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4/5/2026
 Got water questions? Give us a call at 877-52-WATER (877-529-2837), or email us at info@wtny.us
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 1159 am EDT
US and Canada have promised to expedite new land-based mining permits, looking at deep seabed mining outside of international authority. Can we satisfy our appetite for critical minerals without cataclysmic planetary damage?
Mining is a flawed industry.
Critical minerals mining is the dark side of clean energy, the dirty end of personal electronics and the digital infrastructure upon which we have become dependent. Gen Z may have the answers. Passionate about new technology development, waste and environmental harm reduction, Gen Z professionals entering the mining sector over the next ten years will make the industry better with their values and determination.
— concepts from Marion Olivier, PhD student at Queen's University, her essay published in Mar 2026 Northern Miner
Five weeks into the war with Iran, the crippling pain of supply shortages and surging energy prices are hitting everywhere at once. Pain hits most acutely in the Middle East. Neighboring nations under bombardment have been unable to land essential supplies, now seeking approval to defend their supply ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The UN Security Council vote has been postponed to next Tuesday. If passed, this resolution will authorize UN member nations to team up in defense of supply vessels in the Strait. China opposed the original resolution, that members be authorized to use defensive military force. This matter is another strike, firing up the US resolve to reduce dependence on China for vital materials.
US domestic security and resilience under the Trump Administration has come dressed in the colors of right-wing policy think tank, the Heritage Foundation. As the Executive Orders rolled off the President's desk from January 2025, industries and manufacturing got a boost, firing up domestic production once again. Renewable energy projects have been paused, while coal rose in the electrical generation mix for the first time in more than a decade. Barriers were dropped, supporting rapid development in mining, logging and drilling projects at home. Private industries were recruited to scale up production with generous concessions offered; business-prohibitive fees and fines for air and water contamination have been waived or repealed.
Leaning on the 1950 Defense Production Act, the US President is entitled to (Title I) direct private industrial entities to prioritize critical materials supplies for national defense ; (Title III) offer financial incentives to increase critical materials and goods production and (Title XII) foster cooperation across all levels and agencies of government with private industry. All of this is underway today.
Critical Minerals
The base materials supporting our ever-growing demand for new construction, defense hardware, batteries, electronics and data processing, including nickel, cobalt, copper, lithium and manganese. According to Colin McClelland, in his editorial for the March 2026 edition of Northern Miner, copper lands at the top strategic priority globally. In 2024, the US produced 1.1 million tons of copper, while Canada produced roughly half that volume, all in concentrate form, all of it shipped out for processing. The US and Canada each landed in the top five global producers of these materials for 2025, however, both lag well behind China. With China controlling approximately 60% of rare earth elements (REE) mining and 90% of REE refining worldwide*, even with expedited permitting and incentives, the US and Canada may make it to the metals podium by working together. In Feb 2026, Project Vault was announced, with $12 billion allocated for acquiring and stockpiling the critical minerals in the USA, Canadian mining companies are among the key players.
*Mining and Minerals Today, Top 5 Mining Countries in 2025: Global Leaders in Mineral Production.
How, and from where will the US secure its supply of critical minerals?
Greenland and Canada have been put on notice that Uncle Sam wants/needs the metals and will stop at nothing to have them. Canada threw elbows at first mention of the 51st state rhetoric, as insulted as Greenland at the idea of being "taken" by the US. One year later, mining policies have aligned, Canadian companies are marching in lockstep with Washington DC; Ottawa appears to be going along quietly with the US mission to gear up a domestic stockpile of necessary goods.
Canada holds cards. Global Mining Headquarters is rich with geology and well stocked with technical expertise, repeatedly successful professional managers and eager international investors. High quality companies engage the same winning executive managers from one project to the next. The Northern Miner is the quintessential industry publication, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) hosts the largest gathering for miners and investors in the world. PDAC 2026 wrapped up last month in Toronto, with much ado about critical minerals on the agenda. US Bureau of Energy had an increased presence this year.
Deep Seabed Mineral Deposits
Since 1965, the high seas have been inventoried by exploration projects launched from many countries, with environmental protection groups forming to counter mining development at every step. Rich deposits of critical minerals have been identified. Dozens of subsea mining companies are currently licensed for exploration by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a management body under UN Oceans, tasked with protecting the ocean floor habitats and ecosystems, allowing mining if it can be done without serious harm.
Over the decades, the environmental lobby has managed to shut down subsea exploration for several years at a time, placing a strain on projects to retain investors. Over the decades, there have been many resurrections and re-configurations, "getting the band back together", so to speak, the same players are recycled through different ventures. As the demand for critical minerals surges in our current context, in some part driven by the elective use of advanced personal electronics devices and increasing data processing and storage, the pendulum is swinging once again toward the deep seabed deposits.
Seabed metals deposits come in one of three forms:
1. Seabed massive sulfides (SMS)
Described as "chimneys", the stacks grow over millions of years, up to 15 m high, from the chemistry leaking out of the hydrothermal vents in the sea floor. These are found in various locations of the Pacific Ocean, Ring of Fire.
