On the dark, pressurized floor of our planet’s oceans, life is going on as usual – though we still have a lot to learn about what that looks like.
Two kilometers beneath the sea surface, underwater vents thrum with astonishing biodiversity, including giant tube worms (Riftia pachyptila) that stretch up to three meters long and yeti crabs (Kiwa hirsuta) covered in silky blond bristles.
On the seafloor, potato-sized lumps of metal called polymetallic nodules, which form over thousands of years, seem to be generating oxygen, a trait once thought to be unique to photosynthesizing plants – until now.
Meanwhile, back on land, debates about what to do – or not to do – in the icy deep are getting to boiling point.
And the closer you look, the clearer it is that this issue is not just about deep sea mining. It’s about much bigger and gnarlier questions: who gets to decide what happens in and on our oceans?
What’s motivating those decisions – and what can we do to steer ourselves in a direction that will allow our oceans to continue to thrive?
Such questions are especially front of mind for Solomon Kaho’ohalahala, known affectionately across the international community as ‘Uncle Sol.’
An Indigenous Hawaiian, he’s been pushing hard to shift the language of international seabed diplomacy closer to one that encompasses Indigenous relationships with the ocean.
In 2021, Kaho’ohalahala attended a session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) – the UN-affiliated body tasked with regulating deep sea mining in international waters and protecting the seabed – in Kingston, Jamaica.
There, he was “astounded” to learn that the area being proposed for deep sea mining is in the Clarion–Clipperton zone (CCZ), located between Hawaii and Mexico, and that the entire area had already been “subdivided by nation-states” to claim parts of the seabed in preparation for mining.
“I couldn’t believe that it had already happened,” Kaho’ohalahala recalls. “They have determined that the ocean belongs to no one, and so therefore, they all have a right to their claims.
“And I find that absolutely ridiculous, because it is our home. But no one has ever thought it important to ask the people who live in the largest ocean about what our relationship is and what our concerns would be.”
When Kaho’ohalahala asked the body what inclusion they had for Indigenous perspectives and relationship to the deep sea, the only element was recognition of artifacts, architecture and humans remains.
“There was no other provision for culture and heritage,” he says. “Yet in our [Indigenous Hawaiian] cultural connections, our tie to the deep sea is genealogical, and the eldest ancestor in our creation story is the coral polyp.
“And it struck me that there was no consideration of my connection to the deep sea by this international authority.”
Since 2021, Kaho’ohalahala has been collaborating with a working group to try to make Indigenous perspectives more central on ISA’s agenda.
Over that time, an increasing number of communities and countries have stepped up to oppose deep sea mining as the environmental risks become increasingly apparent.
This July, at ISA’s 30th session, 38 countries lent their support to a 10- to 15-year moratorium, hoping that this would give the body time to develop a mining code informed by better scientific knowledge than is currently available.
ISA has already issued 31 contracts for mineral exploration, but deep sea mining cannot start commercially until – or unless – such a code is finalized.
The moratorium did not pass, but neither was the code completed, as some mining proponents within ISA had hoped.
Many leaders expressed concern about the pressure they felt to get the next phase underway.
“We are rushing to prepare regulations atop a foundation of scientific uncertainty, in direct contradiction of our obligation under Article 145 of UNCLOS [the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea] to protect the marine environment,” said Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr. during the meeting.
“This is not urgency born of science but acceleration shaped by external pressure. We must be guided by principle, and not by artificial deadlines.”
All present at the meeting knew what Whipps meant by ‘external pressure.’ In April, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to use U.S. high seas legislation to open up mining in international waters.
Five days later, Canada-based entity The Metals Company (TMC) announced its application for a deep sea mining license in the CCZ – not through ISA, with which it already has two active exploration licenses in the area, but through the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“The whole thing was driven purely by TMC’s financial need for something to happen now,” says Phil McCabe, Pacific regional coordinator of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC).
“It really put the cat amongst the pigeons, and it’s also super risky for them as a company, because they’re putting their two greatest assets – the exploration licenses that they have with ISA – at risk.”
The move represents a blatant challenge to ISA’s authority as the sole regulator of deep sea mining activities in international waters – and to UNCLOS as a whole.
“The Metals Company intends to exploit the deep seabed outside of any legal framework,” said France’s environment minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher in a tweet. “This is tantamount to environmental piracy, and it is unacceptable.”
At the Kingston meeting, ISA launched an investigation into whether TMC’s application was in breach of its contractual agreements with ISA, as well as its international obligations.
“The way that the world organizes and operates in the ocean space, collectively, comes through UNCLOS,” says McCabe.
“People recognize that a crack being wedged open like this puts everything at risk – fisheries rights, territorial rights, security, navigation. It’s about much more than seabed mining.”
And what about the idea that seabed minerals will be required for the green transition? McCabe calls that a red herring.
“The resources are not going to be used for solar panels and electric cars but for making weapons – and that’s already been acknowledged by TMC.”
Meanwhile, other mining proponents are pushing the envelope elsewhere in the Pacific.
Papua New Guinea’s national government supports the moratorium, but the remote province of New Ireland appears to be quietly paving the way for a mining project off the area’s coast despite decades of community opposition.
Tonga and Nauru have also recently signed new agreements with TMC permitting the company to mine in parts of the CCZ where they have special rights in exchange for a share of the profits.
“It’s really hard to see leaders carrying their countries into these situations,” says McCabe. “This is modern-day colonization: it’s stripping the resources and giving back pennies on the dollar, while totally changing the cultural landscape of a place.”
McCabe and I happen to call the same wild black-sand New Zealand surf town home. Twenty years ago, a seabed sand mine was planned directly off our coast.
Community members opposed it and spread the word, and Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) was born; McCabe signed up after a conversation with a mate out in the surf.
Now a country-wide advocacy group, KASM is continually battling new attempts by minerals companies to subvert legislation and skirt environmental and consultative processes.
“There’s a parallel universe happening in the international space,” says McCabe. “TMC was not getting in through the front door, so they’re now showing up at the back door – and the ones who pay the costs are the frontline communities that are opposing it.”
These communities continue to put up critical resistance. But both Kaho’ohalahala and McCabe say it’s been necessary to immerse themselves in high-level processes to help shift perspectives on the deep ocean among powerful people and institutions.
“The global community of colonizers have always been about dominance over nature and the idea that they have the ability to control nature,” says Kaho’ohalahala.
“They look at nature as being there for the taking for the benefit of themselves, and that’s a philosophy that has continued to create the critical situation that we are in right now.”
“Is it not time, then, to elevate the Indigenous voice and perspective – to give us a point in time to reflect and look at what we have done?” Kaho’ohalahala asks.
“And is it possible for us to admit that we have not been good keepers of nature and perhaps apply that Indigenous practice of now reciprocating with nature instead?”
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