The idea of enormous expanses of ocean floor, miles below the surface, covered in potato-shaped metallic nodules that are just sitting there in the dark has an almost cinematic quality. They are not owned by anyone. They have never been touched commercially. Washington now wants to quickly alter that.
President Trump issued an executive order in April 2025 instructing federal agencies to expedite deep-sea mining permits, both within U.S. waters and, more controversially, in international zones where the United States has never formally recognized the governing treaty. Regulators are currently in negotiations with at least nine companies. This summer, portions of the seafloor that extend from American Samoa to Alaska may be auctioned off. Depending on who you ask, the speed of all this is either amazing or frightening.
Private equity investor Victor Vescovo, who has personally traveled to some of the lowest places on Earth, put it simply when he explained the mindset behind the rush: “People feel that there is a cornucopia of metals just waiting to be scooped up like seashells on a beach.” He has decided not to put money into any of these businesses. Considering what he’s seen up close of the seafloor, that choice most likely says something.
Cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, and rare earth elements are all extremely valuable minerals that are in high demand by the world’s battery and electronics industries. Supporters of the industry contend that the U.S. cannot afford to watch China control the vital minerals supply chain while the ocean floor remains unaltered because land-based deposits are running low and demand is rising. The argument is well-reasoned. Additionally, scientists claim that it is being used for very good reasons to expedite a process that typically requires decades of research.
The abyssal zone, which is the large, dark, and frigid area between four and six kilometers below the surface where the majority of these nodules are located, is not empty. It really is teeming. It is home to organisms that grow incredibly slowly, reproduce infrequently, and have evolved over millions of years in conditions of near-total stability, making it one of the planet’s most diverse environments, according to marine biologists. When the sediment in one of these zones is disturbed, a plume can travel hundreds of miles and suffocate communities of life that took geological time to form. How long recovery would take, if it would occur at all, is still genuinely unknown.
Furthermore, the hydrothermal vent systems that are the focus of polymetallic sulphide mining are some of the planet’s rarest ecosystems. These are locations where entire biological communities have developed around the chemistry of the superheated, mineral-rich water that erupts from the seafloor along mid-ocean ridges, the planet’s longest continuous mountain range at 67,000 kilometers. Logging a forest is not the same as mining one of these sites. It’s more akin to destroying a coral reef that took 10,000 years to form, even though we don’t really know what lives there.
As this develops, it seems like the policy is advancing more quickly than science can. A global moratorium has been demanded by a coalition of dozens of financial institutions, 41 governments, and hundreds of researchers. Concerned about both environmental risk and the financial sustainability of businesses whose real business models haven’t been put to the test on a commercial scale, some of the biggest asset managers in the world have joined. A thorough examination of a number of the companies requesting U.S. permits reveals a history rife with court cases and unanswered queries regarding the precise location of the extracted minerals’ processing after they are brought to the surface.
In essence, the Trump administration’s strategy views environmental review as a barrier to be overcome rather than a procedure to be finished. The executive order directs agencies to “fast-track” permits, which in reality entails shortening or avoiding assessments that are necessary because the risks are so poorly understood. Less than 5% of the ocean floor has been investigated by scientists. It is a unique kind of risk to continue with commercial-scale extraction in the remaining 95%.
Here, it’s difficult to ignore the historical pattern. Every significant resource extraction boom in American history, including those involving coal, oil, and old-growth timber, proceeded more quickly than science and resulted in a generation of cleanup expenses. The only thing that makes the deep ocean unique is how much more we don’t know and how much more slowly we can recover. It took millions of years for the targeted nodules to form. They will not return.
At the very least, it is genuinely uncertain whether the promised economic windfall will ever materialize. The infrastructure needed to mine at four to six kilometers below the surface, process the ore at sea, transport it, and refine it into usable metals is enormous and mostly theoretical on a commercial scale. After viewing the actual financial projections, skeptics are typically not persuaded. Following the announcement of the executive order, the stock prices of several of the companies involved have skyrocketed. At least that appears to be operating precisely as planned.
