by Dr. Mateo Alvarenga
As terrestrial reserves dwindle, corporations and states are turning to the ocean floor. Polymetallic nodules, cobalt crusts, and hydrothermal vents promise the metals that power batteries, turbines, and solar panels. But extraction’s new frontier may repeat the old mistakes.
The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast stretch of Pacific seabed, holds billions of tons of nodules rich in nickel and manganese. For mining companies, it looks like salvation. For scientists, it looks like another sacrifice zone.
Governed by the little-known International Seabed Authority, the Pacific’s abyss is both treasure chest and battleground. States from Canada to China compete for contracts, while island nations whose futures depend on the sea are sidelined.
Hydrothermal vents nurture microbes and species found nowhere else on Earth. Entire evolutionary archives could be erased before they’re even understood. Mining threatens to silence ecosystems older than humanity itself.
Sediment clouds stirred by mining could linger for centuries. They threaten to disrupt ocean currents, food webs, and the delicate balance that underpins life across the planet.
Mining machines roar in the deep. Whales and other migratory species rely on sound to navigate, mate, and survive. Disrupted soundscapes fracture migrations, turning ancient highways into dead ends.
Pacific island nations face impossible choices. Royalties promise short-term relief from economic precarity. But the cost is often borne by cultures whose identity, history, and future are inseparable from the ocean.
The Seabed Authority was meant to safeguard humanity’s “common heritage.” Instead, it has become a stage where sovereignty, survival, and profit collide. The battle is no longer just for resources, but for the very definition of the commons.
From Polynesia to Alaska, Indigenous leaders remind us that the ocean is not empty space. It is a living relation, a source of food, identity, and care. To reduce it to capital is to erase centuries of stewardship.
Metals from the seabed may power wind farms and EVs. But if the green transition depends on new sacrifice zones, are we solving the climate crisis—or recreating its logic?
The history of extraction shows frontiers rarely close once opened. To refuse deep-sea mining may be the most radical act: a commitment to restraint, recycling, and justice over endless growth.
The seabed is the last frontier. The choice is ours: treat the ocean as capital to be liquidated, or as a commons to be sustained. The future hangs in the balance.