The ocean changes completely somewhere around 500 miles southeast of Hawaii, far below the warm surface where tourists snorkel and tuna boats trawl. At about 650 feet, sunlight becomes less intense. It disappears at 3,000 feet. At about 12,000 feet, you come to an abyssal plain the size of the continental United States. Continue on, past creatures that glow slightly in the cold. Almost no one on Earth has ever seen the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Nearly nine out of ten species down there, according to scientists, have never been given names. Nevertheless, this is the area where world leaders are currently debating.
It’s not romantic. The dark, potato-shaped lumps known as polymetallic nodules are found all over the seabed. They are filled with cobalt, nickel, manganese, and copper, which are the metals needed to make electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines, missile guidance systems, and about half of the appliances in your kitchen. According to some research, the CCZ may contain more of some metals than all of the planet’s land deposits put together. Treasury officials are startled by a figure like that.
It’s possible that in years to come, the spring of 2025 will be remembered as the turning point when seabed mining became an industry rather than a topic of discussion. President Trump signed an executive order in late April that aims to accelerate deep-sea mining in American waters and beyond. He presented the order as a direct challenge to China’s dominance in vital mineral supply chains. Environmental organizations erupted. Open letters were written by scientists. Nevertheless, the administration continued to operate. Observing this gives the impression that no one in Washington wants to allow Beijing to control the market for the metals that will drive the next century.
Although it didn’t initiate this, China has been quietly working the seabed for years, building the ships, conducting test runs, and holding more ISA exploration contracts than nearly anyone else. India has also engaged in this activity. In 2021, South Korea, Russia, and even the small nation of Nauru effectively fired the starting pistol when they informed the ISA that a subsidiary of the Canadian company The Metals Company planned to begin mining. A harmless bureaucratic letter with huge repercussions. After four years, the regulatory framework is still only partially developed, and that note has not really been addressed.
What happens when industrial machinery the size of combine harvesters begins to grind across an ecosystem we haven’t even started to map is something no one can say with certainty. Clearing forests, contaminating aquifers, and releasing carbon dioxide are all consequences of surface mining, which is already among the most damaging human activities. To be honest, it seems like a risk that no one has fully calculated to undertake on a seabed that hasn’t been disturbed since long before humans existed. Plumes of sediment can travel hundreds of miles. Deep-sea life recovery times are measured in centuries, if not longer.
However, it is difficult to ignore the economic reasoning. The same metals that deep-sea miners seek to extract are necessary for environmentalists’ desired green transition. The industry has been quick to turn this awkward contradiction into a weapon. Nodule mining, according to The Metals Company, is more humane than destroying Congolese cobalt mines. Opponents argue that this is a mistaken decision because battery chemistry and recycling are developing quickly enough to negate the need for the entire process.
It’s difficult to ignore the pattern. Every few decades, a new frontier opens up, such as space, the Arctic, or the rainforest, and we rush in before we’ve decided on the rules. The deep sea is merely the most recent iteration. It’s still genuinely unclear if 2026 will be remembered as the year humanity finally went too far or just as the year it learned how to responsibly mine the abyss. The boats are clearly already departing the port.
