, and, um, you know, I think that's in part why Michael Lodge was voted out.

34:51 Right. Right. 'Cause he said, "Okay, look, you really wanna get this." Yeah. There were some countries that were actually backing that too- Yes … as well. Yes. But they would not have b- been, uh, they would not have risked themselves triggering the so-called two-year rule. They let Nauru do it on behalf of the TMC rather than, um Doing it themselves. But Norway, for example, was saying, "Yes, we need to get these regulations in place," because Norway was planning at the time to mine in international waters- Yes … off the Norwegian coast, but in an area considered under the Law of the Sea to be part of Norway's own extended continental shelf, and therefore Norway could mine there- They have the jurisdiction without getting permission from the, uh, uh, ISA.

35:36 Right. But what Norway, I think, uh, was hoping for, and I think what Japan was considering as well at the time, was if we're gonna go mining, we want to mine, we want to be able to show that we're mining according to the regulations adopted by the international community of nations as a whole. Yeah. Uh, it's sustainable, it can be done, and therefore once the ISA has regulations in place, we can then use those regulations to go mining, and we're not gonna suffer market approbation and, and restrictions and, and so forth and so on. Well, and I think also, like, when you're the first country to do something that's not very popular with the public, there's a lot of pressure on that country, you know, just from the outward negative attention that they get.

36:21 And I know some countries will do it no matter what because it's good for their country, but also some don't wanna do that. You know, some don't like that bad reputation. Um, you know, you can almost, if you look at, you know, something like whaling with Japan, you know, for, for decades and decades they fought to whale in the South, South Ocean, uh, Southern Ocean, and then they finally just said, "We're just gonna keep it within our borders because we keep getting this negative attention. It's, it's just not good for us," and, and so forth. I, I'm not saying that's the, the only reason, but I'm sure there were many other reasons, but- Yeah … that was a, a big part of it. Um- That's right … do you think that has to do with it, that, that international pressure to be like, "Hey, look, if we haven't agreed to this yet You know, there are gonna be some protests. There are gonna be some people like Greenpeace and so forth who are gonna be going and they're gonna be saying, "Hey, you shouldn't be doing this because it's not internationally, you know, agreed upon and we haven't even agreed upon the regulations to make sure we're protecting that environment." Uh, that's right.

37:13 That's absolutely right. You know, one of the things, again, hardwired into the Law of the Sea, which is the treaty, uh, that actually governs, uh, how the ISAs operate, is that the ISA is to, is, is obliged to, quote, "act on behalf of," unquote, and quote, "for the benefit of," unquote, "humankind as a whole." Not for individual countries, not for companies that wanna make a profit, but for something that's going to contribute to the wellbeing, uh, of humankind as a whole. And this, again, is another dilemma, uh, facing negotiators at the ISA because there are some countries that do wanna get these mining regulations in place for themselves or the contractors that they sponsor to go mining, or at least to say for the private companies, "Okay, now we've got regulations in place.

37:59 You can make your own sorts of judgments as to whether you can mine profitably or not, knowing what the regulations are gonna cost you." But the, the, the obligation is there to justify the mining, uh, on behalf-- as, as something that's going to be done on behalf of all of us and for the benefit of everybody. Yeah. And the-- anybody that looks at this industry at the moment and looks at the pressures that, that, that are, that are kind of, you know, trying to get the mining, um to, to, to, to move forward, to become a commercial reality, recognizes this isn't being done for the benefit of anybody but a handful of countries and a handful of companies that wanna make money.

38:40 It's not gonna produce much in terms of- Right … global supplies of cobalt, copper, nickel, and, and, and, and manganese, which is, which are the four metals that are contained in these nodules that are recoverable- Mm-hmm … uh, economically. You hear lithium is in the nodules, you hear rare earth are in the nodules. Well, they're not. I mean, yes, you have trace elements of these, but all of the debate at the International Seabed Authority since 2019 when they first began considering the economics of, of the mining industry for nodules, um, rare earths have been considered a, a, a non-starter simply because- Hmm processing these nodules to extract the rare earth, rare earths would make it much more expensive to process the nodules for the manganese, cobalt, the cobalt, copper, and nickel primarily- Gotcha … which are the big money earners there.

39:26 Um, and so again, that's stalling the process because, you know, countries, uh, negotiators negotiating in good faith on the basis of what was agreed in the 1970s, which is when the Law of the Sea negotiations first took place, are saying, "If we're going to abide by this principle, uh, and this legal obligation, we cannot start, uh, allowing mining to go forward now." Right. It's just, it's not going to pay out to humankind as a whole. You know, the idea- Yeah … back in the '70s was that the, the amounts of metals in the deep sea are so vast that the ISA, uh, authorizing mining for these metals would bring in a huge amount of money to the International Seabed Authority, which would then be shared out amongst all countries of the world, and in particular, uh, benefit developing countries.

40:14 It would be a- Yeah … financial boom- Right … uh, to developing countries. And of course, today, we now know, looking at the economics of this industry, that in fact it's going to generate very little money, uh- Huh … particularly as in terms of royalty payments for the ISA. And those royalty payments will largely go to funding the ISA itself to keep on operating and, uh, to, uh, accommodate or meet an obligation of the International Seabed Authority that again, in, in the Law of the Sea Convention rather, from the, again, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, from the 1970s, that the, um, the ISA would have to pay developing countries who had substantial terrestrial mining economies for the same metals compensation for any loss of income to those countries as a result of the decrease in prices as a, uh, coming from, uh, seabed mining and seabed minerals being put onto the market.

