Should We Be Mining the Ocean Floor, The Hidden Costs No One Is Talking About

0:00 The largest ecosystem on Earth is about to be mined, and most people on the planet don't even know it's happening. Decisions are being made right now about the Ocean floor, thousands of meters below the surface with consequences that could last longer than human civilization itself. We're gonna talk about why that's so important for the future of the Ocean and future for conservation and the people where this mining is going to happen. On this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Angelou and Marine biologist and science communicator here to tell you what's happening with the Ocean, how you can speak up for the Ocean, and what you can do to live for a better Ocean by taking action.

0:41 And today, as we kind of wrap up the annual year of 2025, there have been a lot of things going on in the Ocean. Some of them I've covered extensively, like over the past week or so. We've covered the offshore plan, the US offshore plan for oil and gas drilling, and the leases that's going on right there. We're covering a lot more in the future. I've got a different episode for 2026, but today we're gonna be covering something that I've been expressly covering throughout the year as the topic of deep sea mining has become. A huge priority it seems in the US and it's something that we need to talk about. And so I wanted to kind of reset a little bit. We've had Dr. Andrew Thaler on the podcast to talk about deep sea mining, fed other people as well, but Andrew has been on a number of times to kind of give us the low down.

1:25 I wanted to kind of. Summarize, you know what it is that we're gonna be talking about? Like what is deep sea mining, the types, I know we've gone over it before, but just in case you haven't seen those episode, what those types are. We're gonna talk about what the International Seabed Authority is, what their role is in all this, and why this is happening in the US mining and RFIs, and all these requests for information and public comment is happening in the US and where it's happening and why it's so scary that it's happening right now. And then we're gonna talk about what you can do. Write the audience. What you can do after listening to this, if you feel inspired, you feel charged to say, Hey, I don't want this happening in my backyard, in the us. Or maybe you're in the Pacific Islands where a lot of this deep sea mining is proposed, and you're like, no, not in my backyard. I don't want this to happen. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode.

2:06 By the way, speaking of the Pacific Islands, I just want to make a quick announcement. There is a podcast that I, I'm creating as a co-host, a different podcast that's gonna be on the network. It's gonna be live, it's gonna be on YouTube. We're gonna put the recordings on audio, but it's gonna be with my dear friend Angelo Villa Gomez, who is from the Mariana Islands. I lives in dc, works in Ocean conservation, and the guy's amazing. We get along really well. We decided to do a podcast together. It's been in the works for the last few months, something I've always wanted to do. So I'm very excited to sort of, kind of tease that a little bit. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I can't wait. It's gonna be live on YouTube And then we're going to put it on audio after that. So keep an eye out for that in 2026.

2:48 It's gonna be a lot of fun. And we're gonna talk about Deep Sea money. We're gonna talk about Marion Islands. We're gonna talk about on that podcast, like indigenous conservation and indigenous knowledge and knowledge systems and everything like that. But we're gonna talk a lot about conservation in general. It's gonna be a. Ton of fun. We're gonna talk about some really great topics and I can't wait to do that. Okay, let's start talking about deep sea mining. So the first thing is like, what is deep sea mining? Let's talk about the foundation. The simple definition is deep sea mining is the extraction of minerals from the Ocean floor, usually thousands of meter below the surface, these minerals. Are used in batteries, electronics, renewable energy technologies, and military equipment. Unlike land mining, this happens in ecosystems that have evolved over millions of years with almost no disturbance.

3:32 So there's definitely an environmental significance to this and a very. Cautious flag that's going up when we talk about deep sea mining. But why are companies wanting to mine the deep sea? There's a growing demand for metals like cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese, and other rare earth minerals. Obviously on land. When they land in other countries, countries control that. There are some human rights violations and human rights concerns with a lot of the mining is happening in Africa for these very same metals. It's framed as like a necessary for energy transition and to take pressure off landmines that have a lot of human rights abuses attached to it. And it's often marketed as a cleaner than land-based mining.

4:13 But that's heavily contested 'cause we don't really know what this mining can do. Well, we kind of do, we have some preliminary research of what this mining can do, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But there's three types of mining for the deep sea. There's polymetallic nodules, so these are potato sized rocks scattered across the abyssal plane. They're found about 4,000 to 6,000 meters deep. They contain nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper, which are those metals that we're looking for. And the method is just giant machines that vacuum them off the seabed. Now, when they vacuum off the seabed, it almost. Sounds harmless, like they're just taking those little potato sized rocks, but they're actually taking up a lot of that initial layer that of sand or gravel or whatever's at the bottom of the Ocean and all the animals that are within that.

