Ocean NGOs and advocacy organisations have strongly condemned the latest move from the Canadian mining firm, The Metals Company to fast-track its deep-sea mining operation with an application through the US permitting process to commence work in international waters.

Through its US subsidiary, The Metals Company USA, the firm has submitted a consolidated application to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for an exploration license and a commercial recovery permit for polymetallic nodules in the international waters of the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean.

Filed under the NOAA’s new consolidated application and review process, it represents the first submission of its kind. It also marks a stark upscaling of ambition since the company logged its original commercial recovery permit application in April last year. 

Back then, TMC USA had applied for a recovery permit covering some 25,000-square kilometres of the Clarion Clipperton Zone. Its latest application almost triples that area, applying for an exploration and recovery permit across some 65,000-square kilometres.

Unsurprisingly, the application has been strongly condemned by those in favour of protecting the deep sea environment and shielding the global ocean and the life that depends upon it from further industrial harm. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition has accused the Metals Company of an attempt to undermine the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) by bypassing ongoing multilateral negotiations at the International Seabed Authority.

“Just days after the High Seas Treaty has entered into force, this application to unilaterally mine the global commons is a direct challenge to international law and a threat to the marine environment and the common heritage of humankind,” said Sofia Tsenikli, global campaign director at the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.

Tsenikli has called upon ISA Member States to take urgency in establishing a moratorium on deep-sea mining and send a clear message to governments, financiers, and the industry “that the global commons are off limits to deep-sea mining”.

“The moment requires bold and immediate action,” she said.

The Metals Company claims its ambition to mine the deep-seabed of the Clarion Clipperton Zone is founded both on an economic model and a newly published paper demonstrating that both biodiversity and sediment plume impacts of the seabed mining process are confined to the directly mined area only.

It claims confidence that the paper’s dataset provides a ‘robust, scientifically grounded basis to commence and responsibly scale its commercial operations.’

There is however a growing body of independent science that continues to issue strong warnings of the irreversible biodiversity loss and the long-term ecosystem disruption throughout the water column – including impacts on carbon cycling and sequestration – if the industry is permitted to proceed. Among those scientists is Professor Andrew Sweetman who, this week, released the details of a new expedition to the Clarion Clipperton Zone to better understand the presence and production of ‘dark oxygen’ believed to be emitted by the metallic nodules through either a microbial process or one of chemosynthesis.

Meanwhile, campaigners hold the line that taking unilateral action to bypass international law risks “fundamentally undermining the global maritime order” that has kept the ocean peaceful and shared for decades.

Matthew Gianni, co-founder and senior political advisor at the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said: “Acting outside of UNCLOS doesn’t just set a dangerous precedent for deep-sea mining, it weakens the rules that govern fisheries, navigation, maritime boundaries and security, and invites competing claims and rising geopolitical tensions at sea.

“We urge the 170 countries that have ratified UNCLOS to unite and take action to confront this real and present danger to the health of our ocean and the prosperity it brings to billions of people around the world.”

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