A report commissioned by the National Ocean Protection Coalition and authored by Michael Barnard and Lyle Trytten, “A Techno-Economic Assessment of Seabed Mining,” found that the economic, environmental, and technical challenges associated with deep-sea mining make profitability or commercial success highly unlikely within the next 15 years, yet the administration is pushing forward with these sales anyway. Moving forward with the lease sales could give mining companies control of vast swaths of the American seabed for the next 20 years, despite serious environmental, cultural, and economic concerns from nearby communities.
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Deep-sea mining is technologically speculative
Several types of seabed mining have been proposed across the United States, including the mining of polymetallic nodules, mineral-rich crusts of volcanic seamounts, rocky mounds near hydrothermal vents, and mineral-heavy sands. In American Samoa, companies are looking to recover polymetallic nodules, potato-sized rocks found on the deep-sea floor that take millions of years to form and contain critical minerals such as manganese, copper, cobalt, and nickel.
According to the seabed mining report, mining companies have proposed two different methods to recover nodules from the deep sea. One method, referred to here as “the vacuum,” would deploy a tethered seabed crawler, roughly the size of a bulldozer, with a vertical riser pipe that lifts—or vacuums—nodules, bringing them to a surface vessel. This design is technically feasible, but its sustained commercial viability is questionable—it requires energy-intensive operations and high vessel capital costs, and it causes metal-rich sediment plumes, posing significant environmental risk.
A second method investigated in the report, referred to here as “the grabber,” would deploy a fleet of untethered autonomous underwater vehicles to selectively collect and deliver nodules to a support vessel on the surface. The grabber has been marketed by prospective mining companies as an option that is more environmentally friendly than other technologies due to its selective collection of nodules. Hypothetically, this selective collection would minimize sediment disturbances, and its artificial intelligence image recognition system may avoid nodules with sea life attached. Still, the grabber technology is speculative, and no studies have verified that it would work, let alone lessen environmental impacts.
In addition to recovery, processing and refining seabed nodules at scale poses another challenge to any company pursuing deep-sea mining, according to the report. Although nodule processing through smelting-refining or pressure acid leaching may be viable, the ultimate recovery rates of valuable products remain uncertain, and there are currently no established processing routes or facilities that can process a seabed nodule through to a finished product. Additionally, nodules retain several naturally occurring uranium-series radioisotopes that can cause radiation exposure in marine and human life if not handled properly.
Deep-sea mining lacks economic feasibility
For 70 years, industry forecasts have consistently claimed that deep-sea mining is at least a decade away from commercial viability. Deep-sea mining requires large capital and operational expenditures because of the high costs of extraction, distribution, processing, and refining. Mining companies listed in the seabed mining report underestimated these expenditures, thus seemingly overestimating the economic viability of their projects.
The report found that the grabber technology has highly speculative economic viability and is associated with moderate regulatory and geopolitical risks due to high technological uncertainty, a finding that has been contested by proponents. On the other hand, the vacuum technology has more realistic economic viability but is associated with moderate-to-high regulatory and geopolitical risks because of its potential to cause environmental damage. Moreover, a separate report commissioned by the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, Greenpeace International, and MiningWatch Canada claimed the vacuum technology described by the Barnard-Trytten report has no financial or technical viability, and several reports from Iceberg Research have also found that “the economics simply do not work.”
There are also challenges to future profitability when forecasting demand for metals on the global market. According to the report, market analysis has indicated that there is limited upside for seabed nodules given current supply and demand for nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper. Recycling trends also suggest a further downward price risk, as there are indications that long-term demand for newly extracted materials will stabilize or decline. Additionally, seabed mining faces significant opposition from key consumer sectors, which may affect the market value of products derived from deep-sea mining. Companies such as Google, BMW, Samsung SDI, and Volvo have already pledged not to source seabed-derived minerals.
Deep-sea mining is environmentally risky
Deep-sea mining poses a serious threat to marine ecosystems, with the potential to cause irreversible damage to the seabed and surrounding ocean resources. The process involves disturbing vast areas of the ocean floor, releasing sediment plumes containing toxic metals that can spread for miles. A 2025 study published in Nature Communications revealed that waste discharge from deep-sea mining operations could significantly reduce food availability for deep-ocean species, effectively starving marine life. These findings underscore growing concerns among scientists and environmentalists that deep-sea mining may permanently alter fragile habitats that have taken millennia to form.
