2024 for deep sea mining was a crazy year. So much happened. Norway started to deep sea mine. They were exploring to deep sea mine. Then all of a sudden they're not doing it anymore. What happened? There was a change in leadership with the ISA. What happened? All this stuff happened, but
we didn't really know how it all happened. So actually, Dr. Andrew Thaler, who's been on the podcast before to talk about deep sea mining, contacted me and said, hey, Andrew, do you want to talk about deep sea mining and everything that happened in 2024? Because so much happened. I want to talk about it. I said, absolutely. Let's have you on the podcast. So today we're going to be talking about deep sea mining. What happened in 2024? The good, the bad and the ugly. We're going
to talk about it on today's episode of How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about
deep sea mining and everything that happened in the last year. So much has happened. that Dr. Andrew Thaler, a good friend of mine, is coming on the podcast to talk about it today. And we're going to find out much more about it. But if you want to know a lot of stuff about the ocean and you don't know where to go, this is your resource. Not only is this podcast a resource, but you can go over to our website at speakupforblue.com and check it out. And you'll find all of
our old episodes. We have over 1,700 episodes up there. Other podcasts that deal with wildlife and oceans and sharks and marine mammal veterinary stuff and veterinary stuff for the ocean. There's so much stuff that goes on there. You want to check it out, go to speakupforblue.com. And if you want some of that information to come to your inbox Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern, you can do that by going to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter and
just putting in your email. I don't share your email with anybody. It's free to join and you get that newsletter to your inbox Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern. Let's start the show. Today we've got Dr. Andrew Thaler who's talking about deep sea mining. All the stuff that happened. We're going to be talking about what's the best type of deep sea mining. Not necessarily the best, but what's the least impactful deep sea mining activity
that we can do. And why does Andrew Thaler not want to sign on to this agreement and say, hey, you know, this is good to agreement. What's the problem here? What's going to happen? He's going to talk about that as well. We're going to talk about the dark oxygen story that came out and what is coming up with that. What's new with that? And if it's legitimate, if it's still new research, is it, you know, some more research needs to be done. We're going to find out about a lot of stuff on
this episode. So here is the interview with Dr. Andrew Thaler talking about deep sea mining in 2024. Enjoy the interview and we'll talk to you after. Hey Andrew, welcome back to the How to Protect the Ocean
It has been, and we've been trying to cover it. I cited a lot of the stuff from our last interview that you did, where you came in and you talked about deep sea mining and where it was at, and you talked about the newsletter and the magazine that you did, and all the work that you've done, and we talked about a history of deep sea mining and stuff. And now, that last meeting was quite interesting. And even
the meeting after that was quite interesting. So the last two meetings were quite interesting. And you called me up and you're like, hey, Andrew, let's talk some DC buy. Let's talk some updates from 2024 and what to expect from 2025. And I was like, you know what? My audience loves to hear about deep sea mining, because I think a lot of us are petrified about what's happening. And there's a lot of news out there. There's a lot of stuff that goes
on. It's really difficult to kind of filter through some of the stuff that's real, some of the stuff that's not real, and what's happening, and getting updates. Because it seems like it's changing quite a bit. So we're going to get into all that. But just to remind some of the audience who are new to this podcast who you are and what All right. So hello, everybody. I am Andrew Thaler. I
am a deep sea ecologist and a high seas policy expert. And my work focuses on how humans use technology to explore and exploit the ocean, especially the most remote parts of the ocean. So I have done a lot of work with deep sea mining over the years. I've been in the industry in some sort of fashion for almost 15 years now, maybe even more, 17 years. I have been out on deep sea mining vessels. I have worked on environmental impact
assessments for deep sea mining proposals. I have run the Deep Sea Mining Observer, which was the trade journal that covers the industry. I have worked with NGOs who are trying to find ways to stop deep-sea mining, find ways to stop certain kinds of deep-sea mining, find ways to make deep-sea mining more responsible and more sustainable, or find ways to just advise on creating the best possible policy
surrounding deep-sea mining. So I have been in the thick of it from just about every angle you can think of, and it has been a wild ride. And I will tell you what I told people in 2008, which is Yes. That's what we talked about. And I remember when we first discussed this, it was really far away. It was like, will this ever happen? I think last time we discussed this, I think it was at IMCC 2016. That sounds about
