Sea Camp: To Mine Or Not To Mine

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 https://www.npr.org/people/1082526815/regina-g-barber and Emily Kwong https://www.npr.org/people/767284140/emily-kwong dive into this debate and talk about what science has to say. Curious about other science controversies? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen 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 http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://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 https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel? That's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.

• 0:15Emily Kwong?

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:21Regina Barber?

  Hey, Short Wavers. Regina Barber here.

• 0:23Emily Kwong?

  And Emily Kwong with news. We've reached the final episode in our summertime series, Sea Camp.

• 0:28Regina Barber?

  And our final story brings us back to the ocean floor, the benthic zone,

• 0:34Regina Barber?

  with one of the most significant human activities in the deep sea: mining.

• 0:38Emily Kwong?

  The deep sea is home to a lot of things.

• 0:41Regina Barber?

  Animals, sand.

• 0:43Emily Kwong?

  But it's also--

• 0:45Regina Barber?

  Sand, sediment.

• 0:47Emily Kwong?

  But it's also home to nodules of rare earth elements, elements used for everything from smartphones to electric cars to fighter jets.

• 0:54Speaker 03

  And the ones that are of economic interest are then cobalt, nickel, copper, rare earth elements, lithium and others.

• 1:03Emily Kwong?

  This is Matthias Heckel, a marine geochemist at Guimar Helmholt Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany.

• 1:10Regina Barber?

  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.

• 1:21Emily Kwong?

  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 draw up regulations, basically rules for how countries should mine in international waters. At the UN Ocean Summit in early June, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for countries to respect the ISA's process.

• 1:46Speaker 04

  I support the ongoing work of the International Seabed Authority on this important issue. The deep sea cannot become the Wild West.

• 2:00Regina Barber?

  But mining companies in some countries don't want to wait any longer.

• 2:04Emily Kwong?

  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.

• 2:14Regina Barber?

  And the company among the first to throw their hat into the ring is The Metals Company, a Canadian startup led by Gerard Baron. Speaking to Daniel Ackerman for NPR earlier this year, he compared these polymetallic nodules to golf balls.

• 2:28Speaker 05

  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.

• 2:40Emily Kwong?

  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.

• 2:49Regina Barber?

  But Walther Sognes, 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.

• 3:03Speaker 06

  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.

• 3:13Regina Barber?

  Today on the show, in the clash between the mining industry and international regulators, what does deep-sea science have to say?

• 3:20Emily Kwong?

  What happens when we disturb the sediment at the bottom of the sea?

• 3:23Regina Barber?

  I'm Regina Barber.

• 3:24Emily Kwong?

  And I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 4:54Regina Barber?

  All right, and let's start with science. How are critical minerals developing in the deep sea?

• 4:59Emily Kwong?

  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.

• 5:10Speaker 08

  This is an area that stretches from Hawaii to about Mexico in international waters. So an enormous ocean space.

• 5:17Emily Kwong?

  Diva Amon 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 the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which contains billions of tons of what are known as polymetallic nodules.

• 5:34Speaker 08

  These cherry-to-potato-sized lumps of metal, if you will, that sit on top of the sediment.

• 5:41Emily Kwong?

  And act as anchor points for all kinds of marine life.

• 5:45Speaker 08

  So things like corals, anemones, sponges, worms, they all attach to these nodules.

• 5:52Regina Barber?

  And those become a home for mobile organisms, right? Like brittle stars and crustaceans and like all kinds of microorganisms, too.

• 5:59Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, a lot depends on these nodules. Matthias, the German scientist we met earlier, and Diva emphasized again and again that the Clarion-Clipperton 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.

• 6:17Regina Barber?

  Right.

• 6:17Emily Kwong?

  At an average rate of tens of millimeters per million years. So like fossil fuels. These nodules are not a renewable resource.

• 6:27Regina Barber?

  Okay, Em, let's talk about like how these nodules form in the first place. Overall, that long period of time, millions of years.

• 6:34Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Regina Barber?

  Right, like, so why are so many metals inside of them?

• 6:38Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, there are two main ways to make a nodule. Adorption of metals through the water column and diffusion of metals from the sediment. Let's talk about adsorption first.

• 6:48Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I've never heard adsorption before.

• 6:51Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, me neither. It happens when a particle, so picture a fishbone or a shark tooth, falls to the bottom of the ocean floor.

• 6:58Regina Barber?

  My eyes are closed, I can see it.

• 6:59Emily Kwong?

