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Deep Sea Mining: What Happened In 2024? · How To Protect The Ocean

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2024 for deep sea mining was a crazy year. So
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much happened. Norway started to
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deep sea mine. They were exploring to deep sea mine. Then all of a sudden they're not doing
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it anymore. What happened? There was a change in leadership with
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the ISA. What happened? All this stuff happened, but
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we didn't really know how it all happened. So actually, Dr. Andrew
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Thaler, who's been on the podcast before to talk about deep sea mining, contacted me
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and said, hey, Andrew, do you want to talk about deep sea mining and everything that happened in
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2024? Because so much happened. I want to talk about it. I
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said, absolutely. Let's have you on the podcast. So today we're going to be talking about
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deep sea mining. What happened in 2024? The good, the bad and the ugly. We're going
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to talk about it on today's episode of How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start
0:41
the show. Hey
0:46
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
0:49
your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how
0:52
you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by
0:56
taking action. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about
0:59
deep sea mining and everything that happened in the last year. So much has happened.
1:03
that Dr. Andrew Thaler, a good friend of mine, is coming on the podcast to talk
1:06
about it today. And we're going to find out much more about it. But if you want to know
1:10
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your resource. Not only is this podcast a resource, but you can go over to our website at
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1:52
Let's start the show. Today we've got Dr. Andrew Thaler who's talking
1:56
about deep sea mining. All the stuff that happened.
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We're going to be talking about what's the best type of deep sea mining. Not necessarily the
2:03
best, but what's the least impactful deep sea mining activity
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that we can do. And why does Andrew Thaler not
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want to sign on to this agreement
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and say, hey, you know, this is good to agreement. What's the problem here? What's going
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to happen? He's going to talk about that as well. We're going to talk about the dark oxygen
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story that came out and what is coming up with that. What's new
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with that? And if it's legitimate, if it's still new research, is
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it, you know, some more research needs to be done. We're going to find out about a lot of stuff on
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this episode. So here is the interview with Dr. Andrew Thaler talking
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about deep sea mining in 2024. Enjoy the interview and we'll talk to
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you after. Hey Andrew, welcome back to the How to Protect the Ocean
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It has been, and we've been trying to cover it. I
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cited a lot of the stuff from our last interview that
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you did, where you came in and you talked about deep sea
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mining and where it was at, and you talked about the newsletter and
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the magazine that you did, and all the work that you've done, and we talked about a
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history of deep sea mining and stuff. And now, that
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last meeting was quite interesting. And even
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the meeting after that was quite interesting. So the last two meetings were quite interesting. And
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you called me up and you're like, hey, Andrew, let's talk some
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DC buy. Let's talk some updates from 2024 and what to expect from 2025. And I was like,
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you know what? My audience
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loves to hear about deep sea mining, because I think a lot of us are petrified about
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what's happening. And there's a lot of news out there. There's a lot of stuff that goes
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on. It's really difficult to kind of filter through some
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of the stuff that's real, some of the stuff that's not real, and what's happening, and getting updates.
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Because it seems like it's changing quite a bit. So we're going to get into
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all that. But just to remind some of the audience who
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are new to this podcast who you are and what
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All right. So hello, everybody. I am Andrew Thaler. I
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am a deep sea ecologist and a high seas policy expert. And
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my work focuses on how humans use technology to
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explore and exploit the ocean, especially the most
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remote parts of the ocean. So I have done a lot of work with deep
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sea mining over the years. I've been in
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the industry in some sort of fashion for almost 15 years
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now, maybe even more, 17 years. I
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have been out on deep sea mining vessels. I have worked on environmental impact
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assessments for deep sea mining proposals. I
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have run the Deep Sea Mining Observer, which was the trade journal that covers
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the industry. I have worked
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with NGOs who are trying to find ways
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to stop deep-sea mining, find ways to stop certain kinds of deep-sea mining,
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find ways to make deep-sea mining more responsible and more sustainable,
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or find ways to just advise on creating the best possible policy
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surrounding deep-sea mining. So I have been in the thick
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of it from just about every angle you can think of, and it
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has been a wild ride. And
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I will tell you what I told people in 2008, which is
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Yes. That's what we talked about. And I remember when we
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first discussed this, it was really far away. It was
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like, will this ever happen? I think last time we discussed this, I
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think it was at IMCC 2016. That sounds about
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right. In Newfoundland. And you were like, probably won't happen till about 2030, to
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be honest, like from the technology perspective and the policy perspective. And
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we're almost there. And I think it might be a little delayed just
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a little bit longer. But there's a lot of scary things going
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on, a lot of things that are being said, a lot of things that are happening
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where I believe it was Denmark that went out to do some
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Norway, sorry, Norway, Denmark's on my mind these days
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with Greenland, but Norway that decided to go out and do some exploration, and
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a couple of other countries that are dabbling in it. So I
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think people are wondering, is it okay for countries to
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go out, from a legal perspective, are
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they allowed to go out and do it, and in what situation are
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they allowed, under what context are they allowed to go and do the exploration?
