What Price Will Humanity Pay for Mining the Deep Ocean Floor?
title: "What Price Will Humanity Pay for Mining the Deep Ocean Floor?" slug: "fanchunping-deep-sea-mining-cost.en" date: "2026-06-26" category: "ecology" author: "Fan Chunping (Zhigeng)" excerpt: "The commercial pressure for deep-sea mining is accelerating, but the ocean's ecosystems, thermal systems, and mechanical systems are already under multiple stresses. Before the ISA Mining Code is finalized, a pause on commercial exploitation approvals may be humanity's last window of opportunity."
What Price Will Humanity Pay for Mining the Deep Ocean Floor?
Author: Fan Chunping (Zhigeng)
The first time I learned that the United Nations was allocating seabed mining rights, I overheard it by chance on television—back when I was still working at a publishing house, back when television was still how we got our news. I left the publishing house over eighteen years ago, so this must have been at least eighteen years in the past. My first reaction at the time was: "Good heavens, what kind of cost will this exact? If we destroy the oceans too, humanity will truly have nowhere left to fall."
In recent years, fresh news has kept surfacing, showing that the process is accelerating. This is linked to the breakneck pace of technological development in recent years, the energy transition, and the surging demand for critical minerals driven by supply chain tensions. But acting out of desperation is not a sound strategic choice. Earth's ecosystems are already so fragile—humanity cannot afford to remain an overgrown infant. It is time to grow up.
Why am I so worried?
In the more than seventy thousand years since humanity walked out of Africa, and the ten-thousand-plus years of recorded civilization, the situation we face has probably never been as severe as it is today: climate disruption, ecosystem collapse, geopolitical tensions, the explosion of machine intelligence—and in the midst of all this, desperate to try anything, many have set their sights on seabed mining and the so-called "blue economy."
I. June 2026: Two Lawsuits and One Unfinished Rulebook
1. Deep-Sea Mining Companies Sue the International Seabed Authority
On June 5, 2026, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg, Germany, issued two press releases: Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI) and Tonga Offshore Mining Limited (TOML) had each filed suit against the International Seabed Authority (ISA) before the Seabed Disputes Chamber, alleging "violations of due process."
These two companies are subsidiaries of The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian firm. TMC is the world's most aggressive deep-sea mining enterprise, pursuing a "two-track" strategy—operating simultaneously within the ISA framework and under U.S. domestic regulatory structures. After President Trump signed an executive order in April 2025 to advance U.S. deep-sea mining, TMC, through its U.S. subsidiary, submitted an application to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to mine in international waters—areas that overlap with its exploration contracts under the ISA.
In March of this year, the ISA Council designated TMC's two subsidiaries as entities requiring "special attention due to potential default risk" and decided to defer review of their upcoming exploration contract renewals. TMC's legal team chose to fight back: they sued the ISA, petitioning ITLOS to bar the ISA from making any decisions.
The ISA is the institution managing international seabed affairs under the UN framework, representing a rules-based system jointly crafted by 168 contracting parties (including the European Union). TMC's approach—applying to mine international seabed minerals under the U.S. framework—amounts, in essence, to constructing a parallel set of rules outside the ISA. If the ISA loses this lawsuit, it would mean that the seabed regime of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea could be substantively hollowed out by unilateral action.
2. The Mining Code—A Rulemaking Race, Difficult and Repeatedly Delayed
The ISA's "Exploitation Regulations"—commonly known as the Mining Code—have yet to be finalized.
In February 2026, ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho personally visited the EU headquarters in Brussels, urging the EU to support the swift adoption of deep-sea exploitation regulations. This visit itself was a signal: the commercial pressure is becoming nearly unbearable.
In March, the 31st session of the ISA Legal and Technical Commission concluded in Jamaica, discussing core issues such as exploration contracts, environmental thresholds, and regional environmental management plans. But these discussions remain a long way from producing a complete, enforceable commercial exploitation code—the fundamental conflict between commercial interests and ecological integrity cannot be resolved.