41:10 And so a lot of the analysis, and in fact we just, we just re- released an analysis, uh, uh, done by Koyaan. Uh, a fellow named Johnny West owns this company. He's been advised a lot of ch- uh, uh, uh, countries that are l- you know, negotiating, uh, uh, uh, arrangements or contracts with terrestrial mining industries. Um, he's calculated, and, and I've actually done similar calculations, that the ISA is likely to operate at a loss- Interesting … if it's gonna meet, uh, if, if they're gonna meet that obligation to compensate developing countries whose- Yeah … economies are substantially dependent upon mining the same metals. Right. And so, you know, e- economically it doesn't make sense. For the ISA in particular, it's, it's, it's, it's a huge risk.

41:52 You can't, they can't guarantee they're gonna effectively protect the marine environment for harmful effects. Um, you can't mi- you know, you can't, you can't basically regulate an industry's impact on the environment if you don't understand what that environment is. Yeah. And, and, and then, and the metrics are pretty clear. You know, I mean, there's a lot that, you know, y- when, when you talk about baseline information and so forth, you know, uh, a- and, and connectivity and, and, and so forth, it gets a little bit complicated. But there are some simple metrics. When I get asked, for example, um, you know, "Okay, scientists say we n- always say we need more information. I mean, how much is enough? When do we know we have enough?" And I say, "Well, okay. There are some, you know, some fairly, uh, complex an- answers to that, but here's a simple one." And the one I ci- cite is, is this, that, um, and bear with me on this, but, uh- Of course … y-y-y- is, um, uh, Marielle Rabone and her colleagues at the Natural History Museum in London, uh, published a paper in 2003, I think it was Where they looked at the collections, uh, in natural history museums around the world of organisms that had been brought up from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the area of the Eastern Pacific where most of the mining interest currently lies.

43:07 And they came up with, uh, 5,500-plus, uh, organisms, uh, that, um, that, that were geolocated to having been collected over the previous decades, not just in the last few years. Um, and, uh, of which only 500 had been tox- taxonomically identified. In other words- Hmm … only a 10th of these organisms, or less, had actually been id- well, they were roughly 10th, uh, 500-plus, uh, had been taxonomically identified, meaning there is some indication, some knowledge of how these organisms function, wh- whether they fee- filter feed or digest food, whether they're living in sediments or they're sessile organisms, meaning they attach themselves to the, uh, to the nodules and grow, such as corals and sponges.

43:51 Um, and there's still another 5,000 to go. Yeah. Uh, the, the IS- the International Seabed Authority launched a, the, um, Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative together with the IOC as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science, I think in 2002, '22 rather- Yeah … at the UN Ocean Conference in, in Lisbon. And, and they set themselves a target of identifying, taxonomically identifying over 1,000 species by 2030 And so assuming they meet that goal, there's still another 4,500 to go. Um, and of course Robodeau and her colleagues, and they were looking at metazoan species, not all the microbes and everything or the, the- Yeah … biofauna or the microfauna.

44:35 Um, uh, uh, uh, they estimated there's probably at least another 6,000 yet to be discovered. Geez. Possibly many more. Yeah. And so here's a simple metric that, that, that you can explain to people negotiating these regulations at the ISA why they need to wait until they have a much better understanding, because there is still a whole range of species that would be vulnerable to the mining- Yeah that you don't know anything about. You don't know what, how they contribute to just the, the, the natural processes of, of the deep sea that, that- Yeah … can be crucial, and we have no idea. Yeah. And you don't know how they reproduce. Yeah. You don't know how, you know, what, what, what their young look like or- Yeah what the vulnerabilities they are, they, they would be to sediment in the water column at the larval stage, or if they're filter-feeding organisms- Right … how that they may clog those apparatuses, uh, and make it far more difficult for those species to survive.

45:29 So- Agree … yeah. No, and, and every year, you know, the, the ISA meets twice a year to discuss and negotiate certain terms and items within, within the ISA documents. Um, they just finished a two-week stint of looking at, in, in, from in July, look, in, in Kingston, Jamaica, uh, looking at a lot of different things. Um, can you walk us through those me- Were you at the meetings and, and can you walk us through the- Yeah … the, the sort of the updates from those meetings? Yeah. Let me just pull up something on my screen here- Sure um, to remind myself, 'cause there was quite a bit- There was a lot, yeah. There was a lot being discussed there. But, uh, let me just see here So, well, one of the big topics, uh, on the agenda, it was actually a three-week meeting.

46:12 Okay. Um, two, two weeks of the Council of the ISA, which is now meeting only twice a year. Up until 2025, it was meeting three times a year between 2022 and 2025. Gotcha. Um, or between 2022 and 2024, actually. Um, and then, uh, after the two weeks of the council meeting in July, there was the annual meeting, it's only once a year, of the Assembly of the ISA, which is the supreme body of the ISA, as it's called in the Law of the Sea Convention. But in reality, the, the, the-- all of the negotiation or virtually all of the negotiation for, on the, on the mining regulations and the royalty regime and so forth takes place within the meeting of the Council of the ISA.

