Rich in precious minerals, the ocean floor may soon be opened to deep-sea mining — but at what cost?

What's down there? 
A trove of metals and minerals needed for the green revolution — to make electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, wind turbines — and for electronic devices such as cellphones. These elements, including nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese, are highly sought after among energy and manufacturing companies, and they abound on the deep-ocean floor near geothermal vents and in the crusts of underwater mountains. The most promising source, though, is the lumpy, potato-shaped rocks called polymetallic nodules. Formed over millions of years by minerals building up on objects such as shell fragments or shark teeth, the nodules are thought to contain far more rare-earth elements than exist on all landmasses. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a swath of the Pacific between Mexico and Hawaii that's about the size of the U.S., is estimated to hold over 21 billion metric tons of nodules, potentially worth trillions of dollars. "We need those metals," said Peter Tom Jones, head of Belgium's KU Leuven Institute of Sustainable Metals and Minerals, "to make the transition to a less destructive system no longer based on fossil fuels." 

How would they be mined? 
The process is fairly simple. A support ship sends down a robotic harvester that scrapes the top 5 inches of ocean floor and hoovers up the nodules. The rocks are then cleaned of sediment, which is piped back into the ocean deep below the surface. So far, there have only been a few exploratory forays — including one by the Vancouver-based mining concern The Metals Company in 2022 that extracted more than 3,000 tons of nodules in just two months. Several countries, including Japan, South Korea, and Norway, have launched national programs to get ready to mine in their own coastal waters. But while most of the deposits lie in international waters, there are no international regulations yet in place, thanks partly to intense opposition from environmentalists. 

What's the objection? 
Critics say the mining process would irreversibly harm delicate underwater ecosystems untouched for millions of years. The nodule beds abound with life, including sea worms, crustaceans, sponges, and corals, as well as many species not yet known to science. A study last year found 5,000 new species just in the seabed of the CCZ. In addition to destroying their immediate habitat, mining would send up great plumes of silt that could spread widely, smothering sea creatures further away. It would also disturb ocean-floor microbes that consume carbon dioxide, possibly lessening the ocean's ability to capture and hold carbon long-term. Seabed ecosystems "take millennia to establish and can take seconds to destroy," said Australian marine scientist Tony Worby. "We're playing with fire to think we can go down to the deep sea and strip-mine it without massive repercussions." 

Who decides? 
Under the 1994 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, nations can freely exploit resources within 200 nautical miles of their own shores. Beyond that, though, jurisdiction falls to the International Seabed Authority, a U.N.-affiliated intergovernmental body with 168 member nations — not including the U.S. The ISA has issued about 30 permits to nations and contractors like The Metals Company to do exploratory mining in the CCZ and three other areas. It was due last July to issue regulations laying out whether and how deep-sea mining can proceed. But it missed the deadline, and now says the regulations — which will set ground rules for allowable noise, sediment disturbance, and other factors — may not be completed until next year. In the meantime, organized opposition to deep-sea mining is building. 

Who opposes it? 
Last year, in the wake of a U.N. report that concluded the mining would be "highly damaging to ocean ecosystems," 24 countries called for a moratorium until the environmental impacts are better understood, among them Britain, Spain, New Zealand, Canada, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, which encompasses more than 100 environmental groups, is fighting to stop undersea mining altogether. It argues that advances in battery technology as well as new techniques for recycling battery elements will soon cut down on the demand for newly mined metals. And tech giants Samsung and Google have backed a moratorium, while automakers such as BMW, Volvo, and Volkswagen have pledged not to use materials sourced from the sea. 

What is the argument for doing it? 
That the metals are vital to wean the world off fossil fuels. Demand for nickel is expected to increase 20-fold by 2040, manganese eightfold. If these elements don't come from the ocean, they will be mined on land, which could be even more destructive. Land mining often causes displacement of indigenous communities and grievous ecological harm. Currently, the world's top nickel producer is Indonesia, which is clearing its rainforest in pursuit of more. Turning to the sea would be far less damaging, say proponents. It could also allow other countries to break into a rare-earths industry that has so far been dominated by China and Russia. "We're not talking about mining all of the ocean. We're talking about one little patch," said The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron. "If not this, then what?"

