In 2012, a Canadian mining company sent a ship out
to explore this remote area of the Pacific Ocean.
A few hundred miles southeast of Hawaii--
It's called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
Lying deep on its sea floor
thousands of meters below the surface
is a treasure trove of metals and minerals worth billions of dollars.
We need these for everything.
Like electrical wiring, stainless steel
car engines, jet engines, computers and phones.
Land-based deposits of these minerals
around the world have met our needs so far...
But our needs are changing.
To fully decarbonize, we need clean energy.
And that requires more metals...
up to six times more to get us there.
Estimates show that there are more of these metals
in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone...
than all these land-based deposits combined.
That's why the Canadian company is not alone.
Today, there are 16 other exploration ships
representing various countries and private companies...
that are in a race to the seafloor.
Which one of them becomes the first to mine the deep sea
will depend on an obscure UN organization
that's currently faced with two critical questions:
Is the fight against climate change worth
the irreversible environmental damage of seabed mining?
And should a few nations
get to profit off a shared natural resource...
just because they were the first to get there?
The UN began establishing the laws of the sea in 1958.
They eventually decided
that 12 miles off a coastal country shores is their sovereignty territory.
200 miles after that is their exclusive economic zone...
where the country can have fisheries
or drill for oil and gas... or mine.
But beyond that, about 72% of the deep ocean
sits outside the jurisdiction of any one country.
They simply call it The Area.
And it became the common heritage of all mankind.
That’s where the Clarion-Clipperton Zone...
with all its mineral riches is located.
We've known about the metallic bounty here since the 1870s...
when the British HMS Challenger
made a journey around the world to survey the ocean.
While over the Pacific...
explorers wrote of several peculiar black oval bodies
they had dredged up from the seafloor.
These were rocks roughly the size of apples packed with metals
like manganese, cobalt, and nickel.
Oceanographers would go on to discover metals
throughout the world's seafloor...
in three different types of deposits.
They are in hydrothermal vents
which are like underwater hot springs.
Encrusted in the slopes and summits of undersea mountains.
And found in the form of rocks
lying on vast, flat plains on the seafloor.
The most abundant collection of these
are at the bottom of the Clarion-Clipperton zone.
These discoveries sparked the interest
of multinational companies in the 1960s and 70s...
who were gearing up to mine the ocean floor
for industrial uses like electrical wiring
stainless steel and fertilizer.
Companies from China, Japan
the Soviet Union, Australia, the US, and European countries...
descended on the Clarion-Clipperton zone.
They tested mining equipment
and took some of the first photos of the rocks on the seafloor.
It was during this early chaos at sea
that the Maltese delegate to the UN
made a pivotal speech warning against
repeating the mistakes of colonialism.
He said that the race would reserve
the plurality of the world's resources for the exclusive benefit
of less than a handful of nations.
The strong would get stronger, the rich richer.
“All those in favor, please press the green button.”
So in 1982, the UN met to adopt additional laws of the sea...
and it was signed by over 100 countries...
with three main conditions for mining in the area.
It must benefit all of humankind, irrespective of location.
Consider the special interests and needs of developing countries.
And ensure protection of the marine environment.
To enforce these new rules
they established the International Seabed Authority...
or ISA, in Kingston, Jamaica.
Every country that signed the laws of the sea
would be a member state of the ISA.
Today, that number is up to 168, plus the European Union.
Of these, 36 countries are voted in every few years
to review applications for mining in the deep sea.
Before a country can get permission to mine...
it has to apply for an exploration contract
through this council.
When the council approves an application...
it gives a 75,000 square kilometer portion of the deep sea to the applicant.
And to keep things fair, it sets aside a portion of equal value
for a developing country to claim.
But other countries or companies can get access to this reserved area
by partnering with developing countries.
That's how this ship ended up here in 2012.
The mining company called the Metals Company is based in Canada...
but they sought out a sponsor in the tiny Pacific Island nation of Nauru.
Together, they applied for an exploration contract...
and the company got access to Nauru's reserved area.
In 2015 and 2020...
the Metals Company got two more Pacific islands...
Kiribati and Tonga to sponsor them, so they were able to claim
even more areas reserved for developing countries.
So far, they've been using their exploration contracts to test equipment...
do environmental reviews and collect rock samples.
Over the years, more and more applications
have been approved to explore the area.
So far, the ISA has approved all 31 exploration applications
submitted by 22 different companies or countries...
and 17 of them have been in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
To access the rocks like the ones
lying on the bottom of the Clarion-Clipperton zone...
mining companies use what looks like a large robotic vacuum
to sweep them up and pull them to the surface.
Proponents of deep sea mining argue that this method
has far less impact than land-based mining...
like cobalt mining in Congo that contaminates waterways...
and nickel mining in Indonesia that has deforested
over a million acres of rainforest.
But opponents believe agitating the seafloor
at thousands of meters deep would destroy an ecosystem
we're still trying to understand.
The rocks in the Clarion-Clipperton zone
took millions of years to form.
Unique creatures that live nowhere else on earth
have adapted to live among them in this extreme environment
like types of sponges and mollusks
that have built their habitats on the rocks.
Thousands of new species are still
being discovered today in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone...
like types of sea cucumber and starfish.
The fear is that mining in these dark and quiet ecosystems
introduces noise and light...
and the machinery kicks up massive sediment plumes
that travel for miles underwater and deters marine life.
In a 2020 study of a mining test off the coast of Japan
researchers found that digging up their seabed caused
as much as a 43% decline in fish and shrimp populations for up to a year
after a sediment plume was triggered.
Similar plumes are expected
from mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
This is why at least 21 countries
have called for a moratorium or a ban on deep sea mining.
And why these exploration crews preparing to mine
are drawing protests from the environmental community.
Despite this opposition, in 2021
The Metals Company's CEO rang the opening bell
at the New York Stock Exchange.
"The future is metallic."
The company had gone public...
a major step towards commercial mining.
That same year
The Metals Company and Nauru sent a notice to the ISA council
saying they planned to apply to mine.
But the thing is, beyond these broad ideals
that ISA hasn't set specific mining regulations for the deep seafloor.
So this notice triggered a two-year rule...
which set a deadline for the ISA to figure out regulations.
In July of 2023...
the ISA met with that goal in mind.
ISA countries in support of deep sea mining like China, Norway, and the UK...
argue that our clean energy transition depends on finding more metals...
and The Metals Company says this is their mission:
"to help the project of decarbonizing global energy and transport."
But countries opposed argue that we just don't know enough
about the deep sea to risk the irreversible damage it would cause.
And that the ISA is still very far from figuring out
a fair way to share the profits from mining.
So they reached a stalemate.
No regulations have been issued for mining.
The Metals Company has announced
that they will submit their mining application in 2024...
which has reset the clock for the ISA
to come to a consensus on regulations.
That means The Metals Company may soon win this race
the bottom of the ocean...
and others would follow.
It will be difficult to meet this growing need for metals
without tapping the resources of the deep sea.
But by going in...
we could just end up destroying both the land and the sea
for more metals.
What can mitigate the effects of this race
is a different kind of race.
One that’s been running parallel to the pursuit of mining.
Research ships have been rushing to document
the ecosystem at the bottom of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
What they find could minimize the damage we are about to inflict...
or at least we'll know what we're about to lose...
in order to solve our climate crisis.
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