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All right, so that is a great question. Let's start with Norway, because Norway is
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kind of like an encapsulation of the last year of deep sea
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mining. Beginning of January 2024, Norwegian
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parliament comes out and says, we are going to begin issuing exploration
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permits for deep sea mining of inactive hydrothermal
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vents in our national waters. Countries can do
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whatever they want in their national waters depending on their own laws The
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big regulations and restrictions are what's happening in international waters
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But in national waters, it's national law, so every country's
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got its own rule set They can do what they want Norway said we're going to start
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issuing exploration permits That surprised a
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lot of people because Norway has been, you know, they're a huge offshore
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oil and gas producer But they're also a very strong environmentally conscientious
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society So there was quite a bit of pushback
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from that. It looked for a while like Norway was going to move forward. And
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then in December, as the Norwegian parliament was
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brokering a deal for their budget for the next year, one
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of the stipulations from one of the smaller parties in their parliament that
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they needed to get the votes to get their budget done, one of their stipulations was,
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we don't want deep sea mining permits. And so that was scrapped. This
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entire year for deep sea mining has been a flurry of
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activity that has resulted us ultimately ending up kind
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Yes. From an environmental perspective, we are slowly working
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towards a set of environmental regulations that No
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one's going to particularly like, but everyone will probably be grudgingly
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consent to, which is the best you can hope for for big
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international negotiations. And that process has
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been ongoing for decades and is slowly creeping towards
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conclusion. Polymetallic nodule mining. Now,
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I've been on this show before. I've said a lot of times deep sea mining is three different industries.
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Polymetallic nodule mining is different from hydrothermal vent mining. It's
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different from seamount mining. They all have their own impacts.
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They all have their own consequences. They all have their own
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sort of justifications. And when
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I left the Deep Sea Mining Observer, the first action I did
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as a not-journalist covering deep sea mining was to sign on
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to the scientists' sign-on letter for calls for moratorium on
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the development of the deep sea mining regulations. And the reason I
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did that is not because I didn't think there was a future for deep sea mining. The reason I
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did that is because The current policy being negotiated at
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the ISA is a unitary mining code that
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covers all three kinds of deep sea mining. Gotcha. And so, you
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know, the folks who are working on polymetallic nodule mining, they have a
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pretty good argument. I don't think they're 100% there yet, but I think there's
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a real possibility that they could get to the point where they could have
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an environmentally justifiable industry. For hydrothermal vent
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mining, for seabound mining, for cobalt rich crust,
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I don't think there's any future for those that could possibly have environmental
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justifications. And so as long as there's a unitary mining code,
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you know. giving permission to the best form
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of mining if that also gives permission to the worst forms of mining is
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Why do you think they did that? Why do you think they wanted to just spread it around to
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So it's really curious because this is the
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second set of mining code negotiations that has
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happened. And the first set was for the exploration permits. So
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exploration for deep sea mining is prospecting. It's
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the process of going out into an ecosystem, looking for the ore bodies,
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identifying where there might actually be valuable ore, doing
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the initial environmental impact assessments and then going back and saying, I
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think there's something valuable here. Can we have permission to go on further? And
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then you apply for an exploitation permit. The
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ISA negotiated separate mining regulations for all three
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ore bodies for the exploration permits. So there is
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a separate set of rules for exploration for polymetallic nodules
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and for hydrothermal vents and for cobalt-rich seamounts. But
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for whatever reason, and I think the reason is the people who really, really want to
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do hydrothermal vent and cobalt-rich seamount mining know they're not going to be able to
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get it through unless they get it all through together. For that
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reason, almost certainly, they've decided on a unitary mining code for
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Okay. Interesting. Interesting. So your position here
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is, and why you signed on, it was the fact that it was the full,
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like they were doing a unitary sort of commitment to saying you
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can explore whatever type you want. You're like, no, that's not the
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way we go forward. Let's move forward in a proper way
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and let's look at one specific one that will be the least amount of
10:56
Exactly. And part of that is that the most advanced
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mining companies right now are all looking for polymetallic nodules. The
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financial regime, which is a big hang up that we can get into
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if you really want to get into the economics of things, that's currently being
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negotiated is looking at projections from polymetallic nodule mining.
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The environmental work has all been developed on environmental, not
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environmental, on polymetallic nodule mining. And so we're in
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a situation where You
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know, best is probably not the right word because we're still talking about an extractive industry,
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but the least worst form of mining is driving the negotiation forward, but
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it's dragging worst forms of mining along with it. And
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I think because hydrothermal vents and cobalt-rich
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seamounts aren't being considered in nearly the same detail, we're
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going to be left with a mining code that preferentially discusses
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polymetallic nodule mining with regulations shaped
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around that. And we end up in situations where we're going to encounter regulations that
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don't address impacts that are happening. at things like hydrothermal vents
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and seamounts. Because these are very different ecosystems. They're
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very different geologically. They're very different ecologically. They're
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Yes, the hydrothermal vents especially. I know usually,
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I know in Canada we've protected on our west coast a
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huge system of hydrothermal vents on
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purpose because, you know, not only for that but just for the biodiversity,
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the uniqueness of the habitat is very distinctive and we
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even expanded it a couple of years ago or about four or five years ago to
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make it even bigger than what it was. Do we
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know the detrimental effect it would have if we did hydrothermal vent
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The big thing with hydrothermal vent mining in particular is that the
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process that builds the hydrothermal vent is the same
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process that creates the ore and is the same process that
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supports chemosynthetic communities. So you can't have one without
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the other. You can't remove one without removing the other. When
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you're looking at mining a hydrothermal vent, you are looking at comprehensive removal
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of the ecosystem because the ore is the ecosystem. The
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chemical processes that drive the vents is the chemical processes that
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produce the ore. And so you're really looking at comprehensive total
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removal of an ecosystem from the seafloor because it happens to be rich in gold
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and silver and nickel. You know, when you look at a
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polymetallic nodule field, polymetallic nodule fields are
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scattered across the abyssal plane. They cover probably 60% of the surface
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of the earth. There's a huge ecosystem. It's incredibly spread out.