46:55 And it's a body of 36 countries, uh, of the 172 now, I believe, countries that are, that are members of the ISA that actually is charged with negotiating the, um, the regulations. But one of the biggest issue… Well, so, so, um, a-again, this year, as in the previous, the last few years, they, they made limited progress on negoti- on agreeing things in the, in the, in the regulations. Mm-hmm. Um, there are still well over 100 pages, I think it's about 200 pages, but again, lots of brackets and so forth, in the current draft text of these negotiations There is ano- there are ancillary documents, uh, of several hundred pages more, including draft standards and guidelines, um, drafts of, uh, uh, uh, uh, provisions that didn't quite fit into the current draft text but should be considered because countries are still proposing them, so they have to figure out where to put it in and so forth and so on.

47:56 A- and, and probably as many brackets, meaning unresolved issues in the text, uh, this year as there were last year. Uh, there was a debate over setting a timeline, um, or a, a roadmap for completing the negotiations. Uh, and they've done that twice already and missed the deadline. Yeah. So they did a, did a roadmap in, uh… Well, they actually did a roadmap in, well, not a roadmap per se, but a timeline, um, in 2017 to adopt regulations by 2020. That didn't happen. Right. Uh, then Nauru triggered the two-year rule, which meant that they needed to adopt regulations in by 2023 or else consider giving a provisional license to, in this case, the metals company to mine.

48:43 Uh, they didn't do either. Uh, they set a kind of a tentative timeline for 2025 and missed that as well. Uh, so what they've, what they were talking about this past, um, beginning last year was rather than a new timeline, a roadmap. Identify the key issues that need to be resolved and kind of try to pick them off one by one as a indication of, of progress, uh, toward eventually completing, uh, the regulations, or at least making progress toward completing the regulations. But they couldn't agree, uh, on the, um, on, on the key issues that needed to be resolved. Uh, and one of the more fundamental ones, uh, uh, uh, is the fact that are they negotiating regulations at the moment to, um, only from nodule mining, or are they negotiating regulations for the three types of ores that the ISA has developed exploration regulations for?

49:38 So the other two types being the ores called polymetallic sulfides that you find associated with hydrothermal vents, or the ores on the sides of some seamount ecosystems, some seamounts rather in the deep ocean, uh, called, uh, ferromanganese cobalt crusts, uh, which is basically an ore that it's, it's kind of like a, an accumulation of, of hard- Right substrate on the surfaces of these, um, of, of the seamounts. Or a third option is are they negotiating a kind of framework set of regulations that would, would apply to any type of mineral deposits that would be mined in the international seabed area, including some that haven't yet been discovered? Right. Um, and that's a pretty fundamental, uh, uh, you know, difference of views amongst the states as to what actually they're negotiating the regulations for, what type of mining and, and where and so forth and so on.

50:30 Um, but a really key issue, and this is at the council, uh, was the whole issue of unilateral mining. As you know, the United States is now, NOAA is now, uh, uh, uh, taking on applications to go mine in the- Yes … international seabed a- area, uh, in Uh, i- i- in a, in a way without getting the authorization of the International Seabed Authority to do it, um, in a way that we- that risks fundamentally undermining the Law of the Sea Convention itself and the whole structure of the international maritime order that's been established. Yeah. Which the US has not signed to, right? The, the- Yeah … UN. Yeah. The, the US has not ratified. Ratified, sorry. And so the US, the, the, the current administration, but, but has always cooperated with the ISA- Yes … up until the Trump administration.

51:17 Right. Under the current administration, their argument is, and this goes back to the Reagan years, "Well, we haven't ratified the Law of the Sea Convention, uh, uh, and therefore we're not bound by all of its provisions." The United States accepts all of the provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention as customary international law, except for the seabed mining provisions. Mm. Um, and so therefore, it's not acting in contravention of international law. Now, that's an issue of some debate. Uh, but the reality is that the, if the Metals Company goes mining, and they're the, the first at the table here trying to- Yeah get a mining license from NOAA, um, uh, it will be operating in contravention of the Law of the Sea Convention.

51:57 Uh, particularly given that many of the, the individuals and the companies that are part of the, the, um, the Metals Company framework, as it were, its subs- subsidiaries in, in Canada, well, it, its headquarters is in Canada. It's Canada, yeah. Subsidiaries in Canada. It's got subsidiaries in, in Singapore, in Australia, in the British Virgin Islands. Um, the, the other companies that are either bought into TMC, other companies, I should say, either bought into TMC, uh, such as Allseas, which is the company that owns the mining ship, without which TMC cannot mine. Yeah. TMC doesn't own a mining ship. It's this company, a Dutch-Swiss company called Allseas that actually converted a m- uh, uh, a, an offshore dr- drill v- um, oil- Yep … drilling vessel- Yep … uh, platform, uh, from Petrobras in Brazil to, to a mining ship.

52:51 Um, and, and the companies that w- that TMC is stating that it needs to, to be a- to, to, to enter into contract with to process the nodules when they bring them up off the bottom and bring them up to shore. So there's one called PAMCO in Japan, another called Korea Zinc in Korea. Uh, and these are all companies based in countries which have ratified the Law of the Sea Convention and are under a legal obligation- Mm-hmm … to prevent companies, citizens, and their state agencies over which they hold, h- you know, have jurisdiction from participating in a mining operation in the international seabed area that is not authorized by the ISA, a so-called unilateral mining operation.

