Short Wave - Sea Camp: To Mine Or Not To Mine

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Deep sea mining for rare earth elements and other critical minerals could start as early as 2026, even as 38 countries have called for a moratorium on it. The metals that companies are targeting are used in many green technologies like electric cars and wind turbines – but mining them is destructive to the environment. Some in the mining industry say the mining is necessary to a green transition – and essential to democratizing that transition globally since the supply chain is currently dominated by a single country, China. Meanwhile, some scientists caution against mining before the full scope of environmental damage can be understood. Can there be balance in this environmental and political push-and-pull? Hosts Regina G. Barber and Emily Kwong dive into this debate and talk about what science has to say. Curious about other science controversies? Email us at [e-mail] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Short Waver is Regina Barbara here. And Emily Kwong with news. We've reached the final episode in our summertime series, Sea Camp. And our final story brings us back to the ocean floor, the benthic zone, with one of the most significant human activities in the deep sea, mining. The deep sea is home to a lot of things. Animals.

Sand. But it's also sediment. Sediments. But it's also home to nodules of rare earth elements, elements used for everything from smartphones to electric cars to fighter jets. And the ones that are of economic interests are then cobalt, nickel, copper, rare earth elements, lithium, and others. This is Matthias Heckel, a marine geochemist at Gilmar Helmholt Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany. Currently these metals, cobalt, nickel, copper are mined on land, which is super destructive to the environment.

So mining companies have long wanted to open the ocean for commercial mining. But commercial mining in the deep sea is not regulated. There's no blueprint for how to do it safely. Which is why, for the last decade, the UN's international seabed authority has worked to drop regulations, basically rules for how countries should mine in international waters. At the UN Ocean Summit in early June, the UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez called for countries to respect the ISAs process. I support the ongoing work of the international seabed authority on this important issue.

The deep sea cannot become the Wild West. But mining companies and some countries don't want to wait any longer. This spring, President Trump signed an executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining in both domestic and international waters, basically in defiance of the ISA. And the company among the first to throw their hat into the ring is the metals company, a Canadian startup led by Gerard Barron. Speaking to Daniel Ackerman for NPR earlier this year, he compared these polymetallic nodules to golf balls.

They literally sit there like golf balls on a driving range. We can pick those nodules up and turn them into metals at a fraction of the environmental and human impacts compared to land-based mining. Norway's government has also been pushing for deep-sea mining in their own waters. That so far hasn't come to pass because of pressure from environmental groups that oppose mining. But Walter Sognus, CEO of Glomar Minerals, thinks that the first step towards mining in Norwegian waters, issuing licenses to mining companies, could start soon, like early 2026. And he has a response for those who are against this kind of mining. They want green transition, but they don't want the effect of the

green transition, because the green transition is mining. You cannot take that out of the equation. Today on the show, in the clash between the mining industry and international regulators, what does deep sea science have to say? What happens when we disturb the sediment at the bottom of the sea? I'm Regina Barber and I'm Emily Kwong and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. All right, and let's start with science. How are critical minerals developing in the deep sea? Yes, this is an important question. So I'm going to take you to a zone of the ocean at the center of this debate where a lot of the critical minerals are.

It's the Clarion Clipperton Zone or the CCZ. This is an area that stretches from Hawaii to about Mexico in international waters, so an enormous ocean space. Diva Aman is a marine biologist affiliated with the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara. And she's traveled to so many different parts of the ocean, including Clarion Cliportan Zone, which contains billions of tons of what are known as polymetallic nodules. these cherry-to-potto-potto-potto-potto-sides lumps of metal, if you will, that sit on top of the sediment and act as anchor points for all kinds of marine life. So things like corals, anemones, sponges, worms, they all attach to these nodules. And those become a home for mobile organisms, right?

Like brittle stars and crustaceans and like all kinds of microorganisms too. Yeah, a lot depends on these nodules. Matias, the German scientist we met earlier, and Diva, emphasized again and again that the Clarion-Clyperton zone, the CCZ, is an ancient and pristine place. It's kind of like an old-growth forest, but in the ocean. And the nodules down there grow super slowly at an average rate of tens of millimeters per million years. So like fossil fuels, these nodules are not a renewable resource. Okay, Em, let's talk about like how these nodules form in the first. first place over all that long period of time, millions of years. Yeah. Right. Like, so why are so many

metals inside of them? Yeah. There are two main ways to make a nodule. Ad absorption of metals through the water column and diffusion of metals from the sediment. Let's talk about adsorption first. Yeah, I was going to say, I've never heard adsorption before. Yeah, me neither. It happens when a particle, so picture a fishbone or a shark tooth, falls to the bottom of the ocean floor. My eyes are closed. I can see it. Yep. It's just like drifting down. And then over millions of years, metals from the water column accumulate around that shark tooth and coat the tooth with layers of absorbed metals. Mainly manganese oxides and iron oxyhydroxides, which coprecipitate to produce the metals

that everyone's talking about. Right. So like nickel, copper, cobalt, and other rare earth elements, we're going to call them REEs. Yes, that's the first way. The second way, diffusion, is driven by microbes breaking down organic material. So where is this organic material coming from? It comes from the upper ocean. From those endless predator-prey relationships we've heard about through sea camp, organisms dying and digesting and pooping, all of that organic material sinks down to the seafloor.

