Environmentalists divided over deep sea mining

As diplomats from around the world gather in Jamaica next month to discuss international guidelines on deep-sea mining, environmental activists are urging nations to consider a California law they say could reduce the need to destroy delicate marine ecosystems.

“Deep sea mining will destroy one of the most mysterious and remote wildernesses on the planet, all to extract the same metals we throw away in our trash every day,” said Laura DeHaan, state director of the Environment California Research & Policy Center. “While we work to protect California’s coastal ocean life, we must join the call to protect the deep sea before it’s too late.”

The report was produced by experts from environmental groups Environment America and US PIRG, as well as the Frontier Group, an environmental, nonprofit think tank and research firm.

As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, many replacement technologies – for example electric vehicles and wind turbines – rely on metals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earth elements. And as production grows, international mining groups are increasingly eyeing the deep sea where large numbers of polymetallic nodules – naturally occurring concentrations of many of these metals – are located.

Polymetallic nodules found in deep sea water can fit in the palm of one’s hand and contain many elements vital to modern technologies.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

Formed over millions of years, these bodies range from one to four inches in diameter and are located within the top three inches of the ocean floor.

Now, mining companies like the Canadian Metals Company want to bring their deep-sea harvesters or subsea collectors down to the seafloor and bulldoze the sea floor to grab these “rocks” as they move through the cold, dark waters of the deep ocean.

Their first target: the Clarion Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean, which stretches some 4,500 miles west of the Central American coast, and covers some 1,700,000 square miles.

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In 2016, An international team of scientists investigated They researched the sea floor there and found it teeming with diverse marine life. Not only were more than half of the species collected new to science, but they also found a positive correlation between the amount of marine life and the number of nodules.

Metals companies and supporters of deep-sea mining say their industry is essential to providing the raw materials needed to combat fossil fuel-driven climate change.

The company acknowledges on its website that “metal extraction – whether on land or from the deep sea – will impact ecosystems…” However, “a clean energy transition requires compromises.”

But the authors of the new report – and other experts – say this is not true. They argue that technological innovation, dedicated recycling of e-waste, and laws that enable consumers to extend the life of their electronic products can meet this need.

“I agree with the deep-sea mining industry that climate change is our greatest planetary challenge, our most serious threat … If there was anything that deserved the title of an existential crisis, it would be this one,” said Douglas McCauley, an associate professor in the department of ecology, evolution and marine biology at UC Santa Barbara who was not involved in the report.

But, he added, “It’s a hoax, a lie, that if we want to tackle climate change or take meaningful climate action we have to be mining the oceans.”

In 2021, the Pacific island nation of Nauru, in partnership with the Mineral Company, notified the International Seabed Authority – an intergovernmental body of 167 member states and the European Union established in 1982 under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) — plans to begin mining in international waters. The move triggered the “two-year rule” of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which required the board’s 36-member council to consider and provisionally approve mining applications by July 9, 2023.

The council missed that deadline and ended its meeting without finalizing the rules. The council is now working to adopt the rules by 2025.

Next month, the council will begin deliberations in Jamaica, and environmentalists are hoping to persuade it to ban deep-sea mining, or at least issue a moratorium.

They say innovations in battery technology and production, as well as recycling and right-to-repair laws, will eliminate the need to continue this destructive practice.

“Why deplete one place and then go to another place to get new minerals, when suddenly we have new technologies that actually help us increase circularity and close the loop, and get material out of the deposits we already have,” McCauley said.

According to the report, consumers throw away enough copper and cobalt in electronic waste each year to enable the metals company at Clarion Clipperton Zone to produce it by 2035.

Gerard Barron, president and CEO of The Metals Company, stands in front of a mining research vessel in San Diego in June 2021.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

And they say that extending the life of electronic products through repair and reuse can reduce the need for new materials. For example, doubling the lifetime of a product can reduce demand by 50%, while increasing the lifetime of a product by half can reduce demand by a third.

“Right now we’re throwing away about 47 pounds of e-waste per person every year,” said Fiona Hines, legislative analyst for CalPIRG. “That’s 3 million tons per year in the U.S.”

Currently, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, and New York are the only states with right-to-repair laws, though more than 30 states are considering such legislation.

There is currently no deep-sea mining operation anywhere in the world’s oceans, although pilot and test runs have been conducted to evaluate ecosystem response to the extraction of nodules from the sea floor.

Those experiments and models have shown the potential for irreparable local damage as well as more widespread damage caused by clouds of sediment that can be spread by ocean currents caused by such activities.

“These are among the least resilient ecosystems on the planet,” McCauley said.

He said mining in these areas would cause “damage that we have not seen in all our studies, and that is irreversible.” He cited mining simulations done in 1989 off the coast of South America that have not happened 35 years later.

He said the deep sea area is not like the shallow areas of the ocean, e.g. Bikini Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean — on which 23 atomic bombs were dropped between 1946 and 1958 — but which is thriving today, as populations of coral, fish, turtles and invertebrates recover. Or like a rainforest, which may be devastated but will eventually regrow — even if not with old growth.

He said the areas proposed for deep sea mining do not return anything.

“There are physical reasons behind this – we are talking about a place where there is very little light, very little energy, very cold temperatures and high pressure. So life moves very slowly there,” he said.

And then there are the clumps of sediment that can block sunlight or cloud the normally crystal-clear water, worrying fishermen and environmentalists. Unlike terrestrial operations, these clumps, residues and waste cannot be confined—and models show them moving hundreds or even thousands of miles.

“The wildlife in the ocean recognizes no boundaries,” said DeHaan, state director at Environment California. He mentioned the Pacific leatherback sea turtle, which is considered endangered. “It crosses the Pacific Ocean from Indonesia and comes back to California every year. And then there are the whales that migrate all over the world. All of these ecosystems are interconnected and they support the wildlife in our ocean.”