As part of efforts to achieve independence from Chinese supplies of critical minerals, the Trump administration has expressed renewed U.S. interest in deep sea mining. An April 24 executive order titled Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources aims to rapidly develop U.S. seabed mining capabilities, including expediting the process for issuing mining licenses in areas beyond national jurisdiction. But with an international regime for seabed mining on the high seas already established by 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Washington faces difficult decisions about its path toward critical mineral resiliency.
Deep Sea Mining: The UN and the United States
The existence of valuable resources on the ocean floor became widely known in the mid-twentieth century, and the debates over how nations should be able to access them figured heavily in the negotiations that led to UNCLOS. Under UNCLOS, nations are entitled to exclusive access to seabed resources with their territorial waters or on their continental shelves, up to a maximum of 200 nautical miles from their territorial baselines. They can also access minerals on the “extended continental shelf,” which may extend up to 350 nautical miles, but must share a portion of the revenues with other states through the International Seabed Authority. On the deep seabed beyond these areas of national jurisdiction, the ISA governs licensing of areas for exploration and development.
The International Seabed Authority
Established by UNCLOS and based in Kingston, Jamaica, the ISA began operating in November 1994 on the same date that UNCLOS entered into force. Since then, the ISA has approved exploration licenses in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans for three types of seabed mineral reserves: polymetallic nodules, polymetallic sulphides, and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts. To date, the ISA has approved 22 15-year exploration contracts for these minerals. Many of these contracts target polymetallic nodules as they are believed to be the most commercially viable.
But while the ISA has approved exploration licenses, it has not yet approved any areas for commercial development. Exploitation regulations have been under consideration since 2019, but negotiations have struggled to advance amid concerns from some members about the unknown environmental impacts of seabed mining at a commercial scale. This has provoked frustration from both member-states and companies that have invested considerable resources in exploration.
The United States
The United States has followed a different path on seabed mining. During the final stages of negotiations on UNCLOS, the new Reagan administration came out in opposition to the Convention’s approach to deep seabed mining. Negotiators had adopted the principle that the high seas, and whatever resources lay within, were the common heritage of mankind, belonging equally to all states regardless of their geography or ability to exploit those resources. This principle mandates the ISA to develop equitable schemes to share the benefits of resource extraction, including profits, among UNCLOS member states, with a special concern for developing countries. Some in Washington felt that accepting such terms would disadvantage U.S. companies, which would likely be among the first to make seabed mining commercially viable. This led to further negotiations to address U.S. concerns resulting in the 1994 Implementation Agreement which cleared the way for UNCLOS to finally enter into force. The Clinton administration signed the agreement which, among other things, all but guaranteed the United States a permanent veto in the ISA. But Congress has still not ratified UNCLOS.
As a non-party, the United States has been left out of most proceedings at the ISA, including applications for exploration licenses. Instead, the United States has taken licensing into its own hands. In 1980, before UNCLOS negotiations were even concluded, the U.S. Congress passed the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (DSHMR), which established a framework for U.S. citizens to explore and extract minerals from the U.S. continental shelf and beyond. Congress then authorized the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to issue exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits for deep sea mining activities. In 1984, NOAA issued four exploration licenses for sites in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an area of high seas southeast of Hawaii that is believed to have large reserves of critical minerals. Only two licenses, USA-1 and USA-4, remain active today and are held by Lockheed Martin, though the company has shown little interest in them and sold off its seabed mining subsidiary in 2023.
While the U.S. license areas do not overlap with areas licensed by the ISA for exploration, one portion conflicts with an ISA defined Area of Particular Environmental Interest (APEI 13), in which mining activities are effectively banned.
Breakthroughs in the High Seas
States began making efforts to develop deep sea mining capabilities as early as the 1960s, but progress beyond exploration and testing proved more difficult than originally assessed. In the past few years, however, several companies have made advances that suggest that commercial deep sea mining is soon to be a reality.
The Metals Company
Canada-based The Metals Company (TMC) is at the forefront of deep sea mining technology and is pushing both within the ISA and with the United States to begin commercial mining operations in the Pacific. With its eyes on the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, TMC partnered with three states that hold ISA contracts in the area: Nauru in 2011, Kiribati in 2015, and Tonga in 2017. In January 2025, however, Kiribati officially terminated its contract with TMC and is reportedly exploring another deal with China.
TMC’s partnership with Nauru, on the other hand, has proven productive. Through its subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI) and offshore partner Allseas, TMC conducted historic deep sea trials in the NORI-D test area of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in 2022. Over 3,000 tons of nodules were transported by the world’s first deep sea mineral production vessel, the Hidden Gem, owned by Allseas.
These nodules were then transported for processing to TMC partner Pacific Metals Co., Ltd. (PAMCO)’s facility in Hachinohe, Japan. In 2024, TMC and PAMCO reported that their team had successfully processed the nodules into calcine, a material which can be further processed to produce nickel, copper, cobalt, iron, and manganese silicate.
Hidden Gem, June 24, 2023
Despite its successful test, TMC has not been able to secure a commercial extraction license from the ISA due to continued delays in negotiating commercial mining regulations. Citing concerns over the trajectory of ISA negotiations, TMC formally submitted an application to NOAA for commercial mining and exploration of three areas in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone under the U.S. seabed mining code on April 29, one week after President Trump’s executive order. While the precise areas applied for (referred to as TMC USA A, B, and A-A2) aren’t publicly known, TMC has indicated that they include “areas that contain the Company’s already indicated and measured resources,” suggesting they may overlap with the ISA exploration licenses held by NORI.
