Deep Sea Mining

Hegemony And Ecocide: Deep Seabed Mining Betrays Ocean Governance

April 29, 2025 Arnie Saiki, Substack. Educate! Deep Sea Mining, Executive Orders, Oceans, Trump Administration

The recent Executive Order titled "Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources" marks a definitive rupture in the United States’ approach to global ocean governance. It is not merely a domestic administrative action—it is a declaration. This Executive Order signals that the U.S. government is prepared to bypass international agreements, challenge multilateralism, and unilaterally pursue deep seabed mining (DSM) in areas designated by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as the “common heritage of mankind.” By aligning state power with corporate ambition, this order effectively formalizes what had previously been speculative or tentative behavior—most notably, The Metals Company’s attempt to exploit legal ambiguity—and transforms it into a doctrine of sovereign overreach.

What Can And Cannot Be Done, Cannot Be Undone

April 4, 2025 Arnie Saiki, Oni's Substack. Educate! Deep Sea Mining, History, Resources, Sanctions, US Imperialism

The sediment of history accumulates through class struggle, imperial conquest, and the shifting modes of production. The wreckage promoted by U.S. exceptionalism does not erase this sediment—it lies atop it like a hideous flesh, giving the skeleton of history a monstrous form, shaping its contours while masking its deeper truths. This neoliberal flesh is not merely ideological but structural—built into the very institutions that manage global capital and coercion. What has been done in the name of democracy, security, or market liberalization reflects not just policy choices, but the material interests of a ruling class determined to privatize and reproduce its dominance.

Deep-Sea Mining Could Cause 25x The Biodiversity Loss Of Land-Based Mining

June 30, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Biodiversity, Deep Sea Mining, Environment, Mining

Rising demand for metals like nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese to make batteries used in smartphones and electric vehicles, along with depleting land-based deposits, has led to increased interest in deep-sea mining. But research suggests that the process of extracting mineral deposits from the ocean floor could destroy habitats and decimate species. According to a new report from British nonprofit financial think tank Planet Tracker, mining the ocean’s depths could cause as much as 25 times more biodiversity loss than terrestrial mining, reported Reuters. And the financial cost of repairing that damage would be twice as much as extracting it.

Deep Sea Mining Threatens More Than The Seafloor

July 13, 2020 Climate and Capitalism. Educate! climate crisis, Deep Sea Mining, Oceans, pollution

Interest in deep-sea mining for copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, and other valuable metals has grown substantially in the last decade and mining activities are anticipated to begin soon. Deep-sea mining poses significant risks, not only to the area immediately surrounding mining operations but also to the water hundreds to thousands of feet above the seafloor, threatening vast midwater ecosystems. Currently, 30 exploration licenses cover about 580,000 square miles of the seafloor on the high seas and some countries are exploring exploitation in their own water as well. Thus far, most research assessing the impacts of mining and environmental baseline survey work has focused on the seafloor. However, large amounts of mud and dissolved chemicals are released during mining and large equipment produces extraordinary noise—all of which travel high and wide. Unfortunately, there has been almost no study of the potential effects of mining beyond the habitat immediately adjacent to extraction activities.

Daily movement news and resources