Meanwhile, TMC's lawsuit is exerting enormous legal pressure on the ISA's governance capacity. The July session will review the contract renewal applications of NORI and TOML, while TMC is asking ITLOS to issue provisional measures blocking that review. Should the tribunal rule in TMC's favor, the ISA's governance capacity will be severely undermined.
If that happens, seabed mining could descend into unregulated competition—and the ecological consequences are easy to imagine.
The United States is accelerating its own efforts. In January 2026, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced amendments to regulations under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, cutting the approval timeline for deep-sea mining permits in half—and applying these rules to areas beyond U.S. jurisdiction, in a unilateral challenge to the ISA framework.
On the other side, Norway decided in December 2025 to suspend deep-sea mining within its territorial waters until 2029—the world's first national-level "pause button."
The one optimistic development on the rules front is the BBNJ Agreement (the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction), which entered into force on January 17, 2026, with 84 contracting parties.
Many have celebrated this as "a new era for high-seas protection," but the BBNJ Agreement governs biodiversity—it does not directly regulate mineral exploitation. Between the biodiversity protection framework and the mineral exploitation framework lies an enormous regulatory gap.
II. Global Consensus Remains Far Off
ISA Leadership Transition: From "Push Development" to "Push Rules"
It is worth emphasizing: in January 2025, something happened at the ISA that did not make headlines but was deeply significant—the Secretary-General changed. In my view, this transition carries enormous weight. It amounts to giving humanity a chance to save the oceans. Or, put another way, giving the oceans a chance to breathe.
The previous Secretary-General, Michael Lodge, a British international law expert, served as the ISA's leader for seventeen years. During his tenure, he actively pushed forward the drafting of mining regulations—critics say his direction was "get mining running first, talk later." In 2024, he ran for re-election and lost.
His successor is Leticia Carvalho, a Brazilian oceanographer who previously led ocean governance efforts at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This marks the first time in ISA history that the helm has been held by a woman, by a scientist, by someone with an environmental governance background.
Since taking office, Carvalho has sent several clear signals:
In February 2026, she personally visited the EU headquarters. Her purpose was not to urge countries to start mining as quickly as possible, but rather: before the regulatory vacuum is filled by unilateral actions, get the rules in place first.
She has emphasized on multiple occasions that "science-based, environmentally sustainable" approaches must take priority.
The focus of the ISA Legal and Technical Commission's discussions has shifted from "under what conditions can mining proceed" toward "under what conditions must mining not proceed."
This represents a philosophical shift in governance: from Lodge's "promote development" to Carvalho's "perfect the rules first." Yet while the direction has changed, the challenges have not diminished: commercial pressure is intensifying, litigation is advancing, and whether the international community has the patience to wait for rules to mature remains an open question.
As of mid-2026, around twenty-plus countries have called for a pause on commercial exploitation or urged extreme caution at ISA meetings and sessions of the UNCLOS Conference of Parties. These include France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Palau, Fiji, Vanuatu, and others.
The pro-mining camp, the anti-mining camp, and the fence-sitters are all substantial blocs. Beyond the major powers, Japan, South Korea, and India are all engaged in exploration. Unexpectedly, some of the most urgent pressure is coming from small island states.
The high seas' seabed belongs to no single nation—the international seabed and its resources are the "common heritage of mankind." But the island states situated above these mining zones are not bystanders. The polarization of their positions on deep-sea mining is itself a testament to the complexity of this issue.
The Pro-Mining Camp:
Nauru is TMC's country of registration and the world's most aggressive promoter of deep-sea mining. Its rationale is stark: its phosphate deposits are nearing exhaustion, and the nation needs new fiscal lifelines. Through NORI, Nauru holds an exploration contract in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), the largest mineral deposit on the Pacific seabed. The Cook Islands possess rich polymetallic nodule resources and signed their first joint survey agreement with the China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association (COMRA) in early 2026. Tonga participates in CCZ exploration through the TOML subsidiary; Kiribati also holds an exploration contract.
The Opposition Camp:
Palau is among the staunchest opponents, repeatedly calling at the United Nations for a deep-sea mining moratorium. Fiji and Vanuatu have also aligned with the opposition, concerned about the devastating impact of mining on fisheries and marine ecosystems.
