News is breaking on a daily basis - especially since January, since Donald Trump has governed the USA. Sometimes one even gets the impression that he acts out his strange actions publicly and loudly so that everyone is outraged by them and therefore fails to notice that further developments are taking place in the background, with potentially far more massive consequences.
We share this impression here: the President of the USA is known for his ruthless attitude towards the exploitation of mineral resources. Presumably for this reason, the mining corporation The Metals Company (TMC) has now turned to him, despite the current Canadian hesitation, in order to accelerate the planned commencement of manganese nodule extraction in the deep sea. This is because TMC requires state support for the rapid implementation of its mining plans - operations are scheduled to begin as early as mid-year. Many forces are opposed to this - unfortunately, it is doubtful whether they can still prevent the start of mining.
A disastrous constellation: for years, 169 states within the framework of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) have been wrestling over the rights and obligations of those planning deep-sea mining, primarily in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific, so far without any viable result. Several countries, including Germany, are calling for a moratorium, i.e., a deferral. Global corporations such as BMW, Google, Microsoft, Northvolt, Philips, Renault, Samsung, SAP, Volvo and VW have joined this call: the risks of destroying a habitat that is currently 95% unexplored and would require millions of years to regenerate are too great. Aside from extremely limited insights, we currently have no scientifically sound knowledge of how deep-sea life is interconnected and what chain reactions would result from such an undertaking. Scientists assume that only 10% of the animal species living there are even known to date. The extraction of manganese nodules is carried out by suction using giant "vacuum cleaners", whereby the unused sediment is discharged at the other end of the machine as slurry and settles as a dense blanket over all life remaining after the suction process. For years now, claims in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Mexico have been staked out, somewhat reminiscent of the Golden Age on the Colorado River, only 5,000 metres deeper underwater and therefore somewhat more inhospitable.
While the member states of the ISA remain divided on how to protect the deep sea and perhaps exploit it in a less damaging manner (minimally invasive mining), the Canadian mining corporation TMC, together with the ISA member state Nauru - and the USA as a non-member (yes, the USA does not participate in this environmental body either) - is exploiting the regulatory gap. In the absence of regulations and moratoria, deep-sea mining will commence. This is because corporations are in a hurry: every dollar must be earned quickly - especially when it is to be "feared" that new inventions in the energy storage sector might soon improve the recycling of spent batteries and accumulators or even render them obsolete: there is much to suggest that even an increasingly electrified world does not require the metals contained in manganese nodules at all. What sounds positive for the deep sea would spell the end of profits for TMC, Nauru, and the USA.
In this case, one can probably only hope for a miracle, which (from a strictly scientific perspective) is unlikely to occur.
Further information:
https://www.zeit.de/wissen/2025-03/tiefseebergbau-the-metals-company-un-manganknollen-oekosystem
https://investors.metals.co/news-releases/news-release-details/metals-company-apply-permits-under-existing-us-mining-code-deep
https://www.zeit.de/.../tiefseebergbau-the-metals-company... https://investors.metals.co/.../metals-company-apply...