Local communities bear the burden of deep-sea mining
In public statements, Trump administration officials have expressed the belief that critical minerals are essential to America’s “national security, economic strength and resource sovereignty,” yet there is widespread public opposition among those in the U.S. Pacific territories who have to live with the environmental and social outcomes.
Indigenous leaders have identified the Trump administration’s approach as “resource colonialism,” a model in which extraction proceeds, profits flow outward, and Indigenous peoples and local communities are left with permanent ecological damage and no economic return. A rushed approach will continue to leave communities who bear the burden of deep-sea mining out of the conversation. Instead, the administration should give local leaders time to understand these initiatives, commit to equitable and transparent communication, and respect the wishes of communities.
Take the time to get it right
During the initial requests for information issued in 2025, BOEM received 75,000 comments for American Samoa and 60,000 comments for the Mariana Islands in opposition to Trump’s mining plans. In its rush to mine the deep sea, the administration ignored most of the public comments and the concerns of local officials while nearly doubling the area being leased in the Marianas and American Samoa.
Matt Giacona, acting director of the Marine Minerals Administration, claimed in a release that the administration is advancing these leases “responsibly, transparently” and with “rigorous environmental review.” In July, the agency sent Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands a Coastal Zone Management Act “negative determination,” meaning that the agency had determined preliminary exploration activities would not cause reasonably foreseeable adverse effects on local coastal resources due to their distance offshore. Yet this determination was developed with no local expertise or participation. Northern Mariana Islands Gov. David Apatang put a fine point on the rushed and seemingly secretive process when he told AFP in August, “There have been no consultations with the people of the Northern Mariana Islands.”
It is bad public policy to exclude the people who are affected by these decisions, and even worse that these decisions are being made on a compressed timeline. Giving local leaders and communities more time to understand these initiatives would lead to more durable outcomes in the long run.
Commit to equitable and transparent communication with affected communities
Americans living in the U.S. territories do not have voting representation in the U.S. Congress, are not allowed to vote for the president, and have limited capacity to petition their government. This disenfranchisement and marginalization make it harder for communities there to participate in federal processes.
Trump administration officials committed to working with local governments even as they attempted to change the regulations that require working with them. Top-down approaches such as these often lead to social injustice and unintended consequences.
Instead, the federal government should co-create proposals for ocean management, inclusive of fisheries, marine protected areas, marine research, and other potential industrial uses, such as deep-sea mining. This could include prioritizing jobs, programs, and funding or creating a fund or endowment, similar to the Western Pacific Sustainable Fisheries Fund, to ensure benefits make their way to these communities and that they are not only burdened with costs.
Respect local wishes
States and territories that call for a deep-sea mining moratorium off their coasts should be respected by the federal government. Currently, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Guam ban deep-sea mining in state and territorial waters.
The myth of national security
Critical minerals are used in a variety of products, from electric vehicle batteries to weapons systems. China currently dominates global supply chains for these minerals, a significant national security concern for the United States. Some proponents of deep-sea mining argue it is needed to secure supply chains and gain an advantage over the United States’ main economic competitor. However, Barnard and Trytten’s research shows that such enthusiasm for deep-sea mining represents more wishful thinking than reality, and the costs of the administration’s approach far outweigh their hope for national security benefits. Additionally, the key bottleneck for critical mineral resource security is not resource extraction but processing, something that deep-sea mining does not solve for. Today, regardless of where critical minerals are sourced, most of the refining and processing continue to take place in China. The United States currently does not have domestic facilities that can be modified for processing nodules, and there is no quick commercial route to establishing one.
Conclusion
Deep-sea mining constitutes a dangerous experiment; today, it is both technologically and economically speculative, and it poses immense risks to the environment and human health. Planet Tracker, a British think tank, found that the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining may be 25 times those of terrestrial mining and potentially far more. The Trump administration’s upcoming lease sales will be the first commercial lease sales of polymetallic nodules ever, and the widespread disapproval of communities in American Samoa, the Mariana Islands, and across the United States raises questions of procedural justice and corruption. The sell-off of the outer continental shelves for deep-sea mining will endanger the health of U.S. oceans and the health, well-being, and livelihoods of all those who rely on them.
The authors of this column would like to thank Cathleen Kelly for fact-checking, and Drew McConville, Allison McManus, Kendra Hughes, and Jonathan Fritz for their insights.