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Like I don't like to write off any
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particular ecosystem, but in terms of resilience, like… There's
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a lot more polymetallic nodule field in the world than
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there is hydrothermal vents. If you took all the known hydrothermal vent fields
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on the planet, the ones we've seen with
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ROVs and with submarines and the ones we've hypothesized through looking for chemical signatures,
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if you took that total surface area, it's smaller than Manhattan. Wow.
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So we are talking about, you know, you're making regulations on
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one hand that are regulating the biggest ecosystem on
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the planet and also one of the smallest ecosystems on the planet. And
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And so you're saying when we, if we mine a hydrothermal vent,
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we remove that entire hydrothermal vent that ceases to
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exist. Exactly. So we will go through that a lot faster than
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Yes, and it's very oar-dense. And
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so I think the most valuable one out there they projected was
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worth something like $210 million. Dear lord. Which,
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you know, is a lot of money, but I don't know if it's enough money to justify losing
14:43
Yeah. Now here, you know, obviously you and I and our audience
14:46
members understand the value of, you
14:49
know, a unique habitat such as hydrothermal vents. But there are a lot of
14:52
people out there who are just like, well, if we lose it, what's the big deal?
14:56
You know, we just lose this. Do we know the impact that that
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would have on the deep sea in general? Or is that still under,
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because we haven't really lost them or haven't really known that we've lost them. We
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don't know the impact it would have on the rest of the deep sea ecosystem in and
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So here is the argument that a
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mining company would make that wants to mine an
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active hydrothermal vent. Yeah. Hydrothermal vents
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are geologically active. They have
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their own turnover. In some cases, like if you're in the Western Pacific,
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the average lifespan of a hydrothermal vent is 10 years. These
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are volcanically active regions. They erupt. Sometimes they get
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buried by lava flows. They turn on, they shut down.
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They're very dynamic ecosystems. There is
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an argument to be made that they are incredibly resilient
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to disturbance. That's how they've evolved. There's
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an equally valid argument to be made that natural disturbance versus
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anthropogenic disturbance, which is an additive function of disturbance, we don't
15:58
really know what the consequences of that could possibly be. But when you're talking about
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completely removing a hydrothermal vent ecosystem, you're
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losing genetic conductivity between different
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hydrothermal vent systems. You may be breaking stepping
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stones that prevent downstream hydrothermal vent
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ecosystems from being recolonized as they turn over. And
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hydrothermal vents are nasty. Like these are full of heavy metals.
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There's arsenic in them. They're slightly radioactive. You've
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got a lot of other very nasty heavy metals
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that are produced and embedded within the hydrothermal vent chimney. They're
16:38
sulfur rich. And so you go in with a mining tool and
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you begin grinding. I mean it's functionally strip mining when you're talking about a
16:45
hydrothermal vent. you're creating a plume. You're
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creating a toxic metal radioactive plume that spreads across
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the seafloor. And so that plume is going to settle out in the surrounding sediment
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and who knows how much further it'll perfuse across the
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seafloor. So it is going to have knockdown effects on halo fauna
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as well. It's going to impact the animals around
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hydrothermal vents that aren't necessarily dependent on hydrothermal vents. And
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if you're talking about a mining vessel where you're going to have like a dewatering plume,
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that's coming off the vessel after the ore returns to the surface, that's going
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to end up in the mid-water, and it's going to be impacting things like fisheries. But
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that's hydrothermal vent mining. And a thing I want to highlight is that
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right now, the real push is for polymetallic nodule mining. And
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that's where things are happening at the ISA. And for the most
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part at this moment, when people talk about deep sea mining,
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with a few exceptions, they are talking about polymetallic nodule mining.
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With this type of mining, how is it done? You talked
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a little bit about the hydrothermal vent, how it's just basically you're grinding it
17:52
Polymetallic nodules are very weird
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rocks. We're not 100% sure
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the exact geochemical process for how they form, but
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the kind of broad strokes is that a small nucleating agent, some
18:08
kind of a hard object, it's often like the test of
18:11
a diatom or a radiolarin, but it's sometimes something as big as
18:14
a shark's tooth, when it sinks into the deep sea, very
18:18
slowly over the course of millions of years, heavy metals from
18:22
the surrounding seawater accrete around this
18:25
hard nucleating agent. And basically
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it's a rock that grows and it takes four, five, six million years to grow,
18:33
but it's a rock that grows. A weird thing about
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it is they don't sink. So
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they sit on the seafloor, but you don't ever find them buried in
18:43
the sediment. So there's some long-term process that
18:47
we're not really sure. There's one hypothesis that burrowing animals
18:52
underneath them are causing uplift. There's another hypothesis
18:56
that the process of forming a nodule is biogenic,
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so there's microbes that are part of that, and that the nodule
19:03
is actually breaking down as it contacts the sediment and then reaccreting
19:07
on top. But these are all hypotheses. There's also the
19:10
possibility that just the topology of the seafloor and the movement of
19:13
sediment across the seafloor causes them to remain on the surface. So
19:18
they're weird. They're a rock that grows. And
19:21
they're a rock that grows into an object that contains the
19:24
things we need in an electric vehicle battery. So they're
19:27
rich in cobalt. They're rich in nickel. They're not super rich
19:31
in copper but they have some copper and they're rich in manganese, which
19:35
are all elements that go into next generation renewable energy
19:39
technologies. So there is an
19:42
environmental argument to be made. that if
19:46
we want to get off fossil fuels, if we want to electrify the world's automotive
19:49
fleets, if we want to shift towards renewable energy, we
19:54
might have to go to sea to get the metals necessary to build that technology. I
19:58
don't find that argument particularly compelling anymore. I used to find it
20:01
much, much more compelling. But technology has
20:05
moved on. Only 20% of
20:08
the electric vehicles being made in China right now are using
20:12
batteries that contain cobalt. They're using next generation batteries.
