Imagine if five hundred years ago, capitalists and aristocrats had campaigned not to explore and colonise the New World. Perhaps after meeting a kidnapped Native American and connecting with him as a fellow human being, or after seeing the unique flora and fauna on a continent previously unknown to them, they decided that they were wealthy enough, and should leave that land alone to thrive as it had since Creation.
It would have been a hard hill to hold of course, considering all they were giving up: the lands for building and growing, and all the treasures for the taking, including precious metals, exotic crops and strategic resources, like white pine for ship masts, which would have helped expand their economic influence and military might.
The enlightened capitalists might have argued: those lands are not uninhabited. They’re filled with Native peoples and countless species we’ve never encountered. Who knows how our entry will disrupt the ecosystems and the life flourishing there, and what future benefits gentle exploration, instead of extensive exploitation, might offer.
Tragically, history did not play out this way. But what if this happened again today, and we found another vast unexplored region of the world. After over half a millennium for the lessons of the exploitation of the Americas to sink in, could we convince folks to chart a different course this time?
That’s exactly the story that’s unfolding with the deep sea today.
### The incalculable value of the deep ocean
In 2022, while giving a talk about how forests sustain the very conditions that allow forests to thrive, theoretical physicist Anastassia Makarieva changed my understanding of life’s ability to regenerate. Having studied the declining state of the world for over 20 years, I asked her about Earth’s resilience in the face of accelerating onslaughts from humans. Surprisingly she didn’t talk about tropical forests but rather the deep sea.
She noted that the ocean depths are where life first evolved and that if humans destroy life on land – whether through runaway climate change or nuclear winter – it is in the deep oceans where new life will develop and give birth to a new stable Earth system. Of course she meant over millions of years, but the fact that this unfathomable source of resilience can serve as Gaia’s appendix (a home to beneficial life ready to recolonise a disrupted biome) helped me realize that maybe humanity wasn’t as dire a threat to life as I had feared.
Then I started reading about the state of the deep sea.
### The depths of the damage
While it’s mysterious and hard for people to explore, our trash has penetrated the deepest ocean. Researchers have found nuclear waste, chemical weapons, tires, mannequins, snack bags and beverage cans, and lots of microplastics.1 Just this year, scientists even found DDT in deep sea fish and sediments – stemming from the dumping of DDT off the coast of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s.2
While those legacies of humanity’s explorations of complex chemistry are bad enough, they have been somewhat inadvertent, and probably nothing the hydrothermal vents and creatures adapted to life near them can’t handle. What they might not be able to handle is the intentional and systematic mining of the depths.
As corporations pursue the energy transition and try to electrify everything (from cars and trucks to heat pumps, to even the making of fuels and steel), they’re going to need lots of metals and rare earth minerals. And so why should they hesitate when nodules of metals are literally just sitting on the ocean floor? A dark world, owned and inhabited by no one, that is so vast surely nothing we do can harm it. Of course, we’ve already learned many times over that we can harm large systems – whether the ‘New World,’ the climate system, or as we’re now discovering, global biochemical systems (in the form of forever chemicals, endocrine-disrupting pesticides, and microplastics).
But, the logic continues – just as it might have in the early days of colonization – if we don’t do it, we’ll lose access to strategic resources (this time ‘critical minerals’ not pine trees) and fall behind. If we don’t do it, someone else will, and make loads of money in the process.
Except there isn’t money to be made. A 2024 report found that the total losses from mining the deep sea would add up to $500 billion (between 2028 and 2043), once factoring in ecological costs. Funnily, simply accounting for the total costs versus the profits brings the industry into the red, with mining companies losing $30-132 billion. That doesn’t even consider the lawsuits and eventual clean-up costs they’ll be saddled with – assuming they don’t create shell subsidiaries that can take the heat and go bankrupt.3
_Hydromedusa, Enigma Seamount at a depth of ~3,700 meters. Photo: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration_
And yet that hasn’t prevented exploration from taking its first rudimentary steps. In 2023, Norway’s parliament voted to open up part of its national waters the size of the United Kingdom to commercial deep-sea mining.4 And The Metals Company (TMC), sponsored by the tiny and economically struggling island state of Nauru (which itself has been subjected to the ravages of phosphate mining over the past century, with 70% of its land now uninhabitable), aims to mine the deep seas in the Pacific.5
TMC and Nauru took advantage of the glacial pace of decision-making at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is supposed to decide on an international framework to shape the future of deep sea mining. In the agreement process, there was a loophole stating that if the ISA did not finalize regulations within two years, companies could apply for a mining license, a loophole being exploited by TMC.
In theory, the ISA should reach a decision in 2025. The question is whether it will set a moratorium on deep sea mining, recognizing the importance of preserving the deep ocean for all of humanity, and more importantly for the countless species living in the oceans, and future life on Earth. But this is not likely without a fight.