right. In Newfoundland. And you were like, probably won't happen till about 2030, to be honest, like from the technology perspective and the policy perspective. And we're almost there. And I think it might be a little delayed just
a little bit longer. But there's a lot of scary things going on, a lot of things that are being said, a lot of things that are happening where I believe it was Denmark that went out to do some Norway, sorry, Norway, Denmark's on my mind these days with Greenland, but Norway that decided to go out and do some exploration, and
a couple of other countries that are dabbling in it. So I think people are wondering, is it okay for countries to go out, from a legal perspective, are they allowed to go out and do it, and in what situation are they allowed, under what context are they allowed to go and do the exploration? All right, so that is a great question. Let's start with Norway, because Norway is kind of like an encapsulation of the last year of deep sea
mining. Beginning of January 2024, Norwegian parliament comes out and says, we are going to begin issuing exploration permits for deep sea mining of inactive hydrothermal
vents in our national waters. Countries can do whatever they want in their national waters depending on their own laws The big regulations and restrictions are what's happening in international waters But in national waters, it's national law, so every country's got its own rule set They can do what they want Norway said we're going to start issuing exploration permits That surprised a lot of people because Norway has been, you know, they're a huge offshore
oil and gas producer But they're also a very strong environmentally conscientious society So there was quite a bit of pushback from that. It looked for a while like Norway was going to move forward. And then in December, as the Norwegian parliament was brokering a deal for their budget for the next year, one of the stipulations from one of the smaller parties in their parliament that they needed to get the votes to get their budget done, one of their stipulations was,
we don't want deep sea mining permits. And so that was scrapped. This entire year for deep sea mining has been a flurry of activity that has resulted us ultimately ending up kind Yes. From an environmental perspective, we are slowly working towards a set of environmental regulations that No one's going to particularly like, but everyone will probably be grudgingly consent to, which is the best you can hope for for big
international negotiations. And that process has been ongoing for decades and is slowly creeping towards conclusion. Polymetallic nodule mining. Now, I've been on this show before. I've said a lot of times deep sea mining is three different industries. Polymetallic nodule mining is different from hydrothermal vent mining. It's different from seamount mining. They all have their own impacts. They all have their own consequences. They all have their own
sort of justifications. And when I left the Deep Sea Mining Observer, the first action I did as a not-journalist covering deep sea mining was to sign on to the scientists' sign-on letter for calls for moratorium on the development of the deep sea mining regulations. And the reason I did that is not because I didn't think there was a future for deep sea mining. The reason I did that is because The current policy being negotiated at the ISA is a unitary mining code that
covers all three kinds of deep sea mining. Gotcha. And so, you know, the folks who are working on polymetallic nodule mining, they have a pretty good argument. I don't think they're 100% there yet, but I think there's a real possibility that they could get to the point where they could have an environmentally justifiable industry. For hydrothermal vent mining, for seabound mining, for cobalt rich crust, I don't think there's any future for those that could possibly have environmental
justifications. And so as long as there's a unitary mining code, you know. giving permission to the best form of mining if that also gives permission to the worst forms of mining is Why do you think they did that? Why do you think they wanted to just spread it around to So it's really curious because this is the second set of mining code negotiations that has happened. And the first set was for the exploration permits. So
exploration for deep sea mining is prospecting. It's the process of going out into an ecosystem, looking for the ore bodies, identifying where there might actually be valuable ore, doing the initial environmental impact assessments and then going back and saying, I think there's something valuable here. Can we have permission to go on further? And then you apply for an exploitation permit. The ISA negotiated separate mining regulations for all three
ore bodies for the exploration permits. So there is a separate set of rules for exploration for polymetallic nodules and for hydrothermal vents and for cobalt-rich seamounts. But for whatever reason, and I think the reason is the people who really, really want to do hydrothermal vent and cobalt-rich seamount mining know they're not going to be able to get it through unless they get it all through together. For that reason, almost certainly, they've decided on a unitary mining code for
Okay. Interesting. Interesting. So your position here is, and why you signed on, it was the fact that it was the full, like they were doing a unitary sort of commitment to saying you can explore whatever type you want. You're like, no, that's not the way we go forward. Let's move forward in a proper way and let's look at one specific one that will be the least amount of Exactly. And part of that is that the most advanced
