In 2022, researchers reported that extreme heat events in the oceans were ‘the new normal’. As the world burns around us and governments fail to meet emissions targets and continue to exploit the remaining reserves of fossil fuels, an ominous new threat is looming away from the eyes of the public. Deep sea mining is capitalism’s new frontier of exploitation. CLAIRE WILKINSON reports.
In March 2023 average sea surface temperatures climbed to record highs of over 21°C and stayed there for over a month. Since the 1980s, global average sea surface temperatures have stayed between 19.7 and 21°C.
This unprecedented spike in temperature will have effects that will not be restricted to the sea. The world’s oceans have absorbed approximately 90% of the excess heat caused by human activity – but they are also capable of releasing this heat back into the atmosphere, with catastrophic effects.
The deep sea and the organisms that live there are a vast storage mechanism for carbon and methane, which keeps these greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere where they would further accelerate rising temperatures in the sea and on land.
The Earth is a closed system
The biogeochemical cycles that make our planet habitable for human life are complex and fragile. All the elements and nutrients necessary for life must be recycled, as the Earth is essentially a closed system – energy from the sun can enter, but apart from a tiny amount of gas leaking away from the atmosphere and the occasional meteorite arriving from space, the mass of the Earth remains the same and the quantity of each chemical element present is constant.
Any small change in one part of the Earth’s interlinked biogeochemical cycles can have a devastating feedback loop of consequences elsewhere. We have already seen this as anthropogenic changes to the carbon cycle have caused the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas; increased greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat and further warm the Earth. But the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also leads to an increase of dissolved CO2 in the ocean, making the ocean more acidic; this in turn dissolves carbonate sediments on the seafloor and eventually leads to yet more CO2 finding its way back into the atmosphere.
Alarmingly, it is in this context of climate breakdown that licences to proceed with deep sea mining are soon to be granted to private companies.
Deep sea vents
Deep sea hydrothermal vents were first discovered in 1977, at a depth of 2.5km under the surface of the ocean. Often located in volcanically active areas, they are chimney-like structures, created by the process of seawater seeping into cracks in the Earth’s crust. This water is superheated by hot magma before spewing back out into the ocean containing dissolved minerals from the Earth’s crust.
As this mineral-rich water cools, it forms the deposits which create different types of hydrothermal vents, depending on the minerals involved and the speed of water flow.
In the sparsely populated deep sea, hydrothermal vents create astonishingly rich habitats for life. This is due to ‘chemosynthetic’ bacteria, which create energy from the cocktail of chemicals spewing from the vents in a similar way that plants create energy from the light of the sun. These bacteria support diverse and unique ecosystems around each cluster of hydrothermal vents. The organisms that populate vent ecosystems astonish scientists with their ability to thrive in the most inhospitable environment imaginable.
These ecosystems have enormous value to humanity. A sample of deep-sea sponge extracted from a vent site has already shown promising results in clinical trials attempting to develop new antibacterial compounds – a crucial step towards combating antibiotic resistance. Deep-sea sponge samples have huge biomedical potential, which could be lost forever if deep sea vent mining goes ahead unchallenged. Long-term carbon storage in seafloor sediments ensures that the oceans remove considerably more CO2 from the atmosphere than they return to it. The deep sea also recycles nutrients, a process which supports the fisheries that billions of people rely on for food.
What is deep sea mining?
Deep sea vent mining is a relatively new, experimental process for retrieving minerals from the sea floor. Its long-term consequences are unknown.
The mineral deposits of interest that form the hydrothermal vents can also be found along mid-ocean mountain ridges and on deep sea abyssal plains – flat seabed at depths of between 3,000 and 6,000 metres that makes up 70% of the seafloor. These deposits contain valuable metals, such as gold, silver, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc, as well as rare earth elements. These resources are scarce on land, and most are in high demand for emerging ‘green’ industries, and manufacturing goods like electric cars.
It is predicted that by 2050, global demand for cobalt and nickel will be four times greater than the available reserves on land. The exploitation of mines on land for these resources is severely environmentally destructive and uses exploitative practices like child labour in poor countries, mainly in ‘underdeveloped’ countries. These land mining efforts will not be phased out. Rather, mining companies intend to open up deep sea mining as a new, additional frontier.
The retrieval of mineral deposits from depths of 200–6,500 metres under the world’s oceans is a herculean task that will require a colossal amount of resources. Proposed methods are centered around hydraulic pumps or bucket systems to bring ore to the surface for processing.