53:37 Hmm. And so this is getting really complicated, and this was a big part of the discussion at the council. Uh, the ISA has actually, the council of the ISA has charged the secretary general and the legal and technical commission, its main advisory body, to do an investigation of whether the subsidiaries of TMC are going to be acting illegally if TMC gets a license from the US and starts mining. Um, and the TMC, through its basically proxy, which is- Yeah … Nauru, the country that sponsors it, um, went to court, uh, to try to block this investigation, and they were successful in doing so, albeit temporarily, but temporarily at a critical moment when it could have lost its license with the U- with, with the ISA.

54:27 Uh, and so, you know, this was a major issue of discussion, uh, at the council. Uh, the council decided to, to continue with the negotiations with the, with the inquiry, um, in spite of the fact that TMC tried to actually kill the inquiry through going to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. It's kind of the- Yeah court of the oceans. It was set up to adjudicate disputes between, um, uh, states over implementation of the Law of the Sea Convention, and extraordinarily enough, it does allow… It on- only states can take cases to the International Sea, uh, to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, uh, which can issue binding orders, uh, with one exception.

55:08 And that exception is contractors to the ISA, private companies or state agencies, uh, well, private companies. They- They can't bring it. They can bring, they can bring cases against the ISA to the seabed, to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Okay. Civil society can't do it. Right. Environmental organizations can't take cases there. But the contractors can. Unions can't, you know, even companies can't, but contractors- Interesting … can. And so they use that, I mean, their, their, their lawyers are very astute. Yes. They have been able to manipulate the ISA, uh, with the, with the support of the secretary general and a number of countries, in particular, uh, in this case, Nauru. Um, they, they, they, they can, they understand and, and, and can exploit the weaknesses in the actual decision-making structure of the ISA, and there are quite a few, um, uh, going back to the '90s and even to the 1970s, hardwired into the Law of the Sea Convention.

56:02 Um, and, uh, you know, they tried to do it, and they were, they basically The, um, co- the, the, the contract that TMC had through n- through its, its subsidiary Nori with the ISA was set to expire in June, uh, July rather, of this year- Yeah last month. Um, and they got it extended for another five years because of this kind of legal maneuvering that they were intending- Oh, interesting … to, to do at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. And, and so, so again, coming to the assembly meeting, one of the big debates there was about corporate capture of the ISA. You know, it, uh, is the ISA overly, um, uh, pliant to the interests of, of private companies in particular that want to go mining, you know?

56:49 Yeah. And you look at the triggering of the two-year rule in 2021 that, excuse me You know, TMC and its subsidiary Nori demanding to get a, a license in 2003, 2004, 2005, and now going to the US to get a license and, uh, but wanting to keep its contract with the ISA to be sure that nobody else gets that contract. Yeah. Or nobody else gets that area- Gets that area … which they have a contract over, because that's the area that they wanna mine under a NOAA license. Yeah. Right smack in the middle of the contract that they have with the ISA. And of course, from our point of view is we, you know, we said to d- countries, "You should just cut them loose."

57:30 You know, uh, do not allow, you know, either terminate the contract or do not extend it. And- Right … and, and, you know, this, this con- th- this, this, this company is, is, is manipulating this whole process in ways that are not beneficial to the ISA itself, are not beneficial to the integrity of the Law of the Sea Convention, and are certainly not beneficial to humankind as a whole. Um, and- Let me ask you this. How can, like, a country like the US, who hasn't ratified the UN Convention Law of the Sea, be able, like, how's, how can the metals company be able to work with them to be able to do, like, in international borders or even within their borders? Can anybody mine within their borders, their exclusive economic zone borders?

58:13 Yeah. Yeah, that's the case. Under the Law of the Sea Convention- Okay … um, you know, it, it, they have full sovereignty over exploitation of mineral resources, i.e. mining, both within its 200-mile zones, their 200-mile zones, but also beyond that in areas of the so-called extended continental shelf. Oh. So you have the internet- I see so, and that's, I, I've forgotten which provision of the Law of the Sea Convention it is. Right. Yeah. But generally, that, that could be up to another 150 miles out beyond the 200-mile limit. Which, which increases a lot of the area, too, when you're looking at, like, a small island like American Samoa or, or Marian Islands or things like that, where they're targeting right now. Yeah. Yeah. Although, in that case, again, there's a debate. Russia and China have both challenged the US on this.

58:54 Ch- the US, um, declared its extended continental shelf, uh, several years ago. Um, uh, and basically Russia and China, and some of the others actually, but Russia and China were the most adamant about this at the ISA meeting, saying, "Well, wait a minute, you haven't ratified the Law of the Sea Convention, so you get no right to an extended continental shelf." Right. You know. Yeah. If you don't agree to the… So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. Can't have your cake and eat it too at this point. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so with, with a lot of these, um- these provisions and these updates in, like, from these meetings. Where are we now within, uh, like deep sea mining? So according to ISA, my understanding is there's still a moratorium and a mo- uh, there's more momentum towards a moratorium than anything else after this meeting.