mining companies right now are all looking for polymetallic nodules. The financial regime, which is a big hang up that we can get into if you really want to get into the economics of things, that's currently being negotiated is looking at projections from polymetallic nodule mining. The environmental work has all been developed on environmental, not
environmental, on polymetallic nodule mining. And so we're in a situation where You know, best is probably not the right word because we're still talking about an extractive industry, but the least worst form of mining is driving the negotiation forward, but
it's dragging worst forms of mining along with it. And I think because hydrothermal vents and cobalt-rich seamounts aren't being considered in nearly the same detail, we're going to be left with a mining code that preferentially discusses polymetallic nodule mining with regulations shaped around that. And we end up in situations where we're going to encounter regulations that don't address impacts that are happening. at things like hydrothermal vents
and seamounts. Because these are very different ecosystems. They're very different geologically. They're very different ecologically. They're Yes, the hydrothermal vents especially. I know usually, I know in Canada we've protected on our west coast a huge system of hydrothermal vents on purpose because, you know, not only for that but just for the biodiversity, the uniqueness of the habitat is very distinctive and we even expanded it a couple of years ago or about four or five years ago to
make it even bigger than what it was. Do we know the detrimental effect it would have if we did hydrothermal vent The big thing with hydrothermal vent mining in particular is that the process that builds the hydrothermal vent is the same process that creates the ore and is the same process that supports chemosynthetic communities. So you can't have one without
the other. You can't remove one without removing the other. When you're looking at mining a hydrothermal vent, you are looking at comprehensive removal of the ecosystem because the ore is the ecosystem. The chemical processes that drive the vents is the chemical processes that produce the ore. And so you're really looking at comprehensive total removal of an ecosystem from the seafloor because it happens to be rich in gold
and silver and nickel. You know, when you look at a polymetallic nodule field, polymetallic nodule fields are scattered across the abyssal plane. They cover probably 60% of the surface of the earth. There's a huge ecosystem. It's incredibly spread out. Like I don't like to write off any particular ecosystem, but in terms of resilience, like… There's a lot more polymetallic nodule field in the world than
there is hydrothermal vents. If you took all the known hydrothermal vent fields on the planet, the ones we've seen with ROVs and with submarines and the ones we've hypothesized through looking for chemical signatures, if you took that total surface area, it's smaller than Manhattan. Wow. So we are talking about, you know, you're making regulations on one hand that are regulating the biggest ecosystem on
the planet and also one of the smallest ecosystems on the planet. And And so you're saying when we, if we mine a hydrothermal vent, we remove that entire hydrothermal vent that ceases to exist. Exactly. So we will go through that a lot faster than Yes, and it's very oar-dense. And so I think the most valuable one out there they projected was worth something like $210 million. Dear lord. Which, you know, is a lot of money, but I don't know if it's enough money to justify losing
Yeah. Now here, you know, obviously you and I and our audience members understand the value of, you know, a unique habitat such as hydrothermal vents. But there are a lot of people out there who are just like, well, if we lose it, what's the big deal? You know, we just lose this. Do we know the impact that that would have on the deep sea in general? Or is that still under,
because we haven't really lost them or haven't really known that we've lost them. We don't know the impact it would have on the rest of the deep sea ecosystem in and So here is the argument that a mining company would make that wants to mine an active hydrothermal vent. Yeah. Hydrothermal vents are geologically active. They have their own turnover. In some cases, like if you're in the Western Pacific, the average lifespan of a hydrothermal vent is 10 years. These
are volcanically active regions. They erupt. Sometimes they get buried by lava flows. They turn on, they shut down. They're very dynamic ecosystems. There is an argument to be made that they are incredibly resilient to disturbance. That's how they've evolved. There's an equally valid argument to be made that natural disturbance versus anthropogenic disturbance, which is an additive function of disturbance, we don't
really know what the consequences of that could possibly be. But when you're talking about completely removing a hydrothermal vent ecosystem, you're losing genetic conductivity between different hydrothermal vent systems. You may be breaking stepping stones that prevent downstream hydrothermal vent ecosystems from being recolonized as they turn over. And hydrothermal vents are nasty. Like these are full of heavy metals.