20:16
They're using lithium iron phosphate battery chemistries that
20:21
are cheaper and more stable. … and don't require this incredibly expensive
20:25
metal that's hard to access. And
20:28
so I think the technology itself has moved faster than deep-sea mining
20:31
has progressed to a point where I'm not sure – and I'm
20:35
not an economist, so what the heck do I know? But
20:38
I'm not sure the economic argument for deep sea mining makes a ton of
20:41
sense anymore. And I think the commodities market has played that out.
20:44
So cobalt and nickel right now are in kind of historic ruts. They're
20:48
both in a major surplus. They're both trading at kind of their
20:52
historic minimums. projections
20:57
for deep sea mining. In the summer of 2023, they
21:01
revised the model for a hypothetical
21:05
polymetallic nodule mine based off of metals values
21:08
at the time. And since then, they've lost about $400 million a
21:12
year in value. Just a little bit.
21:15
So the economics are not really shaking out in deep sea mining's favor
21:19
at the moment. On the other hand, There's
21:23
another issue at play, and you've almost certainly
21:27
heard me do this line before, but I say deep sea mining is
21:30
three industries. Deep sea mining is really four
21:34
industries. And that fourth industry is geopolitics.
21:40
Deep sea mining is deeply embedded in
21:43
kind of great power struggles, geopolitical, diplomatic
21:49
brinksmanship, that kind of thing. Countries use
21:53
deep sea mining as a tool to argue for the expansion
21:56
of their outer continental shelf. which expands their EEZ. They
22:00
use it to assert sovereignty over different areas of the seafloor. They
22:04
use it for prestige. And they use it to access
22:08
metals when we have things like security issues. So, you
22:11
know, cobalt is in a historic surplus,
22:15
but cobalt is also 90% produced by the Democratic Republic of
22:18
the Congo, and those mines are largely controlled by China. If you're
22:21
a country like the United States that suddenly is very adverse to trading with
22:25
China, there is a geopolitical argument to
22:28
be made for accessing other sources of these critical minerals. And
22:32
so we've seen that with the major private companies
22:36
who want to do deep sea mining pivoting away from the
22:39
environmental argument and the sustainability argument and towards the
22:42
national security argument, the critical minerals argument, the resource
22:47
independence argument. And I think, you know, I think
22:50
that has some staying power for a lot of people. That's certainly a compelling argument,
22:54
I know, for a lot of the national security hawks that I talk to. So
22:58
on that token, this has been like the biggest year in a long time
23:01
for the U.S. getting involved in deep sea mining. And I'm even talking about
23:04
before the Trump administration kicked off. Right. So
23:09
early in the year, Congresswoman Miller of
23:12
West Virginia introduced a bill to incentivize polymetallic
23:17
nodule refining on the U.S., on U.S. soil, which
23:22
is kind of an interesting case. So the U.S. doesn't deep-sea mine, and
23:25
the U.S. isn't a signatory to UNCLOS, the U.N. Convention of
23:28
the Law of the Sea, which means the U.S. is
23:32
not beholden to the rules of the U.N., but we also don't get
23:35
to negotiate, and we also don't really get to access the
23:39
mineral resources of the high seas. But
23:42
we can refine them and one of the things the US can do that the
23:46
other countries who are signatories to the UN Convention on the Law
23:49
of the Sea can't do is create privileged markets. So
23:53
if you are Canada, if you are Great Britain, if you are
23:56
China or Russia or Singapore and you deep sea mine, the
24:00
metals you mine have to go into the same market as terrestrially produced metals.
24:04
You can't say we're only going to mine the deep sea and sell deep sea
24:07
minerals. You can't privilege the source of the metal. And
24:10
that's in place so that developing countries can't be bullied out of existence
24:14
by deep sea mining. And if those countries, if
24:18
their terrestrial industries are negatively impacted, they have to be compensated.
24:23
So the US, because we didn't sign, we can do that. We can say we only want to put deep
24:27
sea metals in our cars. We don't want cobalt from the Congo. And
24:32
so I think the argument for having the U.S. be
24:35
a refining center for polymetallic nodules, so they'll be
24:39
mined on the high seas by an international company and then landed
24:42
in the U.S. to be refined, you know, I think that
24:46
argument has some weight to it. And I
24:49
think from an economic standpoint, there's a lot of people who want to see that
24:52
happen. And quite frankly, like,
24:56
you know, the US isn't great on refining metals, but like,
25:00
we're an awful lot better than some countries. So like, you
25:03
know, that environmental impact is going to happen somewhere, you know, the US isn't
25:06
the worst choice. Yeah, for sure. Maybe
25:10
it doesn't have to happen at all, because there's no economic value in
25:14
Well, I think that's a question I have for you too, because last time you
25:18
were on, I remember you saying that even if we were to start mining,
25:22
say today, like full-fledged mining, it would take 50 years
25:26
for it to really come into production and be in an actual
25:32
So it wasn't that it would take 50 years for it to come into production and be in
25:36
a battery. It would be, it was that it would be, you
25:40
know, 30 year minimum for it to reach the scale where it's even
25:43
remotely competitive with terrestrial mining operations. Gotcha. Okay.
25:47
So it's, you know, and I think the line I was giving then and it's the line I
25:50
still do now is that, you know, deep sea mining may be a possible
25:56
a route to sustainability to reach 2050 or
26:01
2100 targets, but it's certainly not going to help us reach 2030 climate targets.