2. Polymetallic nodules
These small structures grow very slowly, taking millions of years to reach baseball size, the nodules contain several high value target minerals.
3. Cobalt rich crusts
Also called deep seamount crusts, contain all the critical minerals, also millions of years old.
Deep Seabed Mining is not on the official international menu
According to UN Oceans, administering the Convention on Law of the Sea, the international community must agree on terms and a mining code for the deep seabed, largely undocumented in terms of its flora and fauna. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) represents 170 member nations in its first purpose, the protection of the deep seabed as the common heritage of humankind. Forty countries have indicated support for a moratorium on deep seabed mining development until more scientific consensus emerges about the habitats, the creatures and the risks and potential harms.
Where ISA can agree on its first purpose, described above, ISA is to engage in the permitting and regulation of metals harvesting. Seabed mining exploration has been allowed since 1970, however there is no sense of terms to regulate mining. ISA concluded its 31st Council at global headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica last month, without issuing the long-awaited mining code. Legal minds close to the issue say, as long as the majority of deep seabed flora and fauna remain undocumented, there can be no definition of harm or protection, and therefore no mining code.
The USA, Canada and the "Common Heritage of Humankind"
The USA has never been a member of ISA, nor ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administers an ocean exploration permitting process based on a Carter-era law, the 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Resource Act (DSHMRA). The Heritage Foundation posits the counter-point to ISA and the presumption of global co-operation and forced redistribution of wealth to developing nations.
See WT article, The US White House has departed UN Oceans, UN Water and 64 other international organizations while repealing environmental protections at home. What impact could the increased individual economic freedoms have on international, shared drinking water resources?, here.
In the 2012 policy paper titled, "The U.S. Can Mine the Deep Seabed Without Joining the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea", Steven Groves writes, "No legal barriers prohibit U.S. access, exploration, or exploitation of the resources of the deep seabed. Deep seabed mining is a "high seas freedom" that all nations may engage in regardless of their membership or non-membership in UNCLOS or any other treaty." The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank with lobbyists in Washington, DC working to protect and preserve American sovereignty, self-governance, and independence. This group authored the policy playbook for the current administration, with efficient mobilization of policy in support of economic freedom for the individual.
The Metals Company (TMC) from Canada is touted the undisputed leader of licensed subsea miners. According to self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur, Philip Gales on his website deepseamining.ac, "The Metals Company is a Vancouver-based operating company that holds licenses in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone for mining polymetallic nodules. It is a publicly traded company that trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker TMC. The Metals Company is widely regarded as being one of the most advanced deep sea mining companies. It has carried out a number of exploratory and test cruises in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, including a collector test of a 1/5th scale collector and RALS. The Metals Company has a partnership with Allseas, and uses Allsea's "Hidden Gem" as their production support vessel for deep sea mining operations."
WT caught up with TMC at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference in March 2026. Craig Shesky is Chief Financial Officer for TMC, attending the trade show at PDAC. According to Shesky, TMC has been exploring the Clarion Clipperton Zone and examining its curious polymetallic nodules for decades. Unlike the massive sulfide chimneys growing up over hydrothermal vents in the BIsmarck Sea, these nodules are small, about the size of a dinner bun, sitting lightly and loosely on the sediment, unattached to the seafloor.
Shesky and his colleague at the trade show, Elizabeth Harris, explained that during mining, the collector unit will roll over the sea floor, picking up the copper-cobalt-manganese-nickel nodules intact, shooting them up to the surface through what looks like a vacuum tube. It would appear that in the course of picking up the nodules, there is no physical damage to the seafloor or to the nodules themselves. No solvents are used, and any sediment disturbed by the collector settles back down under the immense pressure at 4.5 km below sea level. The collected nodules will be transferred to another vessel and taken to shore for processing, where 100% of the mass is valued. There is no waste.
Compared to land-based mining, this scenario seems preferable. We asked how the licensing path broke down with ISA, and how it came to be that TMC opted for licensing with US NOAA. A spokesperson for TMC provided an official response by email:
"For more than 15 years we worked in good faith with the International Seabed Authority and our developing state partners to responsibly advance this industry. But the ISA has yet to deliver the regulatory framework it was created to establish, leaving operators and sponsoring states without the certainty needed to move forward. The United States already has a longstanding legal framework for deep-seabed mining, supported by an experienced regulator in NOAA and a history of environmental review in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. As uncertainty continues at the ISA, TMC is pursuing a pathway under the U.S. regime to advance responsible development of seabed minerals needed for energy, infrastructure, and defense.
It should be noted here that dozens of companies hold licenses to explore the deep sea; beyond Canada's TMC, Gales lists several Norwegian companies, including Loke, Scanmudring, Green Minerals, GSR and Adpeth. India, France, Germany, South Korea, UK and Japan all have players in the subsea field. Production support vessels are provided by AllSeas, GSR and TransOcean. Services are provided to support licensees by Deep Reach Technology, engineering consultants active since the 1970's with patents for trenching the seafloor around massive sulfide chimneys.