Yeah, I've heard it called marine snow. And less than 1% of marine snow makes it all the way down. But given the chance, microbes in the sediment will degrade that organic material. And during this process, metals are released. Diffusion then transports these metals to the sediment surface. They oxidize again and then precipitates as oxyhydroxides and get incorporated into the manganese nodules. And form, dun-da-don, polymetallic nodules. That's a second pathway.

And that's a little bit faster than the absorption through the water column. And this is where science meets economics, right? Yeah. Like proponents of the deep sea mining say that there can't be this large-scale transition to green energy. without deep sea mining. Because the batteries used in electric vehicles contain the very metals found in deep seed nodules, this nickel, copper, and cobalt, and there's been a big surge in EV demand since the 2010s. There is a reason by all countries and all nations, they have a critical mineral strategy. It's because standing on the shoulders or the foundation for a green

transition is all these different minerals. We are putting away the hydrocarbons with electronics. So that's Walter again, the CEO of Glomar Minerals. Now, lot of this green technology is moving away from using these critical minerals, like some battery manufacturers in China have already shifted away and launched sodium ion batteries for electric vehicles instead. Yeah. We've definitely reported this on the show before. There is a push to not use metals that would be mined in the oceans. Though what does Walter have to say about that? So some people, including Walter, say deep sea mining is about shifting political control of these metals. The issue is then where are they mined from and who is controlling the mining?

For over 30 years, China has dominated the critical mineral supply chain, like from the mines to owning the processing and recycling plants, all with little environmental regulation, which is part of why right now China is among the most contaminated regions on the planet. And for the rest of the world, we're dependent on China for the vast majority of this critical mineral supply. It's going to be very difficult for Western companies to come into that. And the deep sea minerals are an alternative. Walter equates this critical mineral situation to oil, which is largely controlled by countries in the Middle East. And so the supply and the price are very subject to their decisions. And so he says deep sea mining could be an effective short-term solution to distributing that power, because those nodules are largely in international waters, which are not controlled by any one country.

Oh, I'm starting to see the political dynamics at play here. Yes. Though short term, right? Because, again, long-term companies may move away from products that require rare earth elements. You mentioned earlier sodium ion batteries and alternative tech. Yeah, and countries may be able to build up the recycling capabilities for these metals. Though for that to happen at a larger scale, it's still a ways away. A review paper I found claims Europe is recycling these metals the most, but that's only at five percent.

And also this thirst for current EV vehicles, wind turbines, weapons. The supply doesn't seem to be meeting the demand. Walter also doesn't believe we have enough of these metals now and that the ocean is the more reasonable place to get them. Any mining will disturb where it's mined. So we are saying that with current technology, we believe that the disturbance we are making in the ocean is less of effect than the mining in the rest.

rainforest, for instance. So it has to be a balance. It does have to be a balance. But what is the right balance, you know? Yeah. I mean, we don't know exactly what mining will do to the ocean floor. There has been testing sites. Yes, that's true. And you looked into this, like, what did those reveal? Yes. There have been quite a few studies on the potential environmental impact of deep sea mining. One of the most significant is the European JPI Oceans Project Mining Impact, which Matias has led since 2015. As part of their work, they went to two places, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the CCZ, yes, which we've been talking about, and a part of the Peru Basin. To look how in the last up to four decades these distemes experiment areas have evolved. In the 80s and 90s, both the CCZ and the Peru Basin were used to stage experimental.

sites, basically areas where scientists simulated mining by disturbing the sediment. So, I mean, what does it? What does it look like decades later? The sediment had very little recovery. They basically looked like yesterday. And the reason for that is that the energy flow into the deep sea is very low. Because like you said, Gina, less than 1% of marine snow of that organic material falls into the deep sea. Everything down there just grows so slowly. So if mining were to ever happen someday and nodules were to be removed, Matthias says they would not come back anytime soon. They are gone.

So the specific fauna that needs these hard substrates, the manganese nodules, for their life, the basis of their life is gone permanently on our human time scales. Which means there could be fewer animals and less biodiversity in places where mining has happened. This could affect habitats. all the way up the water column. Right, because historically, the vehicles that have gathered up these nodules use a suction device like a vacuum cleaner to remove the top 15 centimeters of sediment, which kicks up a huge mining plume.

Yeah, it creates almost a dust cloud in the ocean. Yeah, and as material gets pumped to the surface for processing, the nodules are kept, and all the other material just goes back down into the ocean. Right, kind of affecting habitat all the way to the bottom. And now, there are newer and better methods for deep sea mining out there, but at least when you look at just the research, what we know from these test sites, it is clear. These environments are fragile. They take a long time to recover. And it's one of many reasons that 38 countries have now called for a moratorium, a pause on deep sea mining until scientists can figure out the safest way to do it. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and Burley McCoy. It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez and Tyler Jones Check the Facts.

Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is her senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. And I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to this final episode of Sea Camp, the summer ocean series from Shortwave, The Science Podcast, from NPR. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.