26:05
And I think I probably said that in 2019, and now we're at 2025. It
26:08
definitely is not going to help us meet any climate
26:12
targets for 2030, and probably not for 2050 either. It
26:15
might be a solution for 2075. And
26:19
so for that reason, you know, deep sea mining has time, which is one
26:22
of the reasons why I think it's kind of silly to do this unitary mining code when, you
26:25
know, we can take our time and get it right. This is the first time in human history where
26:29
we've negotiated the rules for an extractive industry before
26:33
the industry has been able to extract. And so, like, why not
26:36
make it the example for resource extraction?
26:42
Yeah, it's such an opportunity, right? It's such an opportunity. Now
26:46
with that said, you know, like we're talking about the advancements of
26:50
battery technology and that it doesn't need as much cobalt and
26:53
you mentioned, what is it, 20% of Chinese batteries
26:57
that are being made for EVs are not even using cobalt or
27:04
Is there a possibility that you know, they won't
27:11
Absolutely. So, you know, the two battery
27:14
technologies that are really starting to come online that are exciting to
27:17
me, in terms of not being anti-deep sea
27:21
mining, but in terms of getting us off our need for minerals at all, are
27:26
solid state batteries, They use graphene and
27:29
they use an acid gel as
27:34
their electrolyte so that you have these batteries that are very
27:37
stable, very fast charging. They're basically gigantic capacitors. You
27:41
can dump all the amps into them all at once so you don't
27:45
have to do that whole sitting and charging for 45 minutes thing.
27:49
When you're fast charging and driving across the country, you can just dump all the
27:52
juice in all at once and they're perfectly stable and they run fine. They
27:56
don't need any heavy metals for the most part, at least the best chemistries
28:00
I've seen. And that's really appealing because that makes them
28:04
much, much more accessible with a much lighter
28:07
footprint. Sodium batteries are, they're
28:11
not as fast discharging. They're incredibly stable
28:15
and they can store an awful lot of energy. They're not really a good
28:18
electric vehicle battery, but for like municipal power storage,
28:22
as we start building a more sustainable renewable grid, Sodium
28:27
Or home storage, exactly, yeah. Those sodium batteries will really
28:32
take off. So I think – and neither of those particularly need the
28:36
metals that we derive from the deep sea. Right. So
28:39
I think it all really depends on which battery chemistry wins.
28:43
It's like the USB wars. Is it going to be micro USB or mini
28:47
USB or USB-C or Blu-ray or
28:51
DVD? Now we're in the battery wars. Which battery chemistry
28:54
is going to win? The battery chemistry that wins is going to decide whether or
28:58
not we really have a strong economic argument to
29:04
There was a story that I covered over the last year. And it
29:07
talked about these nodules. I think they were probably metallic
29:10
nodules that were emitting oxygen. And they
29:14
were wondering, is this part of the deep sea ecology? Could
29:18
this be something that we could use in
29:21
the future as an argument not to, or be very careful
29:25
if you're going to take these nodules, because it could be
29:29
providing oxygen to the animals and the
29:34
So that is the dark oxygen story. Yes. That was
29:37
a paper published about polymetallic nodules from the Clarion-Clipperton zone,
29:42
where people want to mine. And I think the actual initial research
29:45
was funded by a deep sea mining company. So it
29:48
is 100% tied to deep sea mining. It is a very preliminary
29:52
study. And the results are incredibly tantalizing.
29:57
I'm not 100% convinced that they've actually detected
30:00
oxygen production yet. And it's hard
30:04
to tell what the mechanism is. And
30:08
it's one of those things where it's probably, there's probably some kind of, if oxygen is truly
30:11
being produced in the volumes they're talking about, it's probably a biogenic process
30:15
involving microbes interacting with the nodules. Right. But
30:19
that is absolutely – it's an incredibly tantalizing piece of research. It's definitely something to
30:22
watch. It's definitely something we want to know more about before we go and
30:25
wholesale – Of course. Remove these nodules from the seafloor. So
30:29
I think that's a really interesting story that we
30:32
definitely need a lot of follow-up on. And that actually kind
30:36
of highlights one of the weird paradoxes of the entire deep sea
30:39
mining story, which is that these mining companies for
30:42
the most part, they're
30:47
I won't say they're green companies, but they want to be green companies. They're environmentally motivated
30:51
companies. Their fundamental value proposition is that
30:54
we need to get off fossil fuels and we have a better way of
30:58
getting the metals we need from the seafloor versus from land. Yes.
31:01
So there has always been an environmental motivation behind fossil fuels.
31:06
Some of these companies, I mean, some of them just want to make money, but most of them are fairly
31:09
environmentally motivated. And they funded a lot of research. They
31:13
want to do the environmental impact assessments right, to
31:17
an extent. They also want to mine, so they don't want the environmental impact assessments to
31:20
say no go. But they're funding this
31:24
research. A lot of the big research that's come out in the last 10 years
31:27
that suggests maybe we shouldn't mine the high seas has come from
31:30
funding from deep sea mining companies. And I'm actually one
31:34
of the examples of that. I worked on the environmental impact assessment for the Sulwara
31:37
I mining project. When I went into that project, I was
31:42
pretty persuaded by the argument that this is a dynamic ecosystem that
31:46
it turns over on. Sulwara I especially turns over very fast. That
31:50
the site itself is underneath an active submarine volcano,
31:54
so it's constantly already getting buried by the same chemically
31:58
enriched plume that would be produced by the mining tool. They
32:01
had a good argument. And so that was one
32:04
of the reasons why I felt comfortable working with them
32:07
on the environmental impact assessment. And as we progress, and I did my PhD thesis
32:11
with them and did a lot of environmental work and did
32:14
a lot of connectivity work on the systems, as I progressed through my research,
32:18
I slowly came to the conclusion that I don't really
32:21
think we can do this kind of thing anywhere without having a
32:24
permanent negative impact to the ecosystem. Even in that area? Even
32:28
in that area. I think Sul-Warun was probably the best case scenario. And,
32:32
you know, it's like the polymetallic nodule argument, right? You know, if it's the least worst,
32:36
if you're still opening the gates to the worst, then it's not helping anyone. Exactly.