The essence of this polarization involves "survival priority choices": for Nauru, fiscal exhaustion is more urgent than ecological risk; for Palau, the marine ecosystem is the entire backbone of the national economy—its tourism industry depends entirely on coral reefs and marine life.
The issue is that this is a shared matter for the entire human community, and solutions should be distinguished by their merits.
III. Four Alarms Sounding at Increasing Volume
In June 2026, just days around TMC's lawsuit against the ISA, the United Nations released the third World Ocean Assessment report. Its language was blunt: anthropogenic and natural factors are subjecting marine ecosystems to mounting stress. It urged all parties to translate the latest scientific assessments into concrete action and to strengthen cooperation to protect marine ecosystems.
Alarm One: The 2026 El Niño—A "Hot Blob" That Shouldn't Be There
In early June 2026, the World Meteorological Organization and weather models across the globe confirmed: the Pacific is experiencing a strong El Niño event.
The physical core of El Niño is an anomaly in the Pacific equatorial trade wind system. Under normal conditions, the trade winds "push" warm surface waters westward, allowing cold deep water to upwell in the eastern Pacific. When the trade winds weaken or even reverse, a vast mass of warm water flows back eastward, accumulating in the central and eastern Pacific as a giant warm pool—covering an area up to half the size of the United States and reaching depths of over a hundred meters. This mass of warm water, which has no business being there, dumps enormous quantities of heat and moisture into the atmosphere, altering global atmospheric circulation patterns: drought in Indonesia and Australia, extreme rainfall in western South America, and a rise in global average temperature.
What makes 2026 special is that this El Niño is not arriving alone—it is layered on top of an already near-overflowing ocean heat reservoir. Global oceans have been at record-high temperatures for three consecutive years (2023–2026). The oceans have absorbed over 90% of the extra heat generated by global warming since the Industrial Revolution—and this thermal buffer is approaching its capacity limit.
Alarm Two: The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) Is Weakening
This publication addressed this issue specifically in an article on June 5 titled "What Happens If Ocean Currents Are Altered?"
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is the core component of Earth's thermohaline circulation—the "global ocean conveyor belt." It transports warm tropical waters northward, releasing heat to Europe and North America along the way, then cools and sinks in the North Atlantic, turning southward back toward the equator.
If the AMOC significantly slows or collapses, Europe and North America would experience dramatic cooling (this is the scientific backdrop for the disaster film The Day After Tomorrow), tropical rainfall belts would shift southward, and agriculture in Africa and South America would suffer devastating blows. A potential trigger is the massive influx of freshwater from the melting Greenland ice sheet—freshwater is less dense than seawater and does not sink as readily, thereby "clogging" the AMOC's driving force.
Multiple studies indicate that the AMOC is at its weakest point in a millennium. In March 2026, news coverage of the decisive moment for global ocean governance carried warnings from experts that the AMOC's tipping point may be closer than previously estimated. Deep-sea mining's disruption of the ocean's thermodynamic system—stirring up benthic sediments, altering deep current pathways, releasing organic carbon sequestered for tens of thousands of years—could become an additional destabilizing factor against the backdrop of an already fragile AMOC.
Alarm Three: The Collapse of Both Polar Vortices Is Accelerating
The Arctic: Sea Ice Loss → Polar Vortex Breakdown → Frequent Cold Waves
On June 8, 2026, a research team from the Middle and Upper Atmosphere Laboratory at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology published findings in a Nature-affiliated journal showing that sea ice loss has led to an increase in consecutive sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events. SSW is among the most dramatic stratospheric dynamic anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere winter, manifesting as abrupt stratospheric temperature spikes and rapid polar vortex disintegration over the Arctic.
Once the polar vortex breaks down, the anomaly signal propagates downward into the troposphere, elevating the risk of cold waves, extreme low temperatures, and heavy snowfall across Northern Hemisphere continents.
Sea ice loss acts as an accelerator of polar vortex collapse. The extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice have been declining steadily over recent decades—the less sea ice there is, the more solar radiation the Arctic absorbs, the faster the polar region warms (the "Arctic amplification" effect). The reduced pole-to-mid-latitude temperature gradient makes the polar vortex more susceptible to disturbance, causing it to deviate from the pole or disintegrate more frequently.
