What is Deep-Sea Mining, the Destructive Activity Threatening Our Ocean Floors?

At the end of April 2025, Donald Trump signed a particularly harmful decree for the health of his territorial waters and for all those around the world in general. In accordance with the return of a republican slogan dated from 2008 “Drill, Baby, Drill” (Fore, Chéri, Fore) pronounced during his inauguration, the 47th President of the United States therefore brought up to date Deep-Sea-mining or the mining of the seabed.

Deep-Sea Mining what is this ?

Translated in a literal way, this English expression means the mining of the seabed. But what does that correspond concretely?

Is this a new way to see hydrocarbon extraction in the sea? Well not. But then what do we find at the bottom of the oceans so that we are interested in it that much?

The answer is in two words: nodules.

Said like that, it's not very clear. So let's bring a little clarity. THE Deep-Sea Mining consists in the extraction, from the ocean floor of nodules. It is, according to National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) of “Metal balls.”Yes, well, it's not clearer.

And if you were told then that these metals that are found in very, very, large quantity at 4 or 5 kilometers deep contain rare metals (cobalt, nickel, manganese, etc.) that can be found in smartphones, portable computers or in batteries of electric vehicles. It's good, you normally see why some players in the middle are now interested in the content of the ocean floor.

But why do we have “need” Deep-Sea Mining ? Do we not find these rare metals directly at the level of the surface?

Of course, if, we even found it full and that's what allowed us to have the latest iPhone or the latest fashionable Mac. But, as the human is greedy and has only become aware for very short time, that the resources of the earth are not “unlimited”, we have almost already exhausted. And the laws of the market are ferocious: we must meet the ever growing demand.

So here is why Donald Trump decided to grant the right to certain companies to be able to practice the Deep-Sea Mining. But as a generous man, he also allowed these same companies not to limit himself to American territorial waters.

Thus, mining companies therefore have a piece of paper allowing them to set up activities of Deep-Sea mining in international waters.

Like that, everyone can take advantage of … pollution, even areas located 4 or 5 kilometers deep which, until then, had almost never known human activities.

How does it work and what are the consequences?

But how do you practice the Deep-Sea Mining? Do we send men with a pickaxe and pliers to raise the metal balls? It would obviously be too dangerous.

No, we send special machines that will aim to scrape the seabed to recover these famous nodules. Kinds of “combine harvesters“, As Mnhn says, who”would destroy the integrity of the ocean floor”. These marine vehicles would be connected to a surface mining platform which would keep the nodules and which, of course, would reject the unwanted residues captured in the seabed, just to pollute the surface.

But long before this pollution by rejection of residues, Deep-Sea Mining would result in the destruction of the biodiversity of the ocean floor. Some acting as real garbage collectors, the living beings that can be found there destroy all the organic waste that flows to them to prosper and thus develop.

The seabed are still very unknown to us and we do not know precisely what we could find there which would be worth protected, except for nodules of course, that's important, and perhaps also … several million living beings?

It is not just a simple nodules sample that is proposed by the Deep-Sea Miningbut a brutal transformation of the seabed ecosystem. Several specialists warn against this practice which, to satisfy a need for consumption, could endanger ultimatelythe whole ocean.

Liberation of carbon, water warming, destruction of the ecosystem and biodiversity, noise pollution, water pollution … And that, without necessarily knowing if the seabed will be able to renew themselves after the passage of the machines.

“” “If restoration is possible, it will take a long time, and for the moment, we do not have any data necessary to determine whether it will take 100 or 1000 years”Explained Jozée Sarrazin, an Ifremer scientist, to AFP in remarks reported by Physical.