59:41 Is that correct? Yeah, I think that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, the, the- they're still far apart on most of the key issues, the, the, the negotiators at the ISA. Uh, they're realizing it's not gonna be economical to mine. Um, you know, the ISA risks, uh, uh, uh, uh, operating at a loss. But more importantly, too, it's, you know, th- there are other things. There, there's, the, there's, the, there's, the, the, the, there's continued discussion of what the ISA should charge companies that want to mine- Yeah in terms of royalties. Right. And as well as, uh, some other things. So for example, one of the big topics of debate has been a so-called environmental compensation fund.

1:00:23 Uh, the idea being that, um, uh, that, that if something goes wrong a- and the contractor goes bankrupt, uh, and the sponsoring state can't cover the damage, the cost- Yeah of the damage, uh, that, that's occurred, then there has to be a fund, a kind of a last resort fund established by the ISA, paid for by the contractors- Yes … or, you know, you know, funded by the contractors before any mining starts. And the view generally is twofold. One, that fund has to be well endowed, uh, because the ch- the, the, the, the, the potential for something to go wrong. Uh, well, three things actually.

1:01:03 The first, the potential for something to go wrong is gonna be higher at the, as the industry starts up- Right … rather than, you know- Yeah … if, if it does start that they could iron out some, some of the problems or whatever. The second is That, um, the, the, the, but, but in the meantime, well, so s- but secondly, that would be a fund of last resort. Uh, and the, both the contractor and the s- the sponsoring state, who is equally responsible for, uh, together with the ISA, for ensuring that a contractor actually abides by the regulations, follows the rules, um, would be liable for any damages, um, and they have to be well insured.

1:01:46 Mm-hmm. And this is, this is, I think one of the, one of the side effects of this is that from, from what I can see, is that a number of insurance companies are, have basically come out and said, "We're not gonna insure this industry." Right. "Because we have no idea what the cost of this insurance will be." It's true. "We don't know how, know, know how to price this." Yeah. You know? And the third element is, and this is part of this debate, is would this fund or the insurance, or both, only require, uh, uh, a, sort of a, to, to, uh, be able to clean up whatever damage occurred- Yeah. Yeah … or would it also require compensation to other ocean users- Yeah … or coastal communities or coastal states for loss- Yeah … economic losses to their businesses?

1:02:27 You know, so you could see, for example, you know, whale watching industries- Mm-hmm … the fishing industry, you know, the, uh, um, turtle conservation societies- Yeah and so forth, you know, if these species or if the fish were impacted by the mining and this caused e- economic losses to these industries that have been built around these- Yeah … um, would it also compensate, have to compensate for those? And I think, and I think this is where what, what I said earlier, uh, to what Andrew Thaler said was, was like, this is where we can do it right, is to put in these, these… A- as much as we don't want, I, I don't want to see deep sea mining happen, we put in these provisions to make sure that the people who are gonna be affected the most are gonna be taken care of. I mean, we saw that with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

1:03:09 Mm-hmm. How many people it affected, how many industries it affected beyond the oil and gas industry. You know, we saw, you know, I, I lived down there for a little bit, and we saw, you know, fishers that were affected, ecotourism that was affected, tourism in, in general. Um, you know, it was a big proportion of- Yeah. Yeah … of that area. And it's still being, you know, we're still- Yeah … finding studies that show, that continue to show damage, and we're more, you know, almost 15 years, uh, past that. And so- Yep … uh, I, I think every regulation, if you look at any regulation, uh, that's written in Canada and US anyway, there's always a, a, a, a development fund. Like, there's always a fund to pay for damages. If you're gonna damage an environment- Mm … you're gonna have to pay for something that will make it better or make somewhere else better.

1:03:53 Um, even then, there's always, there's always contradiction within there. But At least they have to, they have, they're responsible, they're held accountable to, to the payment of, of what damage they're gonna cause and who they're going to affect. Um, one of the things that I've noticed in, in, um, uh, the negotiations or at least even the public comment period for the American Samoa and Northern Mariana Islands, like there were a lot of people, like a majority of the people, like more than 90% of the people who said, "No, we don't want this." That's right. And, and, and they decided to extend, you know, the, the result is the government, is the US government decided to extend the, the, the area that they could mine. Like that- Yeah. Yeah … like almo- more than doubled it or even doubled it, which is insane. I saw your podcast on that.

1:04:34 Yeah. It was crazy. It's insane. I didn't realize that either. Yeah. They're saying everybody like, you know, 68,000 people said no, and there's like three people who are like, "Yeah, we don't mind." And then they're like, "Oh yeah, we're gonna double the area." It's like, it doesn't make sense, you know? And it, it's showing that they're, they don't care about what the people say, and they're just gonna go ahead. And, and I think what's, what's really revealing here, Matthew, is what you mentioned, is it's, it's sh- it's showing that it's not gonna be very economical, you know? And I've heard other things where even if, if you start mining today, that those metals will not get into production for like another 50 years, like from a commercial standpoint. And so I just… And with the, the way the batteries are changing and evolving- Oh, yeah.