A February 2026 WMO bulletin noted: the weakening and distortion of the polar vortex led to additional meanders in the polar front jet stream, driving large masses of cold air into mid-latitude regions, causing cold waves across North America, Europe, and Asia, and creating atmospheric conditions conducive to destructive winter storms.
This is not an isolated polar problem—every breakdown of the Arctic polar vortex ripples through global atmospheric circulation.
The Antarctic: A Melting Continent Rewriting Climate Rules
In mid-June 2026, the Antarctic Peninsula experienced anomalously high temperatures. Data recorded at Argentina's Esperanza Antarctic research station showed temperatures on the peninsula exceeding the normal early-June level by more than twenty degrees Celsius. Because daily maximum temperatures had stayed above zero for the preceding three weeks, the area around the station remained entirely free of snow—in the Antarctic winter.
This is not an isolated heatwave event. Anomalous atmospheric circulation caused by polar vortex breakdown is channeling warm, moist air toward the Antarctic. The weakening of the Antarctic polar vortex exposes the ice shelves at the continent's margins to warmer atmosphere and ocean waters—accelerating ice shelf disintegration and glacier calving into the sea.
As in the Arctic, reduced ice cover means increased absorption of sunlight and accelerated ocean warming.
In August 2025, a research team from the University of New South Wales issued a stark warning: the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is approaching a tipping point. A collapse of the Antarctic overturning circulation would trap nutrients on the deep seafloor, unable to recirculate back to the surface to support biological systems, including the food webs on which marine animals depend. The consequences would be, in their word, "catastrophic."
Antarctic glacier melt is not merely a sea-level-rise problem. The massive injection of freshwater into the Southern Ocean significantly alters seawater density and salinity—and these physical parameters are the foundational forces driving global ocean circulation, including the AMOC.
Both polar ice caps are retreating at rates exceeding projections. It is estimated that if the Antarctic ice sheet were to melt completely, global sea level would rise by approximately 58 meters (some say 60—in any case, on that order of magnitude)—nearly every coastal city on Earth would be submerged.
These scenarios can sound like distant futures, but the record-breaking Antarctic Peninsula temperatures in June tell us: the future is arriving faster than we imagined.
Alarm Four: Deep-Water Warming Upwelling
We once assumed that ocean warming was concentrated mainly in the surface layer. But research published in Nature Communications in April 2026 by the State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology at Tongji University revealed a deeper trend: the Pacific thermocline structure is undergoing significant differentiation, and mid-layer heat transport is accelerating.
This means that surface-layer warming is being transmitted via intermediate water masses to deeper levels, and that deep-ocean heat may, under certain conditions, recirculate back upward.
A more direct signal came from research released on June 17, 2026, by the National University of Defense Technology in collaboration with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences: the impact of tropical cyclones on ocean carbon cycling is undergoing a directional shift. In the past, tropical cyclones (typhoons, hurricanes) prompted the ocean to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But global warming is changing this dynamic—sea surface temperatures are rising far faster than subsurface temperatures, and the vertical temperature gradient in the ocean is steepening significantly, reversing the effect of tropical cyclones on the ocean's carbon budget.
When current systems are altered and vertical temperature gradients are disrupted, the upwelling of deep warm water will become the new normal. And upwelling warm water further erodes sea ice from below, accelerating ice melt, weakening polar vortices, intensifying El Niño—forming a closed-loop positive feedback.
IV. The Mining Map Has Expanded Across All Oceans
The CCZ Remains the Core Zone
The CCZ is a narrow, elongated deep-sea fracture zone in the central Pacific, covering approximately 4.5 million square kilometers. The seabed in this region is blanketed with polymetallic nodules—potato-sized black concretions rich in four critical metals: manganese, nickel, cobalt, and copper. A conservative estimate from ISA Technical Study No. 30 puts the total mass of CCZ polymetallic nodules at roughly 21.1 billion tonnes, with cobalt reserves roughly four times known terrestrial reserves, manganese about 3.5 times, and nickel about twice.
