A Bay Area financial analyst wants a piece of this mineral-rich seabed surrounded by 3 Pacific nations
Grist · LC · trust 52/100
Last summer, at the United Nations Ocean Conference, French Polynesia established the world’s largest contiguous marine protected area, reinforcing its 2022 ban on seabed mining. “The deep sea is not for sale,” France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said at the time.
A year later, that might not hold true for the waters just beyond French Polynesia’s maritime border. A little-known American startup is seeking the Trump administration’s approval to lease 25 million acres of international waters for mining exploration just outside the areas over which French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, and Kiribati have exclusive rights. The area, called Eastern High Seas Pocket 3 because it is entirely surrounded by waters known as the exclusive economic zones of the three nations, has an abundance of albacore, yellowfin, and bigeye tuna and is visited by dozens of fishing vessels each year.
American Deep Sea Minerals is the first company to propose exploring the seabed there for manganese and other critical minerals, part of a global rush to capitalize on the essential components of batteries, military technologies, and other modern technologies.
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