4:56 So the nodules grow over millions of years and our habitat for some deep sea life. There are a lot of different things that we have to worry about when it comes to that. Now there's C four massive sulfide. Found near hydrothermal vents, rich in copper, zinc, gold, and silver. The mining method is cutting and grinding vent structures. And then the problem with that is hydrothermal vents support unique ecosystems that exist nowhere else on earth. Plus, we still don't know it's roll within the deep sea proper. And if we start mining those hydrothermal vents or the areas around those hydrothermal vent. It could be a big problem for our entire ecosystem. Again, there's a lot of mystery around what could happen if we disrupt a lot of these hydrothermal vents.

5:39 And then there's cobalt rich crust, so found on underwater mountains called sea mounts form. A hard crust over rock mining method is scraping and cutting the crust off. So the problem is it destroys slow growing coral and sponge ecosystems, which. To be fair, we don't even see, I think when you think about sea mounts, think about these large mountain ranges and they kind of are flat at the top. They're gonna be cutting pieces of those out. But there are animals on that. There're sponges, there are corals, there are different animals that provide habitats. And these sea mounts are really diverse with unique organisms and species that have these areas. And so to disrupt all that. Again is disrupting. It's probably one of the most destructive types of deep sea mining.

6:22 So, you know, we have all these different ways, these three different ways. We know what deep sea mining is. Now, you probably wonder like if we're gonna go through with this, there's gotta be some type of body that looks after and make sure that people are not going too far and too crazy and destroying the Ocean by trying to get all these metals up and around. So there is what's called UN International Seabed Authority. Okay, and this authority is the ISA. This authority, it's UN affiliated, is created under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. So you have to be a signatory of the Law of the Sea to participate. It's responsible for regulating, mining and international waters, also known as the area, which is like anything in the high.

7:03 Sea. So anything that is not managed by a country, the ISA is looking at it. Other than that, the countries can manage their own deep sea mining, And so the mandate is to protect the Marine environment, ensure benefits are shared globally. That's the key here because what happens is when you mine in, in high Seas. And you could destroy the environment like we talked about. We still don't know the full ramifications or consequences of this mining. Let's be honest. Probably not gonna be good. And we just don't know how it's gonna affect the areas where that mining's gonna happen. So for instance, I'm Canadian. If a Canadian company goes in, in say the Pacific, and there's all these islands around where they're mining, they start to say the Claptons, Clipon area, something like that.

7:45 If they start going after that area and all this destruction happens, and those areas are. Affected, like they have the consequences, but they don't take any of the benefit. The ISA makes sure that they get some of the benefit of that because they're the closest land masses to that area. So it's a lot of regulation, it's a lot of, you know, making sure that everything is equal and making sure that we are not. Disrupting the balance of the environment, but also socially and economically, the people around that live around there and have to deal with the consequences. Very much like climate change where everybody's gotta have a say and everybody has to be not necessarily equal per se. Obviously it'd be nice if it was everybody was equal, but there are some voices that are louder than others, let's just say. And the ISA has been going back. Forth with a lot of countries and scientists And so forth, and there's been some corruption in the past.

8:30 Now there's a new leader, a new chair of this ISA that's more environmentally focused, so they're taking their time. And to be honest, as Dr. Andrew Thaler has been on the podcast before, he said, Hey, like it's time that we just make sure that we are doing great things. Like we have an opportunity to make sure that these regulations are going to help. And if they help, then we are able to make sure that we're not destroying the environment so we have a chance to get it right. This is the chance to make sure that deep sea mining doesn't affect the environment as much as we think it is, or if it is, it's just locally and it's not that big of a deal, and we make sure we take the measures to do this. But there are some companies out there who just wanna start and they don't care about the environment. They don't care as much. Although I'm not gonna say every company's like that. Certain people like know that they need to do this to help with the new renewables, so they want to help with climate change.

9:15 But we have to be careful. We are in uncharted territory here and we don't know what bad things we can do to the Ocean. And let's be honest, we do bad things to the Ocean all the time. And so this is a chance to stop that from happening through regulation and making sure we do things right. So right now the ISA has issued exploration contracts to multiple countries and companies and some commercial mining regulations are still not finalized. And environmental standards are incomplete and heavily debated still, so it's still a big problem. With that said, And then many scientists say that baseline data is insufficient to assess any type of harm, so we don't have enough. There's been a huge rush from scientists and organizations and institutes to try and get as much information as possible, but we're pretty much starting from scratch, And so we don't know everything.

9:58 There has been some research, which we'll talk about in just a minute. So the core problem here is. Mining may begin before there are strong enough regulations to prevent irreversible damages. Now these are just exploratory, so it's not gonna be huge damages, and it's a chance for researchers to really look at what those damages are gonna be. And there's some research that have come out recently that showed that the regeneration of animals and diversity of those animals within a specific area that has been mined two years past from mining still hasn't recovered to the full amount. So imagine if those areas are constantly being mined. What's gonna happen to those areas and how that's gonna affect just the length of regeneration of those animals. And the succession rate, the rate of replacement is not as high as we probably thought in the first place.