For a world undergoing energy transition—where electric vehicles need batteries and batteries need cobalt and nickel—the CCZ's allure is almost impossible to resist. Of the 31 exploration contracts currently issued by the ISA, 19 are in the CCZ.
But the CCZ Is Not the Only Destination
Exploration and testing are advancing in other sea areas as well:
Southwest Pacific (Cook Islands Waters): COMRA and the Cook Islands conducted their first joint survey expedition, cooperating deeply in areas such as deep-sea exploration and marine environmental protection. Cook Islands waters hold rich polymetallic nodule resources.
Northwest Pacific (Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone): Japan completed the world's first combined sea trial of deep-sea rare-earth sediment extraction, transport, and environmental monitoring near Minami-Torishima Island at a depth of 2,470 meters. The deep-sea mud discovered near the Ogasawara Islands is said to contain enough rare earths in a single square kilometer to meet global demand for an entire year. By some estimates, total deep-sea rare-earth resources in the Pacific amount to 800 times current proven terrestrial reserves.
Okinawa Trough: Japan's research vessel Hakurei has drilled multiple sampling sites at hydrothermal vent fields in the Okinawa Trough—where copper, zinc, gold, and silver are enriched at grades far higher than nodules.
Atlantic Ocean: Norway had once planned to open deep-sea mining within its territorial waters, but in December 2025, the ruling party and opposition reached an agreement to suspend issuance of any deep-sea mining licenses until 2029. This was the world's first national-level moratorium on deep-sea mining.
Indian Ocean: India has initiated polymetallic sulfide exploration in the Central Indian Ridge region.
Deep-sea mining is not a single-point issue confined to the CCZ—it is an industrial trend spreading across the global ocean. Even if one area is placed under restrictions, commercial forces will migrate toward sea areas with weaker regulatory regimes.
V. "Picking Up Nodules" Is Just the First Step—The Logic Will Not Stop There
The primary objective of parties holding exploration permits is to go to the ocean floor and collect metallic nodules. But this will not be the final goal—it is merely the leading edge of a much more serious trend: once the commercial pathway for deep-sea mining is opened, mining will not stop at "picking up nodules."
Nodule collection has the lowest entry barrier, but once enormous investments in equipment and infrastructure have been sunk, the natural next step will be targets of even greater economic value: deep-sea hydrothermal vents (high-grade copper, zinc, gold, silver), cobalt-rich crusts, and deep-sea rare-earth mud.
Each step will appear to be a "logical" industrial upgrade, and each step will disrupt the marine ecosystem more than the last, release more heat, and impose greater, less predictable impacts on ocean current systems.
And the ocean is the last buffer for every ecosystem on this planet. More than 50% of global oxygen is produced by marine phytoplankton. The oceans absorb roughly 30% of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities. Ocean current systems regulate the planet's temperature distribution—without currents, the equator would be hotter, the poles colder, and regions where hundreds of millions of people now live would become uninhabitable.
VI. The Cost: None of the Ocean's Three Major Systems Can Withstand a Shock Like Mining
The Ecosystem
Organisms in the CCZ have adapted to extreme environmental conditions—they grow extremely slowly (deep-sea sponges can live for millennia) and have very low reproductive rates. Once polymetallic nodules are removed, the biological communities that inhabit them will be unable to recover for thousands of years.
A test report published in Deep-Sea Research in May 2026 noted that sediment plumes stirred up by mining vehicle tracks can spread hundreds of kilometers in ocean currents, blanketing vast areas of the seabed and smothering filter-feeding organisms such as sponges and crinoids. Even when mining is confined to a single area, the impact radius is measured at the scale of an entire ocean basin.
More serious still: roughly 90% of the species in the CCZ have not yet been formally recorded or described by science. We are approving an industrial project to destroy an ecosystem about which we know almost nothing.
There is also a discovery from 2024 that makes this cost far more severe than previously estimated.
In July 2024, Andrew Sweetman's team at the Scottish Association for Marine Science published a paradigm-shifting paper in Nature Geoscience.
They studied polymetallic nodules at roughly 4,000 meters depth in the CCZ—those potato-sized black concretions—and discovered something that overturned every textbook: the nodules are producing oxygen.