The risks of deep sea mining
As with terrestrial mining, deep sea mining will cause large-scale disturbances to the ecosystems in which it takes place, although it is the knock-on effects that have the potential to be catastrophic. Deep sea mining is an inherently destructive process. Machines picking up sediment from the seabed will destroy everything in their path, wiping out whole ecosystems of unique animals, whilst disturbing loose sediments. Sediment plumes will be released, depleting oxygen in the water and disturbing the natural processes that sink carbon to the bottom of the ocean. The disturbances to the flows of the superheated water that emerge from hydrothermal vents will cause temperature changes.
Scientists aligned with the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI) have described this damage as ‘dangerous’, ‘reckless’ and ‘irreversible’. They agree that deep sea mining will accelerate changes that are already happening in the oceans due to climate change, and that mining activity is highly likely to add to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, both by disturbing the natural processes that lead to long-term carbon storage on the seafloor, and by disturbing the carbon already stored there. The Centre for Biological Diversity also lists noise disturbance to aquatic life, the compaction of the seafloor, the possible disruption of the lava supply in the Earth’s crust, and contamination as likely the most direct impacts of deep sea mining.
There is no way to undertake a process as large in scale and destructive as deep sea mining without causing changes to the ocean’s natural cycles. Furthermore, the extraordinarily remote and hostile locations in which this mining would take place, and the scarcity and expense of remotely operated vehicles capable of reaching such ocean depths means that in real terms, there will be no way to regulate or even observe what mining companies do on the ocean floor and no way of assessing the damage caused.
Unseen, unknown, unregulated
The process of obtaining contracts in order to legally begin deep sea mining in international waters is overseen by the small and obscure International Seabed Authority (ISA) located in Kingston, Jamaica. The ISA is not made up of scientists, but by 36 elected representatives of the 168 member states who have signed the 1982 UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which states that exploration for and exploitation of deep seabed minerals in international waters may only be carried out under a contract with the ISA and is subject to its rules, regulations, and procedures.
The control of the seas is divided between national and international: if a country has mineral deposits located within their own exclusive economic zone then that nation’s own government is free to decide whether to explore deep sea mining in its waters. Japan has recently started the first such operation. The ISA, however, has the lofty responsibility of managing all international waters – what is known as the high seas – on behalf of all of humanity and all nations.
In this capacity, the ISA has already approved 30 exploration contracts in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, to both governments and private companies, in total covering more than 1.3 million square km of ocean floor. Successful mining applications are likely to be granted in the next few years.
In addition to the grave concerns about deep sea mining in general, scientists are increasingly raising concerns about how the ISA fills its stated purpose. Member states have expressed their concerns that the ISA is developing its mining standards and guidelines behind closed doors – this lack of transparency was highlighted in a 2022 Guardian article which detailed how the ISA had recently dropped its independent reporting service. Even beyond their mining standard procedures, little concrete information is available about the ISA to the public eye, revealing a troubling lack of transparency on the future of our international seas.
More concerning than the ambiguity around the ISA is its membership and associations. Recently, Michael Lodge, the British lawyer who is the Secretary General of the ISA, has been accused of abandoning his neutrality, overstepping his role and pushing for the acceleration of deep sea mining operations. Lodge has downplayed the environmental impacts of deep sea mining and resisted measures put forward by some member states to slow down approval for the first deep sea mining in the high seas. The ISA also has its own vested interest, a body called ‘the Enterprise’, which is to serve as the authorities’ own mining operator, potentially generating millions of dollars in royalties which it claims will be shared with ‘developing’ nations.
It is clear there is a conflict of interest at the heart of the ISA’s dual purpose of both regulating deep sea mining and enabling it. This conflict can be explained by the ISA’s funders; both member nations and mining contractors finance its operations. Representatives of member nations of the ISA, including Germany, Costa Rica, France, Spain, Chile, New Zealand and several Pacific nations, have stated that they do not feel that there is currently enough available data to evaluate the impact of deep sea mining on marine life and have called for either a ‘precautionary pause’, or a ban on deep sea mining in international waters. It is clear that the pressure from states and private companies who want to proceed with deep sea mining as soon as possible is leading to growing tensions and confusion over the true purpose of the ISA.
These concerns are soon coming to a head. The island of Nauru, northeast of Australia, which is sponsoring a subsidiary of Canadian mining firm The Metals Company, triggered an obscure clause of the UN Convention on Law of the Sea when it announced its intention to proceed with deep sea mining in international waters. Due to this clause, the ISA is obliged to finalise its regulations within a two-year window, ending on 9 July 2023. The Metals Company would then be able to start mining the seabed as soon as 2024. So far, tellingly, the ISA fails to address climate change at all in any of its existing or pending regulations.
FRFI stands against the capitalist exploitation of the deep sea and the environmental destruction it will bring. The services to humanity already provided by the deep sea must be further studied without pressure from mining interests, and any potential resources weighed carefully against the risks of obtaining them.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! no 294, June/July 2023
