Scientists find a massive mineral treasure 2.5 miles under the sea: Mining companies are racing to extract it
A multi-million-square-mile plain in the Pacific Ocean has highly valuable mineral deposits - but mining them could come at a huge cost to local species’ habitat.
The Clarion-Clipperton Zone is a 2.3 million-square-mile abyssal plain stretching between Mexico and Hawaii - roughly the width of the continental United States. This vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean has become the focal point of an increasingly heated global debate, pitting the push for clean-energy technologies against the need to protect deep-sea biodiversity.
Rocks with enormous industrial value
The reason? Polymetallic nodules. These potato-sized rocks are mineral deposits that formed over millions of years through the extremely slow precipitation of metals dissolved in seawater and deep-ocean sediments. They are particularly rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt, and copper.
That is precisely what makes them so valuable. The metals locked within these deposits on the Pacific seafloor are critical components in the production of electric-vehicle batteries and renewable-energy storage technologies.
Mining companies argue that land-based extraction carries significant human and environmental costs - as illustrated by the cobalt mining industry in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a key supplier for technologies such as smartphones. In their view, the ocean’s metal-rich nodules offer a more abundant alternative that could substantially reduce human-rights concerns within the global supply chain.
The major challenge, however, is recovering them. Most of these nodules lie at depths of around 16,500 feet below the ocean’s surface.
Thousands of marine species at stake
One of the greatest environmental concerns surrounding nodule mining is the potential for irreversible habitat loss. Once disturbed or removed, these habitats could take millions of years to regenerate.
According to a 2023 analysis published by London’s Natural History Museum, researchers collected samples representing 5,578 animal species within the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Of those species, only 436 had been formally identified and described by science.
As a result, more than 90% of the species recorded during scientific expeditions in the CCZ are entirely new to science. They range from glass sponges to sea cucumbers specially adapted to crushing pressures and perpetual darkness.
Many of these organisms - including certain corals and sponges - depend on the hard surface of the nodules as an anchor point for survival. Remove the rocks, and their only known habitat disappears with them.
Who governs this territory?
Responsibility for managing the area falls to the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an autonomous United Nations body headquartered in Jamaica.
The organization is currently under intense pressure. It must finalize the mining code that will establish the legal framework governing when and how commercial deep-sea mining can begin.
At the same time, dozens of countries - including France, Germany, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Samoa, Vanuatu, and Tuvalu - along with hundreds of scientists, are calling for a precautionary pause until the ecological impacts of deep-sea mining are better understood.
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