1:05:14 Yeah … for EVs, it, it looks like we're not even gonna need these types of metals in the long run. Um, so it seems like, you know, maybe it had a chance 15 years ago, uh, when all these things were developing, but it seems like it's, it's kind of past its point of, of, uh, really like, like- Yeah of actually producing something, you know? Yeah, that's right. It's, it's do by date. Du-due date. Yeah. When they, when they call it the, you know, it's, it's- Yeah … it's expired, is what it is. It's expired. Yeah. It's like, it's like spoiled milk, you know? As a business plan, you know, it's, it, it's out of date. Yeah. It's expired. Yeah. Yeah. So like, so I guess the question- Well- … to you is, to, to ask f- to, for you is like the Metals Company, obviously they've had a lot of investment. They have this priority to try and mine and, and they're probably getting a little bit more, more desperate, you know, in terms of trying to do this by circumventing the ISA and, and so to speak, and go through the US.

1:06:06 It's not very economical. What's the benefit for them? I, I guess they're gonna benefit from their shareholders and, and that standpoint, but from the long run, like, it doesn't seem like a very reliable plan in the long run for this thing to work out. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, I think what I've heard a number of commentators say, and Victor, Victor Vescovo one, being one of them, um, uh, is that they think it's a pump and dump exercise basically. Mmm. That you, you, you pump up the price of the stock, uh, and then cash out and- Right … let somebody else deal with the, with, uh, the future of the, uh, of, of the company and the industry. Um- It's interesting … but, you know, and this is something that, that Barron has been accused of doing as well.

1:06:51 Well- Yeah maybe not accused, but he, he bought into Nautilus Minerals- Yeah … um, for several tens of thous- uh, several, yes, a couple hundred thousand dollars back at some point, uh, before he was, uh, with, uh, TMC, and then, uh, previously called DeepGreen, and then sold his stock for something like $34 million. So- Geez … um, and- This is Barron Trump? Pardon me? This is Barron Trump, is that who you're talking about? No, no, no, no. G- Gerard Barron- Oh, Gerard Barron … the CEO- I'm sorry. Okay … T- uh, of, of TMC. Oh, gotcha. And so, you know, he, he and, and his colleagues, I mean, the, the people, you know, that are part of the management of the c- of the, uh, company, um, when they went public and they needed Nauru to trigger the two-year rule, uh, in order to be able to effect a reverse merger and go public on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, uh, which they did in September of 2021, um, they had to get Nauru to do it because country-- investors were, uh, uh, as far as we could tell, investors were starting to get cold feet about the merger.

1:07:58 The, the, the investors in the other company. It was called a Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Company. Mm-hmm. It was a SPAC, a special acquisition company. Okay. Sustainable Opportunities, n-not acquisition. Um, and I won't go into the details there, but they launched, uh, at $10 a share. Right. And the share price steadily declined to, uh, uh, uh, about a dollar a share for a number of years. Uh, and then when the Trump administration started to, you know, uh, uh, indicating interest in, um, in, uh, uh, seabed mining, uh, even before that, uh, when, uh, you know, um, what's his name? Howard Lutnick, um- Yep … whose company's Cantor, uh, what is it?

1:08:41 Cantor Fitzgerald, um, had been invested in TMC, and it became o- obvious that he was gonna be, you know, he, he was one of the chairs of the transition team for the Trump administration. Mm-hmm. And then, of course, became, uh, Secretary of Commerce. Um, the price started going up. And then, of course, Trump, uh, execu- the executive order comes out saying, you know, fast-track deep seabed mining, uh, uh, operations, et cetera and so forth. The, the, uh, the, the, the, the price of the stock has started to climb, got up to about $10 a share again, a little bit more, and then came back down again, and so forth and so on. So it's been in a lot of flux. Yeah. Yeah. Whether he'll… You know. But when he went public, when, when Barron went public, uh, he had 17 million shares, uh, in the company.

1:09:23 Uh, and, uh, so value was, uh, uh, $170 million. Geez. Um, uh, so a nice, you know- Yeah … a, a, a good, good profit there. When you take a company public, as I understand it, I'm no expert on this, uh, as a principal of the company, you can't sell your shares for- Sure a certain period of time- Right … 12 or 18 months or whatever. Um, and by the time that, that those dates came around, the, the share price was worth, uh, you know, uh, uh, a, a, a, a- Back to like- … to a tenth of the, of the- Yeah … what it, what it, what it was when it went public. Right. But, but coming back to what you said earlier, for me at least, I, I have trouble seeing how you can possibly mine nodules Right.

1:10:07 In the sense of doing it in a sustainable or an environmentally friendly manner. Yeah. Because in order to even, you know, the, the, the production targets that are discussed at the ISA are 3 million tons dry weight per year, um, per, per nodule mining license area, um, over a 30-year contract, which is the, the, the agreed period- Yep that a contract would run. Um, basically it would require mining somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 square kilometers, roughly 5,000 square miles- Mm-hmm … of, of nodules. Strip mining an area of, of 5,000 square miles, 12,000 square kilometers in a, in a, in a contract area.

1:10:48 Um, and the contract areas for nodules are, that are issued by the ISA are roughly 75,000, uh, square kilometers. They're a little bit less. You, you can get up to 75,000 square kilometers. Yeah. None of the nodules-- The, the nodules aren't evenly distributed, uh, across a, a, a claim area. They're in sort of strips or clumps or aggregations. And so you would end up mining, say several hundred to maybe a couple thousand, uh, tons here, and then another 500 tons there, and so forth and so on, until-- I'm sorry, a couple thousand square kilometers to 500 square kilometers, et cetera. Well, maybe not even that much. Yeah. I take that back. Anyway, but you, you would- Yeah … you would be getting it-- You would mi- be mining across the, the, the claim area where the nodules were in the highest concentrations.