There's arsenic in them. They're slightly radioactive. You've got a lot of other very nasty heavy metals that are produced and embedded within the hydrothermal vent chimney. They're sulfur rich. And so you go in with a mining tool and you begin grinding. I mean it's functionally strip mining when you're talking about a hydrothermal vent. you're creating a plume. You're creating a toxic metal radioactive plume that spreads across
the seafloor. And so that plume is going to settle out in the surrounding sediment and who knows how much further it'll perfuse across the seafloor. So it is going to have knockdown effects on halo fauna as well. It's going to impact the animals around
hydrothermal vents that aren't necessarily dependent on hydrothermal vents. And if you're talking about a mining vessel where you're going to have like a dewatering plume, that's coming off the vessel after the ore returns to the surface, that's going to end up in the mid-water, and it's going to be impacting things like fisheries. But that's hydrothermal vent mining. And a thing I want to highlight is that right now, the real push is for polymetallic nodule mining. And
that's where things are happening at the ISA. And for the most part at this moment, when people talk about deep sea mining, with a few exceptions, they are talking about polymetallic nodule mining. With this type of mining, how is it done? You talked a little bit about the hydrothermal vent, how it's just basically you're grinding it Polymetallic nodules are very weird
rocks. We're not 100% sure the exact geochemical process for how they form, but the kind of broad strokes is that a small nucleating agent, some kind of a hard object, it's often like the test of a diatom or a radiolarin, but it's sometimes something as big as a shark's tooth, when it sinks into the deep sea, very slowly over the course of millions of years, heavy metals from the surrounding seawater accrete around this
hard nucleating agent. And basically it's a rock that grows and it takes four, five, six million years to grow, but it's a rock that grows. A weird thing about it is they don't sink. So they sit on the seafloor, but you don't ever find them buried in the sediment. So there's some long-term process that we're not really sure. There's one hypothesis that burrowing animals
underneath them are causing uplift. There's another hypothesis that the process of forming a nodule is biogenic, so there's microbes that are part of that, and that the nodule is actually breaking down as it contacts the sediment and then reaccreting on top. But these are all hypotheses. There's also the possibility that just the topology of the seafloor and the movement of sediment across the seafloor causes them to remain on the surface. So
they're weird. They're a rock that grows. And they're a rock that grows into an object that contains the things we need in an electric vehicle battery. So they're rich in cobalt. They're rich in nickel. They're not super rich in copper but they have some copper and they're rich in manganese, which are all elements that go into next generation renewable energy technologies. So there is an
environmental argument to be made. that if we want to get off fossil fuels, if we want to electrify the world's automotive fleets, if we want to shift towards renewable energy, we might have to go to sea to get the metals necessary to build that technology. I don't find that argument particularly compelling anymore. I used to find it much, much more compelling. But technology has moved on. Only 20% of the electric vehicles being made in China right now are using
batteries that contain cobalt. They're using next generation batteries. They're using lithium iron phosphate battery chemistries that are cheaper and more stable. … and don't require this incredibly expensive metal that's hard to access. And so I think the technology itself has moved faster than deep-sea mining has progressed to a point where I'm not sure – and I'm not an economist, so what the heck do I know? But I'm not sure the economic argument for deep sea mining makes a ton of
sense anymore. And I think the commodities market has played that out. So cobalt and nickel right now are in kind of historic ruts. They're both in a major surplus. They're both trading at kind of their historic minimums. projections for deep sea mining. In the summer of 2023, they revised the model for a hypothetical polymetallic nodule mine based off of metals values at the time. And since then, they've lost about $400 million a year in value. Just a little bit.