  Yep, it's just like drifting down and it lands, boom. And then over millions of years, metals from the water column accumulate around that shark tooth and coat the tooth with layers of adsorbed metals.

• 7:11Regina Barber?

  Okay.

• 7:11Emily Kwong?

  Mainly manganese oxides and iron oxyhydroxides, which co-precipitate to produce the metals that everyone's talking about.

• 7:17Regina Barber?

  Right, so like nickel, copper, cobalt, and other rare earth elements, we're gonna call them REEs.

• 7:23Emily Kwong?

  Yes, that's the first way. The second way, diffusion, is driven by microbes breaking down organic material.

• 7:29Regina Barber?

  So where is this organic material coming from?

• 7:32Emily Kwong?

  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.

• 7:44Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I've heard it called marine snow. And less than 1% of marine snow makes it all the way down.

• 7:50Emily Kwong?

  But given the chance, microbes in the sediment will degrade that organic material.

• 7:55Regina Barber?

  Okay.

• 7:55Emily Kwong?

  And during this process, metals are released. Diffusion then transports these metals to the sediment surface.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  They oxidize again and then precipitate as oxyhydroxides and get incorporated into the manganese nodules.

• 8:10Emily Kwong?

  And form dun-dun-dun polymetallic nodules.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  That's a second pathway, and that's a little bit faster than the absorption through the water column.

• 8:18Regina Barber?

  And this is where science meets economics, right, Em?

• 8:21Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Regina Barber?

  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 sea nodules, this nickel, copper, and cobalt. And there's been a big surge in EV demand since the 2010s.

• 8:40Speaker 06

  There is a reason why 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.

• 8:53Regina Barber?

  So that's Walter again, the CEO of Glomar Minerals. Now, a 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.

• 9:09Emily Kwong?

  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?

• 9:19Regina Barber?

  So, some people, including Walter, say deep sea mining is about shifting political control of these metals.

• 9:26Speaker 06

  The issue is then, where are they mined from and who is controlling the mining?

• 9:31Regina Barber?

  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, like, critical mineral supply.

• 9:54Speaker 06

  It's going to be very difficult for Western companies to come into that. And the deep sea minerals are an alternative.

• 10:01Regina Barber?

  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."

• 10:23Emily Kwong?

  Oh, I'm starting to see the political dynamics at play here.

• 10:27Regina Barber?

  Yes.

• 10:28Emily Kwong?

  Though, short-term, right? Because, again, long-term companies may move away from products that require rare earth elements.

• 10:36Emily Kwong?

  You mentioned earlier sodium ion batteries and alternative tech.

• 10:40Regina Barber?

  Yeah, and countries may be able to build up their 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 5%. 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.

• 11:08Speaker 06

  Any mining will disturb where it's mined. So we are saying that with new tech, with current technology, we believe that disturbance we are making in the ocean is less of effect than the mining in the rainforest, for instance. So it has to be a balance.

• 11:28Emily Kwong?

  It does have to be a balance. But what is the right balance, you know?

• 11:34Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I mean, we don't know exactly what mining will do to the ocean floor. There has been testing sites.

• 11:42Emily Kwong?

  Yes, that's true.

• 11:43Regina Barber?

  And you looked into this, like, what did those reveal?

• 11:45Emily Kwong?

  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 Clifford and Zone, the CCZ, yes, which we've been talking about, and a part of the Peru Basin.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  To look how in the last up to four decades, these disturbance experiment areas have evolved.

• 12:18Emily Kwong?

  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.

• 12:29Regina Barber?

  So, I mean, what does it, what does it look like decades later?

• 12:32Emily Kwong?

  The sediment had very little recovery.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  They basically look like yesterday. And the reason for that is that the energy flow into the deep sea is very low.

• 12:44Emily Kwong?

  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, Matias says they would not come back anytime soon.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  They are gone. So that this specific fauna that needs these hard substrates, the manganese nodules, for their life, that the basis of their life is gone permanently on our human time scales.

• 13:15Emily Kwong?

  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.

• 13:24Regina Barber?

  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.

• 13:36Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, it creates almost a dust cloud in the ocean.

• 13:40Regina Barber?

  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.

• 13:47Emily Kwong?

  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.

• 14:21Regina Barber?

  This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and Burley McCoy. It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez and Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber.

• 14:37Emily Kwong?

  And I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to this final episode of Sea Camp, the summer ocean series from Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 14:45Regina Barber?

  Just keep swimming.

• 14:46Emily Kwong?

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

• 14:52Speaker 07

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.