32:41
So like that, I've seen that transition happen among a lot
32:44
of a lot of people. And like, you know, the mining companies are,
32:48
you know, not every mining company, obviously, like, capitalism is
32:52
a thing that drives and motivates people for reasons other than the environment. But
32:56
like, The people I know on the ground who do the environmental
32:59
work for these companies, who are writing the environmental impact statements, who
33:03
are leading their initial research programs, they care about the
33:06
environment. And they learn things, and they fund environmental research,
33:10
and they fund a lot of environmental research that ultimately says, don't mine here.
33:14
Right. Yeah, it's an interesting concept. It's
33:19
really weird in this position that we're in where
33:23
it seems like, as you mentioned, Norway starts off
33:27
January saying, hey, yeah, we're going to explore. And then by the
33:30
end of December, the government's like, as they put their budget through, no, there's
33:34
a small contingent that says, no, we don't want it in there. And they have to pass the budget. So
33:37
that's just the way it goes. Then the other side, as you mentioned, there's
33:40
a geopolitical side to it. And that can
33:44
drive a lot of movement on a
33:47
side for, say, the US or anybody else to activate
33:52
some deep sea mining or at least refineries and see how
33:55
that works. It seems like because
33:59
it's such a global issue, How
34:04
do you expect people to react and what do you expect them to do in
34:08
this situation? The audience members here, just
34:11
like me, are really scratching the surface of deep sea mining and
34:14
just really understanding. Obviously you coming on really helps in finding out
34:18
the three main different types of ways to mine it and
34:22
what's the least amount of harm and then the
34:25
most amount of harm that we see. And so we get that knowledge
34:29
in there. But for the audience member who's listening to this and
34:32
just being like, OK, so now I'm educated on
34:36
how this all works. I'm educated on the different things that can play
34:39
a role in whether this goes forward or it doesn't go forward. What
34:44
do you suggest that people do with this
34:49
So it's tricky because it's not the kind of thing where
34:53
you can write your congressman. Well, especially not
34:56
because we're not part of UNCLOS, so our congressmen are useless. More
35:00
useless than usual. If
35:05
you are a citizen of a country that is a signatory to UNCLOS, which...
35:09
Honestly, most of your listeners probably aren't, because I'm guessing you have a pretty big
35:16
But, you know, if you are the citizen of a country that is a signatory to
35:20
UNCLOS, you write your representatives, however
35:24
you're represented, if it's an MP or a parliamentarian or
35:27
a congressman or, you know, an alderman or whatever, you write whoever represents
35:31
you in the highest level of government. and urge
35:35
them to adopt the position that either
35:39
you do or do not want to support deep sea mining. Because ultimately, this
35:42
is international negotiation. It's happening at the level of
35:46
a State Department. And so whatever is your
35:50
most direct line to the State Department of your country, which
35:53
is usually through your elected representative, if
35:57
you're in the U.S., like the U.S. does go to the ISA and
36:00
that we do have representatives that intervene there that we can't vote on
36:03
ISA issues, you can write directly to the US State Department and be like, hey,
36:07
I'm worried about this. Right. But in terms
36:11
of like direct action, it's a trickier one because it's not like
36:16
you can oppose it in national waters. Yeah. If your issue
36:19
is primarily with deep sea mining and national waters, which very
36:22
few countries are looking at deep sea mining in their own waters. Japan is
36:26
doing a little bit of work on that. China is doing development
36:30
on that, but mostly to test technology for high seas work. India
36:34
is kind of in the same boat. They have nodule fields
36:37
in their territorial waters. They do a little bit of work there,
36:40
but they're not In those cases, it's less about
36:44
the commercialization and more about testing of technology before
36:48
they go out into the high seas. New Zealand is a very active
36:52
back and forth in their parliament over deep sea mining and some of
36:55
the shallower water mining projects like Iron Ridge Sands. So
37:00
for national waters, it is, I mean, in all cases, it's right your representatives. You
37:05
know, there's not like, it's a small industry, it's a small world. So
37:08
it's not hard to keep track of who's trying to do deep sea mining. It
37:14
is hard to get involved unless you're a subject matter expert. If you're a scientist, if
37:18
you're a practicing marine scientist and you're opposed to deep sea mining,
37:22
there is a scientist sign-on letter for support of
37:25
a moratorium that they are collecting signatures for.