So the economics are not really shaking out in deep sea mining's favor at the moment. On the other hand, There's another issue at play, and you've almost certainly heard me do this line before, but I say deep sea mining is three industries. Deep sea mining is really four industries. And that fourth industry is geopolitics. Deep sea mining is deeply embedded in kind of great power struggles, geopolitical, diplomatic
brinksmanship, that kind of thing. Countries use deep sea mining as a tool to argue for the expansion of their outer continental shelf. which expands their EEZ. They use it to assert sovereignty over different areas of the seafloor. They use it for prestige. And they use it to access metals when we have things like security issues. So, you know, cobalt is in a historic surplus, but cobalt is also 90% produced by the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, and those mines are largely controlled by China. If you're a country like the United States that suddenly is very adverse to trading with China, there is a geopolitical argument to
be made for accessing other sources of these critical minerals. And so we've seen that with the major private companies who want to do deep sea mining pivoting away from the environmental argument and the sustainability argument and towards the national security argument, the critical minerals argument, the resource independence argument. And I think, you know, I think that has some staying power for a lot of people. That's certainly a compelling argument,
I know, for a lot of the national security hawks that I talk to. So on that token, this has been like the biggest year in a long time for the U.S. getting involved in deep sea mining. And I'm even talking about before the Trump administration kicked off. Right. So early in the year, Congresswoman Miller of West Virginia introduced a bill to incentivize polymetallic nodule refining on the U.S., on U.S. soil, which is kind of an interesting case. So the U.S. doesn't deep-sea mine, and
the U.S. isn't a signatory to UNCLOS, the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, which means the U.S. is not beholden to the rules of the U.N., but we also don't get to negotiate, and we also don't really get to access the mineral resources of the high seas. But we can refine them and one of the things the US can do that the other countries who are signatories to the UN Convention on the Law
of the Sea can't do is create privileged markets. So if you are Canada, if you are Great Britain, if you are China or Russia or Singapore and you deep sea mine, the metals you mine have to go into the same market as terrestrially produced metals. You can't say we're only going to mine the deep sea and sell deep sea minerals. You can't privilege the source of the metal. And that's in place so that developing countries can't be bullied out of existence
by deep sea mining. And if those countries, if their terrestrial industries are negatively impacted, they have to be compensated. So the US, because we didn't sign, we can do that. We can say we only want to put deep
sea metals in our cars. We don't want cobalt from the Congo. And so I think the argument for having the U.S. be a refining center for polymetallic nodules, so they'll be mined on the high seas by an international company and then landed in the U.S. to be refined, you know, I think that argument has some weight to it. And I think from an economic standpoint, there's a lot of people who want to see that happen. And quite frankly, like, you know, the US isn't great on refining metals, but like,
we're an awful lot better than some countries. So like, you know, that environmental impact is going to happen somewhere, you know, the US isn't
the worst choice. Yeah, for sure. Maybe it doesn't have to happen at all, because there's no economic value in Well, I think that's a question I have for you too, because last time you were on, I remember you saying that even if we were to start mining, say today, like full-fledged mining, it would take 50 years for it to really come into production and be in an actual So it wasn't that it would take 50 years for it to come into production and be in
a battery. It would be, it was that it would be, you know, 30 year minimum for it to reach the scale where it's even remotely competitive with terrestrial mining operations. Gotcha. Okay. So it's, you know, and I think the line I was giving then and it's the line I still do now is that, you know, deep sea mining may be a possible a route to sustainability to reach 2050 or 2100 targets, but it's certainly not going to help us reach 2030 climate targets.
And I think I probably said that in 2019, and now we're at 2025. It definitely is not going to help us meet any climate targets for 2030, and probably not for 2050 either. It might be a solution for 2075. And so for that reason, you know, deep sea mining has time, which is one of the reasons why I think it's kind of silly to do this unitary mining code when, you
know, we can take our time and get it right. This is the first time in human history where we've negotiated the rules for an extractive industry before the industry has been able to extract. And so, like, why not make it the example for resource extraction?