Deep Sea Mining Finance (DSMF) DSMF is listed as a license holder for Seabed Massive Sulfides in the Exclusive Economic Zones of Papua New Guinea and Tonga. WT ran across another Canadian undersea mining co, Nautilus Minerals while investigating accounts of human illness and fish die-off in Papua New Guinea. See Toxic Ocean mystery unfolding in Papua New Guinea: Hundreds of children among more than 750 local residents fallen ill from contact with the water, here.
As we heard from community members how they had become ill following contact with sea water in December 2025, and that thousands of dead fish and eels, even a reef shark were turning up all along the east coast to this day, a discussion on possible causes included mention of mine waste disposal from the two gold mines in the area. Subsea disposal of mine tailings was listed as a potential source of toxicity, along with fertilizer runoff from palm oil plantations sparking harmful algae. Someone mentioned a seabed sulfide mine on the west side of the province, out in the Bismarck Sea. We looked into the Solwara 1 mine, initiated by Nautilus Minerals of Canada in 2011. Nautilus formed a subsidiary for the exploration of this site full of massive sulfide chimneys full of metals, owned in part by Papua New Guinea, and financed by DSMF.
Solwara 1 mine lies within the exclusive economic zone of PNG, not international waters under the jurisdiction and protection of ISA. Local communities and a group of ocean environmental activists from Australia raised a force of opposition to their own government, partnered with the Canadian mining company, exploring in the Bismarck Sea. Locals oppose the disturbance of their fishing industry, on which they subsist and depend. Marine scientists have a very compelling argument for leaving the chimneys alone. Each thermal vent is said to support a unique ecosystem, hosting life forms not found anywhere else in the world, creatures thriving off chemosynthesis, a little understood process.
In spite of the local opposition, the PNG government issued a twenty year mining exploration permit or concession to a subsidiary of Nautilus Minerals, with 15% ownership by PNG. Nautilus Minerals was managed by CEO Glenn Withers, financed by DSMF. Plagued by local opposition and failing to raise the investment required to continue with business, Nautilus Minerals Inc. filed for bankruptcy in Feb 2019. The court appointed PriceWaterhouseCoopers to monitor and manage the dissolution of assets and settlement of debts. We reached out to the trustee to find out what happened to the exploration permit for Solwara 1, the response had not been received as of publication date. A search of the records found a "new Nautilus", no longer publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, went right on raising investment funds, filing an application with PNG Mineral Resources Authority for its predecessor's permit.
From the international interests gathered around PNG communities struggling with mystery toxic ocean effects, we learned of a vessel named Coco, appearing at the Solwara 1 site in June 2024, allegedly unannounced to the locals. An unnamed source tells us this expedition was financed by DSMF, owned by Russian and Oman billionaires, with the former Nautilus Minerals permit-concession valid to 2031 in hand. Willem Marx was invited aboard Coco, shooting for a PBS documentary. In the video clip time-stamped June 29, 2024, Marx caught a failure of the "grabber" , the equipment used to break off and lift the massive sulfide chimney to the surface. The grabber did not close completely, carrying and dispersing fine sulfide particulates upward through the entire water column.
According to a scientific paper on rapid acidification of sulfide ore, specific to the Solwara 1 deposit, the formation of acid is possible if the material is pulverized in the water. "Kinetics of sulfide mineral oxidation in seawater: Implications for acid generation during in situ mining of seafloor hydrothermal vent deposits" by Laura Bilenker, et al, states
"On the ocean floor, it can be argued that the high buffer capacity and low oxygen solubility of cold seawater should act to reduce the marine equivalent of acid mine drainage (AMD) from exploited SMS deposits...
However, in situ deep-sea mining of SMS deposits may still produce circumstances that are far more conducive to rapid acid generation than is first assumed when compared to terrestrial mining settings.
One proposed mining strategy is to pulverize the chimneys and mounds in situ using remotely operated vehicles to allow the ore to be quickly and economically slurried in pipelines to surface processing ships (Gwyther and Wright, 2008, Drew, 2009, Baker and Beaudoin, 2013).
Consequently, the fresh pulverized sulfide mineral grains will have extremely high specific surface areas and be entrained in an environment of high seawater advection both at the mining site and during transport to the warmer surface conditions. All of these factors promote more rapid oxidation compared to natural weathering rates on the seafloor. In addition, processing wastes such as the finest (≤8 μm) non-settling grains and non-economic sulfide minerals (e.g., pyrrhotite) will be released via return pipeline directly above the seafloor in another highly advective environment (0.3 m3/s). If the rate of particle oxidation and sulfuric acid release is rapid enough in such settings to temporarily exceed the buffer capacity of seawater, then ecologic effects caused by increased acidity cannot be ruled out.
No one can say when the US will begin issuing deep seabed mining permits under the authority of NOAA and the 1980 DSHMRA. It seems certain that Canadian companies will be first to start collecting polymetallic nodules from the Pacific Clarion Clipperton Zone. With any luck, the fragile seabed massive sulfides will be left intact in the Bismarck Sea for another million years. More to follow.
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