US Executive Order Opens Up Deep Sea To Mining, Flouting International Law, Endangering Ocean Health

25 April

The U.S. government has issued an executive order enabling U.S. companies and subsidiaries to apply for licenses to mine the deep-sea in international waters under the Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Resources Act, originally designed to regulate mining activities until the U.S. could formally adopt the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

In response to the order, leading ocean experts issued the following statements:

Dr. Douglas McCauley, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said:

“This executive order is a great gift to China’s economy. Up until today, most countries have been sitting around the same table in the International Seabed Authority, carefully negotiating binding mining regulations to ensure the equitable sharing of benefits from resources mined in international waters. The U.S. is attempting to subvert that controlled process.
 
"The US has stepped forward to become the first pirate mining operation in international waters. With rules, we could have controlled the minerals that China or any country or person would take from this part of the ocean. But without any rules, China, simply put, will be far better at winning.
 
"For example, these metals at the bottom of the ocean were recently discovered to be radioactive. It is difficult to imagine any community in the US that would want a mountain of these radioactive metals processed in their backyard. Other countries may be less squeamish about such things.
 
"The grand irony is that we just unleashed a gold rush - but a gold rush for fool's gold. In our fever to get at these ocean minerals - the US seems to have neglected to run the numbers. The cobalt and nickel that could be mined from the ocean floor would be the most expensive cobalt and nickel mined anywhere on the planet. We just committed US taxpayers to something akin to the $400 military hammer scandal. Cobalt and nickel are in oversupply today and can be bought with a click on international metal markets at a fraction of the cost. The US just signed on the dotted line for a very bad economic deal.”

Duncan Currie, legal and policy advisor, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said:

“The decision by the United States to unilaterally pursue deep-sea mining is a breach of international law with dire consequences for every country and person who benefits from the ocean as our common heritage. It upends more than 40 years of legal precedent in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, threatens to destabilize ocean governance globally and is an insult to the peoples and countries across the Pacific that this move will most impact.”

Victor Vescovo, founder and CEO, Caladan Capital, and retired naval officer, industrial investor and undersea explorer, said:

“Deep Sea Mining is an untried, technically difficult, very expensive, and financially risky experiment to secure only two scarce metals available from seafloor mining, nickel and cobalt, that are no longer essential for making electric vehicle batteries. These two metals can also be secured for national security by other, more reliable and cheaper means, or stockpiling. As for Rare Earth Metals or lithium, neither are available in meaningful quantities from seafloor mining. Pursuit of commercial Deep Sea Mining has a very great probability of becoming the Republican Party's version of the Solyndra embarrassment.”

Bobbi-Jo Dobush, ocean conservation policy expert and author of “Deep Sea Mining Isn’t Worth the Risk,” said:

“Deep-sea mining is fundamentally an unproven and high-risk endeavor, beset by significant technical, financial and regulatory uncertainties that carry substantial risk for investors. The Metals Company is promising certainty where none exists.”

The experts above are available to discuss why:

• A rush to mine the deep sea would create economic hardship and geopolitical harm for the U.S. without apparent gains.
• Experts project deep-seabed mining to be economic folly – generating some of the most expensive cobalt and nickel ever mined on the planet.
• U.S. action would likely trigger a “fool’s gold” rush to mine the deep sea from competitors such as Russia and China, causing irreparable harm to vulnerable marine ecosystems and ocean health.
• The release of toxic materials associated with mining represents a risk to public health globally through seafood contamination.
• Deep-sea mining poses immense risks to marine habitats and ocean biodiversity.

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