Mining the deep seabed could cause irreversible damage to ocean ecosystems, a group of international scientists say, raising questions as to whether the seafloor’s wealth of critical minerals is worth the risk.
The potential harms they outline are only the ones researchers know about today. In fact, the world has explored very little of the deep seas, leaving a knowledge gap seemingly as vast as the ocean itself.
“If mining was to go ahead with the current state of knowledge, species and functions could be lost before they are known and understood,” the group of scientists wrote in a June 24 report produced for the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy. That panel consists of world leaders from 14 coastal countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, and Portugal, and is supported by the United Nations’s special envoy for the ocean.
The group’s cautionary findings come as the world is at a critical juncture. Governments around the world are considering tapping into the resources housed under the ocean floor, especially amid the realization that the world will need much greater access to critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth elements to meet the demands of economies powered by more and more renewable energy and with millions more electric cars on the roads.
And this year, the International Seabed Authority, of which most countries around the world are members, is crafting regulations to govern deep-sea mining. The United States is not a member but participates as an observer.
Once those regulations are adopted, it would pave the way for commercial mining to begin in international waters. The ISA has already granted 30 contracts to countries, including Japan, China, India, and Russia, allowing them to explore areas of the deep sea known to be rich with minerals for 15 years.
“Basically, society has to choose whether it wants to go into what’s effectively a pristine system, and really the largest one on the planet, and do some damage,” said Lisa Levin, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and a lead author of the Ocean Panel paper.
“Everybody knows mining is going to cause some damage. I don’t think that’s in question no matter who you talk to,” she told the Washington Examiner. “It’s just a question of whether that is acceptable.”
In the report, Levin and her co-authors outline a need for much more research — not just on how mining would affect deep-sea environments but also to better characterize what those ecosystems look like and what species live in them.
“We need to understand what those thresholds and tipping points are for the ecosystems and biodiversity so we can use that to inform what technology is being developed,” said Diva Amon, a deep-sea biologist and scientific associate at London’s Natural History Museum who was a contributing author to the paper.
Amon, during remarks on a June 24 webinar launching the report, said more time is needed for researchers to gather scientific data about deep-sea ecosystems.
“On the seafloor, when you look at the lifespan of these [areas], they may be from 10 [million] to 50 million years old,” said Kristina Gjerde, senior high seas adviser at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Global Marine and Polar Programme. Gjerde was not involved in the report.
“The life that’s growing on there and around it is never going to return in humanity’s lifetime, most likely,” she told the Washington Examiner.
Gjerde pointed to studies that show even microbes would take decades to recover from the disturbances caused by mining. Those include wholesale removal of parts of the seafloor as well as sediment plumes.
“We’re talking about creating dead zones for swaths of the ocean, for which we really have no clue the consequences,” Gjerde said.
Governments around the world are ramping up efforts to study the oceans. The U.N. is launching a “decade of ocean science” next year aimed to deepen the world’s knowledge of the oceans’ response to pressures such as climate change and human activity and to develop policies to reduce harm to the oceans.
The U.S., too, is boosting efforts on ocean science. Just last month, the Trump White House released national strategies to map the Alaska coastline and the U.S. exclusive economic zone, an area bigger than the landmass of all 50 states. The White House also released recommendations to speed permitting for mapping and exploration activities in the exclusive economic zone.
“The Trump Administration is committed to a comprehensive understanding of our ocean and efficient permitting for ocean exploration generally, including for advancing science, building ocean-related industries, informing decisions that balance ocean use and conservation, and enhanc[ing] the nation’s prosperity and security,” said Dan Schneider, associate director for communications for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, in a statement.
Scientists have concerns, though, if the U.S. and other governments attempt to rush the process.
The ISA has come under increasing scrutiny amid questions about whether it is including the viewpoints of all nations, especially developing countries, and whether it has the capacity to oversee environmental risks from deep-sea mining. Researchers have suggested the creation of an independent environmental and scientific committee within the ISA to assess how deep-sea mining could affect ecosystems and biodiversity.
Ultimately, the Ocean Panel paper raises questions about the need to mine the seafloor for critical minerals. It recommends boosting research and development of alternative minerals, minerals recycling, and renewable energy technologies that don’t rely so heavily on critical minerals.
For example, the research is bullish on the potential for offshore wind power to expand significantly, even becoming cheaper than onshore wind. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a corresponding expansion of mining for critical minerals, even though current offshore turbine designs use permanent magnets that require rare-earth elements, said Peter Haugan, program director of the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research and an author of the paper.
“We shouldn’t underestimate the capability of the industry to develop competitive alternatives if one particular mineral is scarce,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Above all else, researchers urge caution in any decisions regarding deep-sea mining and say governments shouldn’t jump the gun without considering alternatives and the environmental harm.
“In the dream for a transformative green economy, you don’t just want to transform one form of pollution on land to another form of pollution at sea,” Gjerde said.
