There are billions of undisturbed polymetallic nodules on the seafloor somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, four to six kilometers below the surface. They have been sitting there for millions of years, gradually building up manganese, nickel, and cobalt in coarse, potato-sized lumps. They won’t be seen by most people. As it happens, the majority of people also failed to notice when the US government declared them ready for harvest.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration completed extensive changes to its deep seabed mining regulations on January 21, 2026. The regulations had remained largely unchanged since 1981. As is always the case, the announcement was published in the Federal Register. No press conference was held. Not in primetime. A few environmental organizations took notice. A mining company in Vancouver undoubtedly took notice. The majority of others didn’t.
In traditional bureaucratic language, the modifications were presented as an attempt at streamlining. President Trump signed Executive Order 14285 in April 2025, instructing federal agencies to expedite seabed mineral permits, according to NOAA. In reality, the new regulations reduced what had been a two-stage, sequential process—separate environmental reviews and applications—to a single, integrated track. With just one environmental impact statement, a business can now apply for both an exploration license and a commercial recovery permit at the same time. The timeframe for permits is shortened by about 100 days.
When a business is already waiting, it’s difficult to ignore how important 100 days are.
In April 2025, the same month the executive order was signed, The Metals Company, a Canadian company that operates through its U.S. subsidiary TMC USA, submitted an application for a commercial recovery permit. By last week, NOAA had verified that the application complied with all of its rules. The next step is to draft an environmental impact statement. A mining permit might be issued as early as the first quarter of 2027, according to TMC’s public statements. It’s unclear if that timeline is accurate, but the fact that it’s even conceivable seems like something that ought to have sparked more discussion.
More than twice the size of Vancouver Island, the area in question is roughly 65,000 square kilometers of Pacific Ocean seafloor. It’s a big experiment. That’s industrial scale, which begs the question of what precisely is disturbed when equipment descends to the ocean floor and begins to vacuum up sediment that hasn’t been touched since pre-human times.
All of this has a deeper tension that doesn’t neatly end. The Law of the Sea Convention, which views the deep seabed as a shared human heritage, has been ratified by about 90% of UN members. It was never ratified by the US. That treaty established the International Seabed Authority, which has spent more than ten years developing mining regulations but has yet to complete them. Therefore, by remaining outside of the international framework, the United States is, in a sense, entering a regulatory void that it helped create.
According to a recent legal analysis, if The Metals Company operates under a unilateral U.S. permit, Canada, the company’s home country, may be in violation of international law. It’s an odd place for a business to be. It may also be a sneak peek at the diplomatic conflict that no one seems to have fully prepared for.
The minerals themselves have actual value. Nickel and cobalt are inputs into battery supply chains. Medical equipment and defense systems both contain rare earth elements. The rivalry with China over vital mineral access is real, as is the strategic reasoning. However, there’s a feeling that urgency is being exploited to advance more quickly than the science warrants. For years, researchers studying deep-sea ecosystems have been warning about irreversible damage to ecosystems that recover on geological timescales, if at all.
The regulations have been finalized. The program complies with regulations. The floor of the ocean is ready. That aspect of the story still seems unresolved, regardless of whether anyone was paying enough attention to push back before it mattered.