1:11:36 And so spreading the impact out across much, if not most of the, the actual 75,000 square kilometers, even if you're only mining 10,000 or 12,000- Right square kilometers total- Yeah … in a 30-year period. And what you get out of that, um, you know, setting the economics aside, uh, and the increased costs, uh, that would be, uh, uh, would, would be related to, um, royalty payments and environmental compensation fund and, you know, increased price for insurance and so forth, is you get a very small amount of metal, uh, based on current global production, uh, terrestrially. And let me just bring up those figures for you.

1:12:17 I've done these calculations. I keep updating them, but the last time was in 2024. And basically, um, let's see here Bear with me. Yeah, no worries. So you, you would, if, if, if-- so mining 3 million metric tons, I mean, metric tons dry weight per year, um, would give you about 0.13%. Gives you about 30,000 tons, roughly speaking. And these are, you know, I'm, I'm being generous here. Yeah. Because you got to subtract the amount of, you know, the, the, their, their, their, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the percentages in the nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone are roughly very similar, plus or minus 20%.

1:13:01 Gotcha. Um, they, they differ a lot when you go over to the Cook Islands, for example- Yeah … or the central Indian Ocean, some of these other nodule, uh, ar- areas where, where there's some interest in nodule mining. But basically you get 30,000 tons of copper, which is approximately 0.13% of what is mined, was mined terrestrially in 2024. You would get, and I'm being generous here, 36,000 could get, let's put it that way, 36,000 tons of nickel, which is 0.8%, so less than 1% of what was mined terrestrially in 2024. And for cobalt, uh, you could get, uh, close to 2%. I calculate roughly 5,000 to 6,000 tons of cobalt out of three million tons of nodules, or about 1.9%, uh, of the, uh- Right of the amount that's mined terrestrially today.

1:13:49 And if you actually-- And, and that's, that's, that's primary production terrestrially I'm talking about here. Yeah. If you add in the fact that a lot of the copper, cobalt, and nickel on the market today is actually recycled- Yeah … which means you're putting even a lower percentage of new material, uh, on the market, uh, based on what's currently available. So in the US, I, I've not found global, uh, statistics on this, but you-- looking at, um, US Geological Survey commodity statistics, uh, for the US, about roughly 25% of the cobalt on the market is recycled or, or from scrap, 35% of the copper the same, and 54% of the nickel, interestingly- Wow … on the, on the market is either scrap or recycled.

1:14:32 Scrap being leftover from production of steel, for example. You still got a whole pile of nickel left over and, uh, and so you're gonna reuse it. Um, so all this is to say it's a, it's a huge area that you're gonna impact on the seabed itself and just above it in, in a, in a, in a far larger area that will suffer some impact in the water column as a result of the discharge of the, um, of the wastewater sediment and mining fines that are pumped back off the boat after you bring the nodules up to the surface, um, a- and onto the boat. And, and, uh, you know, you're contributing a very small amount to global supplies.

1:15:14 And why, so why, you know, what is the benefit- Yeah … of, of even any mining at all for nodules in- if you need to mine at least three million tons a year to make it economically- Viable … viable according to the ISA. Um, and those numbers have been challenged at the ISA itself. They were- Yeah … they were numbers that came up from, uh, that, that were the, the, the e- economics estimates of the ISA were done by a, a team at, uh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Right. So MIT And so, you know, so yeah, uh, uh, some guys. And, and basically what they were trying to do is in effect make it look as, as attractive to the ISA as possible.

1:15:55 Right. Uh, and one of, one of the ways they did that was to basically say, um, you could convert the manganese into a very high value manganese, something like- Yeah … 99 point something percent pure, but the market is limited. Right. And the price elasticity is huge. You know, after the third or fourth mining operation, putting that much high value manganese on the market is gonna d- decrease the price. Yeah. Uh, and, and- S- … and similarly with the economics, uh, b- but the, but the other-- the, the flip side of this is, yeah, and similar with the economics, if you are going to-- if you're looking at deep seabed mining to substantially contribute to global supplies, and I've done the same calculations for the, um Um, uh, the, um, uh, IEA, the, the International to- no, the International, ugh, IEA, Energy Agency.

1:16:42 Yeah. Uh, I, I don't think I got that right actually. No, it's not the International… Anyway, we're looking at their projections of demand of cobalt, copper, and nickel for 2030 and 2040. And, uh, and you get even less, uh, uh, deep seabed mining would e- per, per mining license would contribute even less- Right … uh, uh, to, to global supplies there. So if you're looking-- So in order to actually substantially, uh, increase global supplies, and I take your point on batteries, for example. Yeah. They're phasing out cobalt- Right … and nickel. It's, it's lithium iron phosphate- Yep … has replaced manganese nickel cobalt or manganese nickel, uh, aluminum- Yeah … uh, uh, batteries. And now there's a whole s- new slew of technologies coming online or materials technologies- Yep … coming online for batteries.