37:29
I think it's hosted by the IUCN right now, or possibly the Worldwide
37:34
Fund for Nature. Can't remember who's currently hosting it, but if you Google
37:38
scientist sign-on letter. I'll put the link in the show notes, yeah. So
37:42
there are things to do if you are a practicing scientist that carry
37:47
Okay. Now, one more question about
37:51
what people can do. So is it bad to
37:55
have an EV right now? Just knowing, you know, like from
37:58
an ethical standpoint, you know, we look at how cobalt
38:02
is mined now, as you mentioned, in the Democratic Republic
38:06
of Congo. But but plus with the possibility of
38:09
deep sea mining, if you are an environmentalist, or
38:12
you want to do something good for the environment, and you are buying a car, is
38:16
it bad to have an EV? Is it bad to have
38:19
a hybrid vehicle? I mean, it's good for the environment. We know that. But
38:23
then there's also the fact of what goes into it. And
38:26
this is an ethical point. I guess it's more of your opinion kind of
38:29
piece. But what would you say for people who are
38:33
like, well, why would you get an EV with all this
38:37
So no, absolutely not. There is no projection that
38:41
has EVs coming out worse than a new gas car. If
38:45
you are shopping for a new car or a new used car, EVs
38:49
are always going to be, hands down, a better choice for the environment. The
38:52
best choice for a car is always the car you currently have. Drive
38:56
it till it dies, make it last as long as possible, and then replace it
38:59
with the most energy efficient car you can. My family
39:02
has had to do that twice in the last two years. We've had two cars
39:06
totaled. I drove mine until it died. My wife drove hers until
39:09
it died. We got hundreds of thousands of miles out of both of them. And
39:13
now we have two EVs. So we went the EV
39:16
route, and we went with a Hyundai Kona,
39:20
and we went with a Ford Escape plug-in hybrid. So
39:24
depending on your personal politics and other motivations, there are certain
39:27
car companies you may want to avoid. Um, and
39:31
I, you know, I have a, I have a personal beef with Tesla that is not related to
39:34
politics, but it's related to how they do battery storage and how they do, um,
39:39
uh, access to, um, uh, the hardware that
39:42
you've already bought. So if you buy like a base level model Y,
39:46
there's more battery capacity in that model Y than you're allowed to use.
39:49
And you have to pay Tesla for permission to use
39:52
an extended range, but that, that battery, capacity is
39:56
already built into your vehicle, which means you are driving around with
39:59
a third of an electric vehicle's worth of cobalt and
40:02
nickel that is not being used. So in
40:06
that case, and that's changing too because Tesla has switched its
40:09
battery chemistries to lithium iron phosphate for those vehicles. So
40:13
that was more of an issue four years ago than it is today. So
40:17
there are, if you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty and look at
40:21
battery chemistries and compare battery chemistries, and OK,
40:25
you want to avoid the potential for creating demand
40:28
for deep sea mining. There's no battery on the market right now that uses metals from
40:32
the deep sea. But if
40:35
you want to avoid creating that demand, you can look for batteries that use lithium iron
40:39
phosphate rather than lithium polymer
40:43
or nickel-based or cobalt-based batteries. So
40:46
you can do that. But at the end of the day, The
40:50
car you have, drive it until it can't be a reliable car
40:53
anymore and replace it with a used car that is
40:56
as efficient as possible is almost always going to be the best choice. Electric
41:01
vehicles, especially the used electric vehicle market is great right
41:04
now. This is a fantastic moment in time to get a used EV.
41:09
A used EV is going to be hands down always the most environmentally
41:20
Yeah, true, true. Awesome. Is there anything, I
41:23
know a lot happened last year, is there anything that we missed talking
41:28
We have barely scratched the surface. Oh my gosh! I
41:31
have not even talked about the usurping of the Secretary General of
41:34
the International Space Agency. Yes, yes, let's talk about that, let's talk about that.
41:38
So I think this is important because I think this is the biggest a
41:42
policy change to happen in the ISA in the last eight years.
41:46
So Michael Lodge was the previous Secretary General of the ISA. He
41:51
took over in 2016. And he
41:57
was very pro-mining. He
42:00
really saw it as his mission to get the mining regulations done.
42:05
and to get deep sea mining started under his watch. It
42:09
seemed like he wanted that to be his legacy, which of course, if you're the Secretary General
42:13
of the ISA who's tasked with creating a deep sea mining industry,
42:16
of course that's the kind of legacy you want to create. His
42:20
leadership was mired in a couple of scandals, which – all
42:23
of which are like allegedly at this point, and
42:28
the new secretary general has said that there will be investigations. We'll
42:32
see how far that goes. There were accusations that he was
42:35
cozying up with specific mining companies. and
42:39
preferentially favoring them. There were accusations that he was passing privileged
42:43
information on to third parties in those mining companies. There
42:48
was accusations during the last election that he was attempting to
42:51
bribe his opponent by offering her a job within
42:54
the ISA if she would drop out of the election. And there
42:58
were overall a lot of moments of dissatisfaction with
43:02
his leadership, I think is probably the most diplomatic way to say it. His
43:06
handling of the COVID pandemic wasn't particularly inspired.
43:12
He actually, you know, I was at the very last in-person ISA
43:16
meeting before the pandemic shut everything down. And
43:19
the delegation for, this was February of 2020. The delegation
43:23
from China had a long intervention where they basically said, this
43:27
is going to be bad. We need to put provisions in place to have remote meetings. And
43:31
the secretary general said, we are not equipped to have remote meetings and we will not do
43:43
No, it was happening. The first cases were out. They knew. It
43:46
was blowing up in Wuhan. They were like, this is bad. The first
43:49
cases in Italy had hit, so they knew. And
43:53
so because of that, they basically shut down negotiations for two years,
43:57
obviously. And they put some provisions in place to
44:00
have like sort of remote, but not really kind
44:03
of sustaining meetings. But like, you know,
44:06
I think generally speaking, a lot of delegations were dissatisfied with
44:10
his leadership. And so there was a vote on the new secretary general
44:15
at the last ISA meeting of 2024. Everyone
44:20
thought it was going to kind of be a nail-biter and it was going to come down to like the
44:24
pro-moratorium countries versus the pro-mining countries. But
44:28
it actually ended up being a blowout and Secretary General Lodge
44:32
was voted out of office and Secretary General Letitia Carvalho
44:36
was voted into office. Secretary General Carvalho is
44:41
going to be the first oceanographer to leave the ISA. She's a
44:44
scientist. She worked for the
44:47
UN Environmental Program, so she's a very seasoned administrator
44:51
with these kinds of programs. And she's the first woman and
44:54
the first Latin American to lead the ISA. So it's a very – MR
44:58
PALLADINO She's from Brazil? MR KIRBY She's from Brazil, yes. So
45:01
it is a very significant change in leadership that will really
45:05
shape how the next four years of ISA negotiations go. I
45:10
don't know how they will be reshaped yet because she's
45:19
Started at the beginning of January. So we will see at the first ISA
45:22
meeting what kind of changes we can expect to see.