10:39 Now it's worms and a lot of invertebrates and things like that, but it's diverse and they're there for a reason. They're not just there for the fun of it, And so we just don't know exactly what they're there for and why they're so important. So with all of this, like the ISA is still being very cautious in giving out these types of permits. And even like it gave out permits to Norway and Norway all of a sudden was like, you know what? We're not gonna do this. We've decided not to do this and we're gonna put it off till 2032, which is great for the Ocean to find out, hey, make sure we're not destroying the environment in the process of exploration. So they're gonna hold off. So. The ISA is doing a really great job in tempering the expectations of companies and what were they're gonna be able to do, so we can't just go tomorrow. That was really until this past year, and in 2025, we got something that was very scary.

11:24 The Metals company, a Canadian company, believe it or not, went to the US and said, Hey. Let's mine the Deep Sea within us waters. We don't need the ISA and the US is not part of the ISA 'cause it's not part of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. They're not part of that. So they don't need to worry about the ISA. They're not a voting member, but they can still mine Deep Sea Mine within their own country. Instead, the US is pursuing deep sea seabed mining within its own waters because they haven't been part of the talks of the ISA. Because let's just say there's an administration that is more worried about gaining natural resources and using its natural resources for money and extraction. They're not necessarily worried about the environment. Let's be honest. They don't care about the people around it.

12:05 They've shown that because of where they've put the sites. So there are two sites. There's been. Request for information for these leasing areas. What that means is they put out a public comment period and they put out information that they're getting companies to put out information. So if they can get interest, generate interest from industry that wants to do deep sea mining in the Ocean, those companies will start to apply to this request for information to say, Hey, this is how we're gonna do it. This is what we plan on doing. This is how it's gonna benefit your country and all this kind of stuff, and we're gonna minimize the impact and all that kind of stuff, even though it hasn't been researched on how they can minimize it. There's also a public comment period where people from the Marion Islands and all over the US and all over the world can actually comment and say what they have to say to say, you know what?

12:46 Let's not do this. 'cause we're really worried about the environment. We're really worried about our islands, and we don't know what the ramifications are gonna be. So there's been RFIs in two places. One in the American Samoa that was issued. Last June in 2025 and one that was recently issued in November, but the public comment period extended for 30 days into halfway through January, which we'll talk about on the new podcast with Angelo. Those two places have been the focus of these areas. Now, both of these are in the Pacific Islands. Both of these, the 200 nautical miles contains probably about almost 90% of US waters, and unfortunately, it's affecting just a small population that doesn't even have. The proper representation in the government.

13:27 These are US territories. They put out information and a lot of the feedback from the American Samoa, were looking at a variety of things, so looking at equality, making sure like the environment's gonna be protected. They're not sure about what's gonna happen to local people from. An economic point of view, an environmental point of view, a safety point of view. 'cause you have to remember when this mining occurs, there are machines now at the bottom and they're sucking up parts of that first layer. So probably like a little bit into the layer. It's not just sucking up nodules. You're sucking up the sand and the animals that go into it. It goes into a pipe that goes all the way up to the surface of the boat where it gets processed, right? So you have this huge thing that goes into the middle of the water column.

14:07 It goes all the way down to the seabed. And then it just sucks up things as it goes up like a vacuum. All that stuff is the noise. Everything that goes on, maybe spills or leaks or anything that could happen could be bad for that area. The Maryanne is the one that's just announced in November. The scary part is it's right near the Mary and the Trench, which is a national monument, and that's been a special place for the CNMI, the Marina Islands. And so people are worried and they're concerned about that. So that public period is still going on. American Samoa, there was a huge public outcry to say, Hey, we don't want this. We're very worried about this, but because they had enough interest from the industry that RFI turns into the next step in the process, which I'm not sure what that is, but they'll start probably looking at more environmental assessments and looking at how it's going to affect the environment.

14:54 So it's the next. Part of issuing leases for everybody. So that's what's happening, you know, in the American mode. Nothing's happening yet, but let's be honest, once this lease goes up, they could pretty much start mining as quickly as possible. Will the fruits of that mining, the metals that come up from that mine be issued and put into processing right away? Probably not because there's still a lot of exploration that has to be done. It's not an efficient process at this point 'cause it's just, just pretty much brand new. And so there's gonna be a lot of stuff going on probably won't be put in according to Andrew Thaler into regular production for another like 50 years. So, you know, it's something to think. It's like it's, even though if we start mining today, still not gonna be put in 50 years. But the interesting thing is by that time, the global market could have shifted.