Metal oxides on the nodule surfaces—manganese, iron, and others—act like natural electrochemical cells, generating oxygen through seawater electrolysis. The measured voltage was approximately 0.95 V—just above the threshold for seawater electrolysis. The research team observed net oxygen production at multiple sampling sites and named it "dark oxygen."
In the complete absence of sunlight, in the darkness far removed from photosynthesis, there exists a source of oxygen that humanity had never previously known.
What does this mean? Polymetallic nodules are not merely a substrate onto which deep-sea organisms attach—they are themselves part of the deep-sea ecosystem's oxygen supply. Removing the nodules does not just dismantle the habitat of deep-sea life; it cuts off a supply line of oxygen to this abyssal realm.
This discovery reminds us: the fundamental processes of deep-sea ecology are not yet fully understood. And a textbook-rewriting finding published only in 2024 cannot be the last. The industrial projects being approved are charging into a domain where humanity does not yet even fully grasp the most basic oxygen cycle.
The Thermal System
The ocean is Earth's largest thermal buffer. Large-scale mining would: stir up benthic sediments, releasing organic carbon that has been sequestered for tens of thousands of years and accelerating its re-entry into the carbon cycle; alter the efficiency of deep-sea carbon cycling; and indirectly affect the ocean's entire heat distribution.
Against the backdrop of the strong 2026 El Niño—superimposed on polar vortex disintegration, deep-water warming upwelling, and AMOC weakening—any additional thermal perturbation could become the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. This is not a single-point disturbance—it is a multi-pronged assault on the entire oceanic thermal system.
The Mechanical System
The ocean's mechanical systems—currents, tides, vertical convection—maintain Earth's thermal equilibrium and material circulation. Deep-sea mining's disruption of benthic currents, destruction of sediment structures, and artificial reshaping of seabed topography all affect the stability of this mechanical system.
Seabed sediments are not a passive substrate. They participate in the global carbon cycle, in the energy dissipation of deep currents, and in supporting benthic ecosystems. Removing nodules, excavating seamounts, disturbing hydrothermal vents—every mining action imposes a "new boundary condition" on the ocean's mechanical system.
A marine mechanical system already rendered fragile by climate warming, now to be overlaid with industrialized mechanical disturbance—we do not know where the tipping point lies. But we do know: under the accumulation of multiple stresses, the tipping point is drawing closer.
VII. What Should Be Done?
The point of this article is not to say that deep-sea minerals must never, under any circumstances, be extracted. The point is: before we act, we must genuinely understand the cost. If the cost is unacceptable, economic considerations must plainly yield to civilizational survival.
Step One: Before the ISA Mining Code is finalized—and has undergone independent scientific review—suspend the approval of commercial exploitation. Use this window to accelerate scientific investigation, increase investment in basic research on deep-sea ecosystems, and establish a genuinely rigorous environmental impact assessment framework. The ISA's own scientific efforts are advancing—in May 2026, the ISA-China Joint Training and Research Centre held a workshop on cumulative impact assessment in Sanya—but the pace of scientific understanding remains far behind the speed at which commercialization is advancing.
Step Two: Designate permanent no-mining zones within the CCZ and other deep-sea mining areas—akin to a terrestrial national park system—with a pledge: "This area will never be touched." Currently, high-seas marine protected areas cover less than 1% of the total high-seas area. The UN target for terrestrial protected areas by 2030, by contrast, is 30%. What the ocean lacks is not potential, but consensus, resolve, and action.
Before his death, the eminent ecologist E.O. Wilson repeatedly called for setting aside half the planet's ecosystems as untouched, if the Earth is to remain habitable.
Looking across the planet, the terrestrial ecosystems can no longer afford to leave half undisturbed—and even among those designated as nature reserves and national parks, how many are genuinely well protected?
For the past century or two, the stability of Earth's ecological balance has probably relied, for the most part, on the ocean's buffering capacity. Now, the ocean is sounding alarm after alarm.