The U.S. gets left behind 
The U.S. has no voice on the ISA as it crafts mining rules — and can't be awarded exploration permits or mining licenses if and when they are granted. That's because the Senate never ratified the 1982 Law of the Sea treaty that laid the foundation for the agency. Though Washington was key to negotiating the treaty, President Reagan declined to sign, saying it could undermine U.S. sovereignty on the high seas. Since then, conservative Republicans have remained opposed, and a 2012 push to ratify backed by both business and environmental groups failed after the Heritage Foundation fought it. Now, though, hundreds of former political, military, and security leaders are once again calling on the Senate to ratify the treaty. "With respect to deep-seabed mining," said former Republican national security official John Negroponte, China is "eating our lunch."

As the moon slid across the sun and darkened the day, Americans were reminded "of our planet's place in the cosmos," said Michael Roston and Ben Shpigel in The New York Times. From Mexico's Pacific coast to Newfoundland, millions donned protective glasses to witness the first total eclipse visible in North America in seven years. When the sun and moon merged into a single black disc ringed by fire, the temperature dropped and our world was plunged into an eerie, unearthly twilight for roughly four minutes. Over 30 million Americans live in the path of totality, and about 3.7 million more traveled to reach it; hundreds of millions saw a partial eclipse, with a sliver of sun not covered. Cheyenne Davis, who traveled to see the last total eclipse in 2017, was no less overwhelmed by seeing this one in Illinois. "I was not prepared for the awe that came with it," she said. 

Eclipses are the product of "a wondrous coincidence," said Sabine Stanley in The Washington Post. The sun is a ball of gas 870,000 miles wide, and it's 93 million miles away from us. The moon is just 2,100 miles wide, and it's 240,000 miles away — but it's positioned exactly in the right place to neatly cover the sun when their orbits periodically align. "If the sun were a bit bigger or closer, or if the moon were a bit smaller or farther, totality would not occur." In the ancient world, said Jason Colavito in CNN.com, eclipses were believed to be "evil portents," and "sparked fear because they seemed to happen at random." But in a triumph of science over ignorance, we now know why they occur and how to predict them years and decades in advance. The next total eclipse won't arrive in the U.S. until 2044. 

What a show this one was, said Jason Gay in The Wall Street Journal. "This was a Celestial Super Bowl, outdoors, available to anyone, without commercials" — a collective, authentic, human experience that briefly transcended all our differences. Some viewers wept, but "I was too awestruck to cry." As "the show" concluded, I heard people clapping and laughing. "It was the sound of joy, no subscription required. What a world it can be, when it still surprises you." 

Rebecca Hall regrets being a movie snob, said Thessaly La Force in The New York Times. Best known for artsy films like Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and Christine (2016), the British actress overthought every move when she was starting out, once scolding her agent for sending her to auditions for big-budget films. "I wrote a letter at the time saying, 'I want to do interesting independent films. I'm not a conventional movie star, and how dare you,'" says Hall, the daughter of Royal Shakespeare Company founder Sir Peter Hall. "I mean, I was probably nicer than that. But the gist of it was: 'I wish for you to conceive of me as something other than what you're conceiving me.'"

But now that she's starring in a genuine blockbuster, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the 41-year-old sees those early decisions differently. By turning down big movies, Hall missed opportunities in small, character-driven ones, too. "As cool and righteous as it sounds, I think it was an error," she admits. "The more of those big jobs that I would've done in my 20s, the more access I would've had to other work. It was also incredibly arrogant to assume that all those films were unworthy." Appearing in big crowd-pleasers gives her the financial freedom to make smaller films, but, she adds, it's not just a cynical move — "there's also a huge amount of fun in it."