15:36 Batteries like, uh, EVs, electronic vehicles, batteries that store electricity, whether it be for your homes or these massive batteries for cities and municipalities and regions And so forth. Those are all evolving quicker than we can say it. And there are a lot of these batteries that are coming in that are planned or that are being tested that don't even require these rare earth metals. So what are we doing here? Do we really need it that fast or is it just like a new industry that wants to get started? 'cause there's a lot of money involved and it's like here, no evil, see no evil. If we don't see anything that's below the Ocean, we don't hear anything bad. That's really what happens. They do it with oil and gas.

16:16 When they get a big spill and they want to get rid of the oil, they're saying, oh, we're cleaning up the oil. But they're actually just dispersing the oil so it gets hidden down to the bottom of the Ocean. And the chemicals they used to disperse it are even worse than the actual oil. It is on the environment. So like, again. I ask, what are we doing here? What are we talking about in terms of like, is this worth ruining an environment that we know nothing about or virtually nothing about? We do know that the regeneration of these ecosystems down below take longer than we initially expected. More than two years. Again, is it really worth the production and the cost? And the payment is gonna give if these are not put into play, if these are just, you know, we don't know really what to do with them after.

16:57 So it's a big problem that we're going through and the fact that the US is rushing it without learning about what's happening with the ISA, not using their regulations because they're not a signatory to the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. It's a really scary thought. Now the question is like. What can you do about it? You listening to this or watching this on YouTube and you're like, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to play a role in this? Well, this is the thing. Pay attention early, follow a lot of the science communicators that are trying to get out the word of, you know, myself, Christopher Cabra, her husband, Alex Mark Haver, there's a lot of other people who are doing some really great things in telling you when these RFIs come out, where they're at, the consult and when the decision starts. By the time the mining is approved, options are limited.

17:39 So the awareness at early stages actually matter. So be aware, follow science communicators, Ocean science communicators who are trying to protect the Ocean. Listen to what they say. Support precautionary, pause or moratorium. So many sciences and governments that support a pause or deep sea mining like the maranas, they want to pause and well, they wanted a moratorium on deep sea. Mike. This allows time for research, governance, and alternatives. Then the pause is not necessarily anti-technology, it's just pro knowledge. That's really what it comes down to. So then the reduced demand pressure, right? Support recycling. Support circular economy solutions. Ask where materials are coming from. Push for better product design and longer lifespans. Like, you know, we look at our phones, our phones use these rare earth minerals.

18:20 We need to like demand, not just ask demand. These companies do better in making sure that our phones work without the requirements of these metals. So amplify the credible reporting. If you see something that's credible, you know you're following the right people, you can amplify that by reposting, by telling people about it. Whether it's people within your family or friend. Circle your social circle. Maybe people who are in positions of where they have a high influence, that would be the best. So journalism brings transparency to opaque processes, so that's always great. Sharing reliable reporting helps communities to be heard, and it creates records that matter later on. So this is something that's very, very important. And then you speak up when these consultations are open. So right now the CNMI consultation, the RFI is open for public comment.

19:02 So public comments are part of the official record. They stay like that. They have to be shared scientists, educators, and citizens, all of them count. Silence is pretty much interpreted as consent. So don't just lie back and say, I can't do anything. I need to do something more. So basically, you know, the Deep Sea does not have its own voice. We have to be those voices. The community speaking up, people on social media, speaking up, talking about what's happening, talking and helping the people of the American Samoa people of CNMI in the Marina Islands. These are people who have to live with the consequences of these deep sea mining activities. Do we really want them to live with those consequences? No, we don't. We want them to make sure that they can live a great life.

19:43 Just like we do here on the mainland. And so we wanna make sure that we're supporting the people out there on those islands. It's not about necessarily stopping progress, it's just about making sure that the decisions that are made are right for the environment and right for the people. And I think that's an important aspect. So that's what I want to focus on today. If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you and just put it down in the comments below. If you're watching this on YouTube. And of course, if you're listening to this on your favorite audio podcast platform like Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or whatever you're listening to, whatever it is, overcast Podcast attic, all the great podcast apps that are out there that we're on, feel free to give me some feedback. I'd love to hear. They can comment. Just go to speak up for blue.com/feedback.

20:25 That's speak up for blue.com/feedback. I always love to hear from you, whether it's a voicemail or typed out. It's always great to hear from you. And then don't forget to follow, subscribe, whatever you can. It's always helpful too. So that's it for today's episode. I want thank you for joining us here on the How to Protect the OSHA podcast. I'm your host Angela and from the True North Strong and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy observation.