Step Three: Against the backdrop of an oceanic thermal system and mechanical system already under multiple stresses, elevate the environmental impact assessment of deep-sea mining from the "local ecology" level to the "ocean-system" level—looking not only at species loss within the mining zone, but also at the potential impact on the entire ocean's heat distribution, carbon cycle, and current systems; not only at the shock to the ecosystem, but also at the shock to the thermodynamic system.
The Real Hope: Seek solutions through urban mining and the circular economy. Seek solutions in space. (This publication will address these topics in a separate article.)
This is not a choice between "develop" and "not develop." It is a choice between "blindly charging into an unknown domain" and "first understanding the cost, then deciding"—and choosing the latter.
When the entire planetary home is already in peril, should we really be carving fresh wounds into the seabed and churning up the ocean's thermal circulation? Is it truly right? Is it truly worth it? Are we truly unafraid that the reckoning will come too fast?
References:
[1] "Environmental impacts of deep-sea mining: sediment plume dynamics in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone", Deep-Sea Research Part I, 2026.
[2] Feng Ni, Yang Jianmin: "Progress and Insights on Global Deep-Sea Mineral Resource Development—Centered on Equipment Technology", Pacific Journal, No. 8, 2024.
[3] Jin Yongping, Dong Xiangyang, Wan Buyan, Liu Deshun: "Status and Analysis of Deep-Sea Metal Mining Equipment and Technology Development", Journal of China Coal Society, Vol. 49 No. 8, 2024.
[4] United Nations, Third World Ocean Assessment, June 2026.
[5] NOAA: Strong El Niño Advisory, June 2026.
[6] World Meteorological Organization: Global Ocean Temperature Trends Report (2026).
[7] China Meteorological Administration: El Niño Monitoring Advisory, June 2026.
[8] Minmetals Securities Research: Deep-Sea Mining New Materials Report (2026-05-26).
[9] BBNJ Agreement: Entered into force January 17, 2026, 84 contracting parties.
[10] ISA Technical Study No. 30: CCZ Polymetallic Nodule Resource Assessment.
[11] Nature Communications: Mid-layer heat transport in the Pacific accelerates interglacial warming (2026).
[12] Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology: "Sea ice loss has led to an increase in consecutive sudden stratospheric warming events", Nature-affiliated journal (2026-06-08).
[13] World Meteorological Organization: Multi-hazard global impact bulletin, January 2026 (2026-02-07).
[14] National University of Defense Technology, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, CAS: "Impact of tropical cyclones on ocean carbon cycling is undergoing reversal" (2026-06-17).
[15] Ocean Outlook: "Deep-sea miner pursuing a two-track strategy sues the International Seabed Authority", June 10, 2026.
[16] ISA Secretary-General visits the EU, urges support for swift adoption of deep-sea exploitation regulations (2026-02-08).
[17] ISA Legal and Technical Commission, 31st Session, Part I concludes (2026-03-10).
[18] Global ocean governance enters decisive moment, Ministry of Natural Resources report (2026-03-09).
[19] COMRA-Cook Islands joint survey expedition (2026-01).
[20] Norway suspends deep-sea mining plan until 2029 (2025-12).
[21] U.S. NOAA amends deep-sea mining rules, accelerates approval (2026-01).
[22] Ministry of Natural Resources: 2025 China Marine Ecological Early Warning Monitoring Bulletin (2026-06).
[23] Xinhua News Agency, CCTV News: Antarctic Peninsula June heat shatters records, abnormal ice melt (2026-06-13).
[24] UNSW: Scientists warn of "catastrophic consequences" as Antarctica reaches tipping point (2025-08).
[25] Sweetman, A.K. et al.: "Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor" (2024), Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/s41561-024-01480-8.
[26] Permanent Mission of China to the ISA: Activity records of Ambassador Wang Jinfeng (2025–2026).
[27] ISA Secretary-General transition: Michael Lodge departs, Leticia Carvalho assumes office (2025-01).
[28] ISA 31st Session, Second Part, Council and Assembly: Progress on deep-sea mining regulations (2026-06).
[29] Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) member state position summary on deep-sea mining (2024–2025).
[30] EU Council position paper on the ISA Mining Code (2025–2026).
Fan Chunping (Zhigeng) · June 2026