How Trump’s Executive Order Made America the World’s Leading Proponent of Deep-Sea Mining For many years, an international organization secretly controlled what happened to the world’s ocean floors while the United States largely watched from the sidelines. Washington observed, discussed, and occasionally offered commentary, but he never took any significant action. When President Trump signed an executive order on April 24, 2025, ordering federal agencies to expedite deep-sea mining both inside and outside of U.S. waters, that era came to an end. It was a dramatic change that, in some respects, has yet to fully sink in. The order, “Unleashing…
Author: Derrick Lester
Derrick Lester
Derrick Lester is a professor and editor at indeep-project.org. His academic career has been molded by a single, enduring obsession: the sea and all life in it. Drawing from marine biology, oceanography, and the kind of hard-won field knowledge that only comes from spending significant time on and under the water, Derrick's writing has the depth of a scholar thanks to his years of research and teaching experience. His writing delves into the science of marine life with the inquisitiveness of someone who has never fully moved past the wonder of what exists beneath the surface. Derrick hopes to introduce readers to a world that encompasses over 70% of the planet and is, in many respects, still largely unexplored through his contributions to indeep-project.org.
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Watching footage from 6,000 meters below the ocean’s surface can be almost disorienting. A human body would be crushed in a matter of seconds by the cold, lightless water. On screen, however, a fish appears to move effortlessly past the camera. The image, which was taken by remotely operated vehicles diving off the coast of Puerto Rico, is the focal point of a recent study that is changing the way marine scientists understand where and why fish can live. The study, which was published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science in 2026, gathered 1,137 observations of deep-sea fish in…
The scene is essentially the same whether you are in Rotterdam, Singapore, Shanghai, or any other major port. Massive ships stood in line, waiting and burning fuel. The emissions are clearly visible, even though the smoke isn’t always. Nearly three percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from global shipping, and the underlying issue is that no one has discovered a completely environmentally friendly method of transporting a 200,000-ton ship across the Pacific. Well, not just yet. For this reason, it’s important to keep an eye on the covert developments that have been taking place in the field of…
The fact that humanity has more accurate maps of Mars than our own ocean floor has an almost philosophical quality. This seems to be something that Katy Croff Bell considers frequently, and unlike most people who think about it over dinner and then forget about it in the morning, she has taken action. A 3D interactive globe with 10,000 target locations on the world’s deep seafloor—each of which represents a location no human eye has ever truly seen—was unveiled this week by the National Geographic Explorer and founder of the Ocean Discovery League. It’s the kind of project that seems…
For many years, deep-sea mining was primarily a theoretical goal that engineers sketched on whiteboards, investors circled cautiously, and environmentalists cautioned about in reports that few people actually read. It seemed far away. Controllable. like a challenge for a future generation to solve. That future suddenly became much closer on January 21, 2026, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a final rule amending regulations under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act. It’s not an ostentatious rule. Seldom is regulatory language. Companies can now pursue an exploration license and a commercial recovery permit concurrently rather than one arduous…
When an industry continues to change its narrative, there is something noteworthy. The only practical source of the cobalt and manganese nodules required to construct the batteries that would power the future was deep-sea mining, which was marketed a few years ago as the key driver of the green energy transition. Then the argument began to falter. With the Trump administration actively promoting seabed extraction in international waters, completely eschewing the established procedures of the International Seabed Authority, the discussion has now subtly shifted to national security and vital mineral supply chains. The goalposts have not simply shifted. They have…
Negotiating the fate of an ecosystem you hardly understand has a subtle, unsettling quality. At the 31st session of the International Seabed Authority, a body established to regulate deep-sea mining in international waters, delegates once again convened in a building under fluorescent lights in Kingston, Jamaica, to discuss an environment that none of them will ever be able to see firsthand. About 200 meters below the surface is where the deep seabed starts. The majority of its inhabitants have never been given names. Nevertheless, there is growing pressure to start removing manganese, nickel, and cobalt from those depths. These minerals…
The ship is located thousands of meters above a seafloor that has never been completely mapped, somewhere in the Pacific. There are rocks beneath it in almost complete darkness. Mineral-rich, avocado-shaped, and untouched for millions of years. Additionally, The Metals Company, or TMC, wishes to discuss them. When you put it simply, it sounds almost ridiculous. However, the closer you look, the more difficult it is to ignore. In the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a region of the Pacific floor about the size of the continental United States, TMC has spent more than ten years developing a scientific and practical case for…
The ease with which the Sun can decide to rearrange things is almost unnerving. At precisely 14:01 UTC on June 6, 2026, an M1.8 solar flare was released by Active Region 4461, a region of the solar surface that scientists had been closely monitoring. Not the strongest class. Not an X. M1.8 has a tenth of the energy of an X-class event, placing it in the middle of the solar eruption hierarchy. Nevertheless, a G3 geomagnetic storm watch was issued by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in a matter of hours. It’s important to pay attention to that escalation, which…
A certain type of ambition doesn’t make a big announcement. Instead, it manifests as four ships circling a section of the Norwegian Sea for almost 200 days, lowering 2,500-meter mooring lines into 1,300 meters of chilly, dark water, and declaring it a season’s work. That’s essentially what transpired at the Aasta Hansteen field, and it’s difficult not to see something bigger emerging as you watch it play out. One of the most difficult areas of the Norwegian coast is where Aasta Hansteen is located. The field is farther from shore than most operators would find comfortable, the weather windows are…