China
China has worked through the ISA to position itself as a major player in deep sea mining, with three Chinese companies (China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association, China Minmetals Corporation, and Beijing Pioneer Hi-Tech Development Corporation) collectively holding the most (five) ISA licenses of any single sponsor nation. China’s progress toward commercial seabed mining has also drawn from a broader apparatus of government support for marine science, technology, and industry that often blurs the lines between activities done for scientific, commercial, and military purposes.
China operates the world’s largest civilian survey fleet, which routinely conducts research in the high seas across the globe. Unlike other nations that have clear distinctions between scientific, commercial, and military surveys, the data collected by China’s research vessels is often shared across sectors. This knowledge sharing has been particularly beneficial in the area of deep sea mining, where research craft operated by universities or government agencies have made important contributions that can be taken advantage of by the Chinese firms that hold the rights to ISA license areas. For example, the most significant Chinese deep sea mining test to date was conducted not by a mining company, but instead by a collaboration between Shanghai Jiaotong University and the State Oceanic Administration.
In June 2024, the survey vessel Xiang Yang Hong 3 brought and deployed the Kaituo II, a prototype mining vehicle developed by Shanghai Jiaotong University, to collect polymetallic crusts and nodules in five test collections in the western Pacific Ocean at national record depths of over 4,000 meters. Interestingly, the test took place in an area southeast of Taiwan where Chinese and Philippine continental shelf claims overlap.
Despite this broad government support, no Chinese company has yet conducted a test collection at the depth and scale of TMC’s successful 2022 trial. But two, China Minmetals and Beijing Pioneer Hi-Tech Development Corporation, are on the verge of catching up. China Minmetals received approval from the ISA in May to proceed with plans to conduct a mining trial in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone later this year. And Beijing Pioneer has announced plans to conduct a test collection, also in 2025, of polymetallic nodules in its ISA license areas in the western Pacific.
The exploration area lies adjacent to Japan’s continental shelf off the southeast island of Minamitorishima—where Japan has its own plans to mine the seabed.
Mining on the Continental Shelf
Japan is one of several states in the Indo-Pacific that are actively exploring opportunities for seabed mining within their own continental shelves, where no approval is required from the ISA. In 2020, the Japanese government, along with Japan’s Organization for Metals and Energy Security, conducted the first successful excavation of cobalt-rich seabed within Japan’s continental shelf off of Minamitorishima. Further tests happened in the same area in 2024, and the Nippon Foundation and other entities plan to start large-scale extraction and commercialization of nodules in 2026.
India, which itself holds ISA licenses and has conducted deep sea mining trials in high seas areas in the Indian Ocean, is also exploring seabed minerals on its continental shelf. In October 2024, the National Institute of Ocean Technology completed a successful trial collection of polymetallic nodules in the Andaman Sea.
And, most recently, the United States has begun looking toward seabed minerals on its continental shelf. On April 8, California-based Impossible Metals became the first company to ever apply for a seabed mineral exploration lease under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved that initial request on May 20 and is beginning environmental, cultural, and economic impact assessments of potential mining activity in the waters off American Samoa that Impossible Metals is targeting.
Calls for a Pause
But even as many states are pushing forward with seabed mining, others are sounding the alarm over its possible environment impacts. As of 2025, 32 countries have declared their support for a moratorium, precautionary pause, or ban on deep sea mining for environmental concerns.
Countries Supporting a Ban or Pause on Seabed Mining
The list of those opposed includes some countries, like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, that themselves hold ISA exploration licenses. In some cases, these countries have used their exploratory licenses to conduct research on the potential environmental impact of mining in these areas.
For example, France’s Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer (Ifremer) has conducted missions that have focused on understanding the biodiversity associated with polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
Between Rocks and a Hard Place
The need to secure reliable supplies of critical minerals will only grow as technologies such as AI take on even more economic and strategic importance. That is incentivizing some mining companies frustrated by the ISA’s delays to look to the alternative pathway now offered by Washington As a result, the United States has at least three pathways to seabed mining, but each presents its own normative and environmental risks.
TMC’s application for a commercial recovery license in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is in some ways the most appealing, as its successful mining trial indicates that it may be the firm most ready to begin development. But if the areas for which TMC has applied overlap with its ISA exploration license, a U.S. approval without coordination with the ISA would risk triggering major international backlash. It could even potentially collapse the seabed mining regime of UNCLOS; if member-states find that their hard-fought exploration licenses do nothing to stop unilateral exploitation of the very same geographic areas by the United States, they might not bother to seek any more approvals from the ISA. As a core part of UNCLOS, a major blow to the ISA could shake faith in other aspects of the convention, including those championed by the United States.
A second option would be development of the original 1980 U.S. license areas held by Lockheed Martin, though no company has come forward with interest to do so. This option, while still controversial, would be somewhat less damaging to the ISA. Though one of these areas partially overlaps with an ISA-declared APEI, the licensing of the area occurred decades before that declaration, and even before the signing of UNCLOS itself. Given this timeline and the fact that the areas do not conflict with any ISA exploration licenses, U.S. development there might be tolerated as a one-time exception, avoiding an existential threat to the UNCLOS seabed mining regime.
Development on the United States’ vast continental shelf, rather than the high seas, would be Washington’s easiest route to avoid conflict with the ISA and the global community. If that were to happen on the extended continental shelf, it is unlikely that Washington would abide by the revenue-sharing requirements of such exploitation under UNCLOS. That would provoke criticism, but far less than unilateral exploitation in the high seas.
Washington’s pursuit of any, or all, of these options could also finally force the ISA’s hand. The threat of unilateral U.S. mining and subsequent undermining of UNCLOS could incentivize member states to end their interminable bickering and agree on regulations for international seabed mining. That would be the path preferred by most mining companies.
