The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration received criticism on Instagram Friday after a post supporting President Donald Trump‘s Executive Order to allow deep-sea mining.
The NOAA has long condemned the practice and on Thursday condemned the executive order. More than 30 countries object to deep-sea mining, according to the NOAA. Trump’s executive order is spurred by a proposal from The Metals Company requesting U.S. approval for mining in international waters and would bypass the authority of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a U.N.-affiliated agency which is in the midst of considering standards for deep-sea mining across the world.
“This executive order flies in the face of NOAA’s mission. NOAA is charged with protecting, not imperiling, the ocean and its economic benefits, including fishing and tourism; and scientists agree that deep-sea mining is a deeply dangerous endeavor for our ocean and all of us who depend on it,” Jeff Watters, Ocean Conservancy’s vice president for external affairs, said Thursday.
More than 2,000 comments to the NOAA‘s post on Instagram Friday poked fun at the organization for compromising its core mission of protecting the ocean.
According to Watters, areas of the American seafloor that were mine tested more than 50 years ago have not fully recovered and the harm is not just seen on the ocean floor, but impacts the entire ocean area where mining is permitted.
“Evidence tells us that areas targeted for deep-sea mining often overlap with important fisheries, raising serious concerns about the impacts on the country’s $321 billion fishing industry,” Watters said.
Trump’s and the Department of Government Efficiency‘s (DOGE) federal program cuts already threaten the NOAA.
“NOAA is the eyes and ears for our water and air. NOAA provides Americans with accessible and accurate weather forecasts; it tracks hurricanes and tsunamis; it responds to oil spills; it keeps seafood on the table; and so much more. Forcing the agency to carry out deep-sea mining permitting while these essential services are slashed will only harm our ocean and our country,” Watters said.
Other countries would also be harmed by the executive order and the Trump Administration is opening the door for other countries to perpetuate harm on the world.
The House Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing on April 29: “Exploring the Potential of Deep-Sea Mining to Expand American Mineral Production.” Victor Vescovo, founder and CEO, Caladan Capital, and retired naval officer, industrial investor and undersea explorer will testify as a witness.
Trump’s executive order will make it easier for American companies apply for licenses to mine on the ocean floor in international waters under the Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Resources Act of 1980, which was originally designed to regulate mining activities until the U.S. could formally adopt the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Duncan Currie, legal and policy advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, will testify on the order’s international legal implications and the weak economic case behind deep-sea mining Tuesday morning.
“The decision by the United States to unilaterally pursue deep-sea mining is a breach of international law with dire consequences for every country and person who benefits from the ocean as our common heritage. It upends more than 40 years of legal precedent in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, threatens to destabilize ocean governance globally and is an insult to the peoples and countries across the Pacific that this move will most impact,” Currie said.
According to Dr. Douglas McCauley, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the executive order is a gift to China‘s economy.
“Up until today, most countries have been sitting around the same table in the International Seabed Authority, carefully negotiating binding mining regulations to ensure the equitable sharing of benefits from resources mined in international waters. The U.S. is attempting to subvert that controlled process,” McCauley said.
McCauley said that the U.S. has become the first pirate mining operation in international waters. Rules could have controlled minerals taken from the ocean, but now “China, simply put, will be far better at winning.” Metals at the bottom of the ocean have been discovered to be radioactive, which makes recovering them difficult.
“The grand irony is that we just unleashed a gold rush – but a gold rush for fool’s gold. In our fever to get at these ocean minerals – the U.S. seems to have neglected to run the numbers. The cobalt and nickel that could be mined from the ocean floor would be the most expensive cobalt and nickel mined anywhere on the planet. We just committed U.S. taxpayers to something akin to the $400 military hammer scandal. Cobalt and nickel are in oversupply today and can be bought with a click on international metal markets at a fraction of the cost. The U.S. just signed on the dotted line for a very bad economic deal,” McCauley said.
Vescovo said that deep sea mining is untried, difficult, expensive and financially risky to secure metals that are no longer essential to making electric vehicle batteries.
“These two metals can also be secured for national security by other, more reliable and cheaper means, or stockpiling. As for Rare Earth Metals or lithium, neither are available in meaningful quantities from seafloor mining. Pursuit of commercial Deep Sea Mining has a very great probability of becoming the Republican Party‘s version of the Solyndra embarrassment,” Vescovo said.
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Rebecca Barnabi