45:26
There seems to be, because she's an oceanographer and her experience with
45:30
UNEP, there seems to be a bit more of a positive
45:34
outlook when it comes to, as you mentioned before, of taking
45:39
advantage of looking at policy before this
45:43
extraction happens. and being proud
45:47
of putting together a very comprehensive strategy and
45:51
policy before we go out, especially because she's
45:55
a science-based leader. Is that a
45:59
fair assessment of what we're looking at? Do you feel the
46:03
I think it's fair to say that she has a much better
46:07
grasp on what the science is than the outgoing secretary-general. I
46:11
think she is – and he was a private sector lawyer,
46:15
so he had a very different skill set. She is a
46:18
seasoned administrator with the UN, so I think there is
46:22
going to be a much higher focus on science. the
46:26
norms and protocols of UN programs that
46:30
some people felt was lacking under the last leadership. I
46:34
don't think she's a pro-moratorium person. I don't think she's, like, trying
46:37
to shut down deep-sea mining. I know some people are like, oh, yay, the environmentalists
46:41
won. I think she is going
46:45
to be the kind of secretary general where we're going to see the best possible mining
46:49
code get codified under her watch. And a
46:52
lot of people won't be happy with the best possible mining code because they didn't want any
46:56
mining code at all. But the best possible mining code is a heck of
46:59
a lot better than what was coming out under the
47:04
How many times have you and I and other scientists have looked
47:08
at previous extractive activities or other extractive
47:11
activities and be like, oh, if we only… you know, had these types of
47:14
regulations before it started, then it would have been
47:18
– the precedent would have been there and we could fine-tune
47:22
So this is … Here's something wild. Here's something that we've never
47:26
seen before with the new industry. There's an environmental fund
47:36
Well, the companies, and so, you know, it's weird because there's
47:39
private companies that deep sea mine, there's also countries. Ah, gotcha. And
47:43
so they're both kind of working in tandem. And also the ISA gets to have its own
47:46
mining company too, which is a whole other story. Yeah, that's
47:50
interesting. Okay. So there's a lot of entities that are
47:53
doing the mining, but if there's a pre-funded environmental fund,
47:57
that means when accidents happen, there's already money available for remediation. And
48:02
that's not something we've really seen before at this scale ever. So
48:05
just simple things like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
48:09
it's penalize them after the fact, not pre-fund. So
48:13
those are the kinds of things that I think they lead
48:17
to a better – and I'm not like – I'm not
48:20
a super big industry naysayer and I'm also not super rah, rah,
48:23
rah, let's go mine. acknowledge
48:28
begrudgingly that there may need to be a path forward that involves the
48:32
deep ocean if battery chemistries don't catch up and
48:36
if we do genuinely need these metals. And
48:40
like, let's do the best thing we can. Yeah,
48:43
if we can make the regulations as good as possible. And if you
48:46
know the negotiation to get those regulations as good as possible takes so long,
48:50
the battery technology catches up. Great. Yeah.
49:01
I love this. So this was huge. We'll
49:04
stop the interview here. I'd like to invite you back for a part
49:08
two, because there's more information that we're going to be talking about
49:11
with deep sea mining. And I would like to invite you back, to
49:15
be honest, Andrew, on a regular basis. because there's so much going on
49:18
in the world right now, especially in the US, with ocean policy
49:22
that we're going to be covering at least over the next four years and
49:26
seeing what's happened. And of course, we did an episode previous
49:30
to this on your article regarding all the different policies
49:34
that were changed in President Trump's first day after
49:37
the inauguration. So we're going to be discussing a lot of that over this
49:41
time and the effect that it'll have Not only on the deep sea, but
49:44
just on the ocean in general and on people as well. And we'll have a number
49:47
of different experts that come in to discuss it, but we would love for you to
49:50
come back and help us out to detangle everything. So that'd
49:54
be really great. So thank you so much for coming on this time. Appreciate it. You're
49:57
very welcome and thank you for having me. Thank you, Andrew, for joining me on today's episode
50:01
of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. So much stuff happened, we
50:05
didn't even get to cover, we're just scratching the surface. So we're gonna have
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him back on to get another update on what happened in 2024 and
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what continues to happen as we go along. New leadership, which
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is great to see, only 22 days in, so we're gonna see what
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happens having an oceanographer. as a leader uh and
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and to see like what's going to happen are we going to take advantage of this and
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say hey we can come up with the best type of uh
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of policies the best type of regulations before we start this
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extractive process if we're going to start it and if we're going to see if it's even
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worth it with the advancement of batteries the way it
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goes so much is happening so quickly we're going to keep you up
50:41
to date in the future But until then, if you have any questions or comments
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about the episode, you have questions for Andrew that maybe the next
50:48
time he's on, he can answer, I can ask him, please let me know.
50:51
Just hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean. And
50:55
if you have a question or comment and you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, just
50:59
put your question and comment in the comment section
51:02
below. And of course, don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification
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bell if you haven't already to get all of our episodes. We put out
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Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week. Enjoy. This
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is the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm your host Andrew Loon. Thank
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you very much for joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have