Pouring €25 million into a location that is never exposed to sunlight has a subtly bold quality. There are no cameras following you down there. The terrain is not captured by any satellite image. However, France has determined that the ocean floor, particularly everything below 1,000 meters, merits the same significant investment that the world typically sets aside for semiconductor factories and aerospace programs. From the outside, at least, it seems like an oddly brave wager that is also long overdue.
The money is provided by France’s larger France 2030 initiative, a comprehensive €54 billion plan to revitalize the nation’s industrial and technological foundation. Within that framework, the government set aside €25 million for the Deep Sea Project, which it refers to as the Grands Fonds Marins. Eleven companies were chosen after a nearly two-year review process that followed an open call to public and private enterprises in 2022. Underwater drones, autonomous submersibles, robotic systems, sensors, and the software required to interpret whatever data these devices are able to extract from the deep are all part of their work. It’s a powerful set of technologies. The kind that governments support when they genuinely want to do business.
Despite the public framing, France’s interest in the seabed is not solely scientific. The nation is home to what is thought to be the world’s largest deep-water Exclusive Economic Zone. Approximately 93% of France’s total marine surface, or more than 10 million square kilometers, is below the 1,000-meter mark when its overseas territories are taken into account. That’s a huge, mostly unexplored area that could be rich in rare metals like manganese, nickel, and cobalt as well as biological material. It is easy to understand the strategic reasoning behind this.
Simultaneously, France has deliberately distanced itself from the extractive race. At the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon in 2022, President Macron argued that knowledge and protection had to go hand in hand and called for a legislative framework to end high-sea mining. In early 2023, the Assemblée Nationale actually banned deep sea mining as a result of that speech. To be honest, it’s still unclear if that stance will hold as the economic pressure surrounding rare earths increases. Large amounts of the same metals found at the ocean’s bottom are anticipated to be required for the green energy transition alone. Rare earths are necessary for wind turbines. Cobalt is necessary for electric cars. The political math quickly becomes difficult.
However, what France is currently funding seems more like science than extraction, and that distinction is important. There are only about 10% of known species on the ocean floor. Stretching between 1,000 and 4,000 meters below the surface, the bathypelagic zone is still mostly unmapped. Marine sponges may carry bacterial strains that could help address drug-resistant infections, a crisis that researchers predict could kill ten million people annually by 2050. Hydrothermal vents release chemicals that have already sparked genuine interest in next-generation antibiotic research. There is more to the deep sea than just a mineral deposit. Perhaps it’s a biological library that we haven’t yet accessed.
As this project develops, it seems like Europe has finally realized how far behind it it has been in ocean science. Over the past ten years, both China and the US have made significant advancements in deep-sea technology and research. Despite its significance, France’s investment is still small in comparison. It’s really difficult to say at this point whether €25 million will be sufficient to close that gap or if this is just the beginning of something much bigger.
The seriousness of the machinery being developed is more difficult to ignore. AI-assisted data processing and autonomous submersibles are not recreational tools. They signify the start of a true industrial capacity. Furthermore, discussions about how to use that infrastructure tend to change rapidly once it is in place. France is referring to this as a research mission for the time being. That might be precisely what it is. It’s also possible that France has decided to arrive early because the ocean floor is going to become much more contested.
