As a Canadian company appears to sidestep international law and works in tandem with the Trump administration for a deep-sea mining licence, legal experts and activists are urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to censure its actions and publicly reassert Canada’s position supporting a moratorium on mining the fragile ecosystems.

Just before this year’s annual meeting of the International Seabed Authority (ISA)—the body mandated under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to regulate all mineral-resource activities on seabeds beyond national jurisdiction—36 Canadian environmental organizations urged Canada to publicly reprimand Vancouver-headquartered The Metals Company (TMC) for circumventing UNCLOS in its quest to mine the central Pacific seabed.

TMC is seeking mining rights through two channels. Its two Pacific island-based subsidiaries are working within the ISA process. And at the same time, the company’s United States-based subsidiary is working with the Trump administration to secure comparable exploration rights via the 1980 U.S. Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (DSHMRA).

Activists and scholars argue that such unilateral action contravenes UNCLOS, which states that all parts of the ocean floor that lie outside national limits, including all resources found there, belong to all humanity and that no state may claim or exercise sovereignty there.

Effectively dormant for the past four decades, DSHMRA was re-energized last April when Trump signed an executive order directing staff to expedite deep sea mining by U.S. companies both within its national waters and in “areas beyond national jurisdiction.”

The U.S. never ratified UNCLOS, so it isn’t bound by ISA processes. Canada is a different story: it ratified the treaty in 2003.

Yet Canada remained silent on the matter of TMC at the ISA meeting held in Jamaica this July. In August, Global Affairs Canada told The Energy Mix by email that “Canada participated actively during the session to advance the finalization of regulations.”

“Canada carefully assesses developments that may have implications for Canadian interests, including marine environmental interests, and engages with partners through appropriate bilateral and international channels where warranted,” Global Affairs added.

Without mentioning TMC, the email included a link to a 2023 statement: “Canada supports a moratorium on commercial seabed mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction and will not support the provisional approval of a plan of work.”

Strip-Mining the Ecologically Rich Abyssal Plains

Founded in 2011, TMC (formerly DeepGreen Metals) has long pursued polymetallic nodules: potato-sized lumps of mineral precipitate that form on the deep seabed, between four and six kilometres down. The nodules are rich sources of cobalt and nickel, both of which are in high demand in the defence and aerospace sectors as well as clean energy.

Typically the only hard objects on the soft seabed, the nodules also provide anchor points for myriad forms of deep sea life, much of it only now beginning to be explored.

In 2023, in a first-ever effort to catalogue the range of deep sea creatures living in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the central and eastern Pacific—a six-million-square-kilometre region that is ground zero for nodule mining aspirations—a team of scientists from the United Kingdom discovered roughly 5,000 new species. 

(See here for a video from MIT Engineering on how companies like TMC plan to vacuum up polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor.)

Committed to U.S. Mineral Independence

As The Tyee writes in its comprehensive July report on TMC and its deep-sea mining plans, TMC CEO Gerard Barron paid a visit to the West Wing a few days before Trump signed his executive order to expedite deep sea mining permissions. Meeting unidentified senior U.S. officials, Barron reportedly discussed his company’s “readiness to become the first corporation to commercially mine the ocean floor.”

Continuing to hobnob with the Trump administration, Barron has been outspoken about his intentions to align his company’s interests with those of the U.S.

Polymetallic nodules are “such an enormous resource that can really make a dent when it comes to the mineral independence that America is so desperate for,” Barron told CNBC.

So far, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has certified the second of TMC’s two exploration licence applications for the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. All told, TMC is looking to secure exploitation licences for roughly 187,000 square kilometres of seabed within the zone, territory that it estimates contains over 1.6 billion tonnes of polymetallic nodules.

Speaking Up for International Law

“Parties to UNCLOS are legally obligated to ensure their nationals and corporations do not claim or exercise rights to the international seabed outside UNCLOS,” Mining Watch Canada, Greenpeace Canada, and dozens of other organizations wrote in their late April letter to Carney and several ministers. TMC is operating in clear defiance of UNCLOS, and Canada must not be silent, they added.

The Carney government must “publicly denounce efforts by a Canadian company to engage in unilateral deep-sea mining.”

Beyond a boilerplate acknowledgement of receipt from the Prime Minister’s Office, the signatories have received no answer to their letter, Catherine Coumans, Asia-Pacific Program Coordinator at Mining Watch Canada, told The Mix.

Some of the same signatories, including Mining Watch Canada, had written a similar letter to the Carney government last June.

In tacitly allowing a Canadian-headquartered company to undermine UNCLOS, Canada is risking legal action from its peer signatories, Michael Bissonnette, a staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law who signed the April letter, told The Mix.

The convention contains “dispute resolution processes that other states could use to hold Canada accountable,” he said.

Support for Moratorium Grows

As the 31st Assembly of the ISA wound down in Jamaica, environmental activists were encouraged by the increasing number of delegates citing a dearth of scientific knowledge as reason to further postpone any decisions on opening the deep seas to mineral extraction.

“The growing emphasis on science-based decision-making is an important development, because the lack of scientific understanding about the deep sea is obvious,” Jessica Battle, World Wildlife Fund lead on its No Deep Seabed Mining Initiative, said in a press release. “We are only beginning to understand the biodiversity and climate functions of deep ocean ecosystems.”

Six African countries have supported the call for either a moratorium or a precautionary pause on deep sea mining since May, a measure of accelerating concern about the nascent industry, noted WWF. “More governments are recognizing that protecting the deep ocean must come before opening one of Earth’s least understood ecosystems to a new extractive industry,” said Kum Elvis Meh, WWF’s regional policy coordinator for Africa.

To date, 46 countries support a moratorium, alongside nearly 1,000 scientists, more than a dozen financial institutions, including Quebec’s Caisse de dépôts, and companies including Microsoft and General Motors.

A Planet-Nurturing Ecosystem at Risk

While ISA recognized the need for greater scientific knowledge, that sentiment “did not lead to the adoption of a proposal by the government of Vanuatu to establish a mechanism to assess gaps in scientific knowledge and progress toward filling them,” WWF writes.

And now deep-sea mining proponents are looking beyond polymetallic nodules.

Plans are afoot to strip cobalt from “sea mounts,” mountain-size extrusions of volcanic rock and deep biodiversity rising at least 1,000 metres from the ocean floor, reports the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.

The extraction of polymetallic sulphides from hydro-thermal vents is also being contemplated.

Alongside biodiversity concerns, deep sea mining also threatens carbon sequestration processes, the international non-profit warns in a September, 2025 explainer.

Consisting of  “marine snow,” the product of “the constant drizzle of dead plankton, fecal pellets, and organic debris” settling on the seafloor over millennia, the thick sediments now at risk from mining “form one of Earth’s largest and longest-lasting carbon sinks, locking carbon away for thousands to millions of years.”

Deep-sea mining will disturb these sediments, thereby risking “the release of stored carbon back into circulation, and undermining a vital climate buffer.”

“We are at a critical moment for the legitimacy of the international legal framework that governs the high seas,” said Bissonnette. “We need the ISA and member states, in particular Canada, to stand up for this international legal framework in the face of unprecedented threats from the United States and The Metals Company.”