1:17:26 But if, so, but you would have to mine so much of the seabed and impact so much of the water column in order to make a significant contribution, not replace terrestrial mining- Right but just maybe add 10% or 20%, uh, to the amount that would be terrestrially mined, that it's, it, it, it's, it's first of all, it becomes even less economical because the impact on prices would be huge. Uh, but it's, it's also sacrificing so much of, of the seabed, so much of the biology and ecology of, of the deep ocean, uh, for limited- For limited, yeah … potential gain. You know, you think, "Okay, what is-" Just doesn't make sense. "What is the societal calculation here? What is the ethical approach here?" Exactly.

1:18:08 "Do we really need to do this?" You know? Exactly. Um, you know, have we not learned from 300 years of the Industrial Revolution that going into whole new frontier areas and, and, and strip mining, uh- Yeah … these areas or clear cutting these areas without knowing what the ecological impacts would be, and only waking up 50 or 100 years later and saying, "Oops. Boy, that was a mistake." Now we're gonna try to reverse this. Oh, true. You know? So. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And the other thing is with the ISA is, and this is, this is-- I, I won't go into the detail because it's so esoteric. It, it's not that esoteric, but it's, it's hard to explain without a, a, a lot of time. Of course. But ba- but basically you have, for example Sitting on the council of the ISA, you have, uh, ab- about 20 countries that are sponsoring, uh, either themselves or private companies for exploration licenses.

1:18:58 China, Korea, Russia, Japan, I won't say all 20 of them, but, uh, India, Germany, uh, France, UK, Belgium, Poland, Nauru, Tonga, uh, Cook Islands, Jamaica, uh, Singapore, et cetera. The ISA has got a real weakness in its decision-making process. Um, and I won't go into the detail here, but basically if… And this is the way-- And I've, and I've been going to ISA meetings for 12 years now, since 2014, and just seeing how the whole decision-making process work independent of its environmental, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, regulations, uh, in this case for exploration. But if they all want-- If the first companies go and make a profit, let's say it does become economical The e- the economic pressure, the, the, uh, uh, uh, on the ISA to open up more areas for mining, by private companies teaming up with developing countries to get explo- e- exploration licenses, by states deciding to get in, uh, uh, into the game, will be so great that it's impossible to imagine that the ISA could say to, to, to China, "Okay, China, you're gonna have to wait until 2031.

1:20:06 Belgium, you're next. You get a license in 29, uh, 2029. Uh, UK, come back in 2038. You know, uh, Nauru, you know, uh, next year," et cetera and so forth. If they all want to get licenses, they'll get them. The political pro- pressure and in particular the economic pressure, if the big money pours into this industry- Yeah if TMC makes good money, gets bought out by one of the big name- Yeah … uh, mining companies, and they start pouring billions into developing the technology and billions into building the infrastructure to, to go do this, all bets are off. The economics will likely drive the development of that industry. Yeah. You know, the ISA may be able to place some constraints around the edges of that development, but basically it's gonna be, you know, money talks and regulations walk.

1:20:50 Yeah. No, totally get it. Matthew, this has been absolutely fascinating. I think we could probably talk about this for another two, three more hours. But, uh, I'd love to invite you back, uh, to talk more about deep sea mining, but also just the deep sea in general. This has been a fascinating- Yeah … chat. Um, and we really appreciate you, you coming on the episode and, and being able to, uh, chat with us and give us updates on what's happening. I think it's, it's very informative to see, uh, the future or maybe not the future of deep sea mining, uh, based on these, on these new revelations. So thank you so much for, for joining us. We really appreciate it and looking forward to having you back on. All right. Thank you, Andrew. A, a pleasure, uh, talking with you and, uh, I, I'm be happy to come back anytime.

1:21:30 Awesome. Thanks. Thank you, Matthew, for joining us on today's episode of the "How to Protect the Ocean" podcast. It was great to have you on. So much to talk about, so much to review and digest. I would love to hear from you, though. Like, from this interview, it looks like deep sea mining is not sustainable economically. We know the environmental impacts, or we don't know the environmental impacts, but we can predict that they're not gonna be good But just even looking at the economics of the whole situation, it doesn't look like there could be a lot of revenue generated. And you wonder, what's the point? Why is there such a big push to mine these metals when batteries are getting better, they don't require as much of the metals that are being mined from the ocean? They're gonna be made differently. Is there really anything that can be done to stop it, and do we really need it?

1:22:12 There's a lot of questions around there, and I would love to hear from you. If you're listening to this on Spotify, comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts on deep sea mining and whether there's a future in it from an investor relations point of view and an economic point of view. Obviously, we kinda know the environment, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that as well. And of course, if you wanna hit me up on my socials, ask me questions, those links are in the show notes. And of course, the website for Deep Sea Conservation Coalition will be in there. You can get more information on them and what they're up to, not only from a deep sea mining standpoint, but also from a deep sea trawling standpoint, which is a very important issue that needs to be addressed. So this organization has been working on it for a long time, and they're very knowledgeable. I think it's great to see Matthew, as a former fisher, now, you know, being a huge advocate for the ocean from a political and policy advisor standpoint.

1:22:59 It's just, it's great to see how everybody who works in and around the ocean, or a lot of people who work in and around the ocean, want to protect it, and it just goes to show that fishers wanna protect it as well. So yeah, that's the episode for today. All the links for Deep Sea Conservation Coalition will be in here. Hopefully, Matthew will come back one day to update us on more of their work, especially from the trawling standpoint. Again, I would love to hear from you, but that's it for today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.