### Defending the deep seas
Ultimately, as with chemicals, fossil fuels, genetically modified organisms, deforestation and so many other struggles to protect Earth from shortsighted humans, the defense of these unexplored dark lands will require a concerted and strategic effort – with multiple complementary fronts that if successful could prevent the irreversible disruption of Gaia’s resilience. The good news is that there are elements of a global campaign forming – resistance at various levels both within global institutions, within corporate systems, and within the global citizenry.
At the policy level, activists have started pushing for a ban (or at least a moratorium) on all deep sea mining, mobilizing nation-states that are part of the ISA to endorse this. Already 32 countries have gone on record in support of a ban, moratorium, or ‘precautionary pause.’6 Increasing this number and getting that bloc to vote for a moratorium could protect international waters. And the High Seas Treaty, which was signed in 2023, may also make it more difficult to harvest minerals in international waters.7
Second, there are efforts to make it too costly for mining companies to mine the depths. Imagine if there had been a 90% tax on any goods flowing from the Americas to Europe. While a tax that big is not on the table, there have been activists strategically pushing global mining companies to divest from deep sea mining, and to promise not to explore the ocean floor. This helped sink the deep sea mining company Nautilus. Activists approached mining company AngloAmerican and encouraged it to divest its four per cent stake, which it did in 2018, helping to drive Nautilus into bankruptcy in 2019.8 Of course, that may not stop groups like TMC (though it is publicly traded and subject to shareholder resolutions and investor pressures), but efforts like these will certainly shrink the playing field.
Third, the largest consumers of metals – computer and phone makers, renewable energy companies, car and plane producers – have been starting to commit to not using minerals mined from the ocean floor. In cooperation with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Samsung, Google, BMW, and Volvo made this commitment in 2021 (and several dozen other corporations have joined since). Getting more companies to embrace this ‘Global Moratorium on Deep Sea Mining’ could dry up demand before it gets going, and make ocean mining even less economically viable.9
Fourth, banks and investors will play a key role. If investors had refused to invest in exploration of the New World, would ships (including Columbus’ Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria) have ever set sail? Just as more banks are saying they will no longer support new coal, gas or oil projects, if they commit not to invest in deep sea mining (particularly _before_ they’ve tasted any profit from this dark realm), this will make exploration far more difficult. Without a steady flow of funds, companies like TMC will have a much harder time of it. The good news is some banks have also signed the WWF moratorium, and others have gone further. For example, the Norwegian investor Storebrand changed its investment policy in 2022 to ban investing in any companies involved in deep sea mining.10
If humanity is going to survive, and play a healthy role in the Gaian system, all of us will have to learn to accept limits – that certain areas of the world are not for us humans to exploit but belong to Gaia and the untold species that inhabit them. Will we learn that this time around, or will we look back 500 years from now and regret our unthinking exploitation of yet another unexplored expanse? That is assuming we, or the rest of the beings of this living planet, have survived that long to even consider this.
1. James Bradley, ‘Radioactive waste, baby bottles and Spam: the deep ocean has become a dumping ground,’ The Guardian, 12 Mar 2024 at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/12/radioactive-waste-baby-bottles-and-spam-the-deep-ocean-has-become-a-dumping-ground
2. Margaret E. Stack et al., Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2024 11 (5), 479-484, at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00115
3. ‘How to Lose Half a Trillion’, Planet Tracker, March 2024, at https://planet-tracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/How-to-Lose-Half-a-Trillion.pdf
4. Esme Stallard, ‘Deep-sea Mining: Norway approves controversial practice,’ BBC 9 January 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67893808
5. Christina Lu, ‘The Country With Nothing Left to Lose,’ Foreign Policy, 11 February 2024, at https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/11/nauru-deep-sea-mining-economy-china-taiwan/
6. ‘Momentum for a Moratorium,’ Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, at https://deep-sea-conservation.org/solutions/no-deep-sea-mining/momentum-for-a-moratorium/ (as of 10 March 2025).
7. ‘Beyond borders: Why new ‘high seas’ treaty is critical for the world,’ United Nations, Press Release, 19 June 2023, https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/06/1137857
8. ‘Anglo American to end investment in deep sea mining company Nautilus,’ Reuters, 4 May 2018, at https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1I523Q/
9. ‘Brands Back Call for Moratorium on Deep Seabed Mining,’ WWF, Press Release, 31 March 2021 at https://wwf.panda.org/wwf\_news/press\_releases/?1909966/Brands-Back-Call-for-Moratorium-on-Deep-Seabed-Mining
10. ‘Storebrand tightens the requirements for all investments,’ Storebrand, Press Release, 1 December 2022, at https://www.mynewsdesk.com/no/storebrand-asa/pressreleases/storebrand-skjerper-kravene-til-alle-investeringer-3221041