Yeah, it's such an opportunity, right? It's such an opportunity. Now with that said, you know, like we're talking about the advancements of battery technology and that it doesn't need as much cobalt and you mentioned, what is it, 20% of Chinese batteries that are being made for EVs are not even using cobalt or Is there a possibility that you know, they won't
Absolutely. So, you know, the two battery technologies that are really starting to come online that are exciting to me, in terms of not being anti-deep sea mining, but in terms of getting us off our need for minerals at all, are solid state batteries, They use graphene and they use an acid gel as their electrolyte so that you have these batteries that are very
stable, very fast charging. They're basically gigantic capacitors. You can dump all the amps into them all at once so you don't have to do that whole sitting and charging for 45 minutes thing. When you're fast charging and driving across the country, you can just dump all the juice in all at once and they're perfectly stable and they run fine. They don't need any heavy metals for the most part, at least the best chemistries
I've seen. And that's really appealing because that makes them much, much more accessible with a much lighter footprint. Sodium batteries are, they're not as fast discharging. They're incredibly stable and they can store an awful lot of energy. They're not really a good electric vehicle battery, but for like municipal power storage, as we start building a more sustainable renewable grid, Sodium Or home storage, exactly, yeah. Those sodium batteries will really
take off. So I think – and neither of those particularly need the metals that we derive from the deep sea. Right. So I think it all really depends on which battery chemistry wins. It's like the USB wars. Is it going to be micro USB or mini USB or USB-C or Blu-ray or DVD? Now we're in the battery wars. Which battery chemistry is going to win? The battery chemistry that wins is going to decide whether or not we really have a strong economic argument to
There was a story that I covered over the last year. And it talked about these nodules. I think they were probably metallic nodules that were emitting oxygen. And they were wondering, is this part of the deep sea ecology? Could this be something that we could use in the future as an argument not to, or be very careful if you're going to take these nodules, because it could be providing oxygen to the animals and the
So that is the dark oxygen story. Yes. That was a paper published about polymetallic nodules from the Clarion-Clipperton zone, where people want to mine. And I think the actual initial research was funded by a deep sea mining company. So it is 100% tied to deep sea mining. It is a very preliminary study. And the results are incredibly tantalizing. I'm not 100% convinced that they've actually detected oxygen production yet. And it's hard
to tell what the mechanism is. And it's one of those things where it's probably, there's probably some kind of, if oxygen is truly being produced in the volumes they're talking about, it's probably a biogenic process involving microbes interacting with the nodules. Right. But that is absolutely – it's an incredibly tantalizing piece of research. It's definitely something to watch. It's definitely something we want to know more about before we go and
wholesale – Of course. Remove these nodules from the seafloor. So I think that's a really interesting story that we definitely need a lot of follow-up on. And that actually kind of highlights one of the weird paradoxes of the entire deep sea mining story, which is that these mining companies for the most part, they're I won't say they're green companies, but they want to be green companies. They're environmentally motivated
companies. Their fundamental value proposition is that we need to get off fossil fuels and we have a better way of getting the metals we need from the seafloor versus from land. Yes. So there has always been an environmental motivation behind fossil fuels. Some of these companies, I mean, some of them just want to make money, but most of them are fairly environmentally motivated. And they funded a lot of research. They want to do the environmental impact assessments right, to
an extent. They also want to mine, so they don't want the environmental impact assessments to say no go. But they're funding this research. A lot of the big research that's come out in the last 10 years that suggests maybe we shouldn't mine the high seas has come from funding from deep sea mining companies. And I'm actually one of the examples of that. I worked on the environmental impact assessment for the Sulwara
I mining project. When I went into that project, I was pretty persuaded by the argument that this is a dynamic ecosystem that it turns over on. Sulwara I especially turns over very fast. That the site itself is underneath an active submarine volcano, so it's constantly already getting buried by the same chemically enriched plume that would be produced by the mining tool. They had a good argument. And so that was one of the reasons why I felt comfortable working with them
on the environmental impact assessment. And as we progress, and I did my PhD thesis with them and did a lot of environmental work and did a lot of connectivity work on the systems, as I progressed through my research, I slowly came to the conclusion that I don't really think we can do this kind of thing anywhere without having a permanent negative impact to the ecosystem. Even in that area? Even in that area. I think Sul-Warun was probably the best case scenario. And,
you know, it's like the polymetallic nodule argument, right? You know, if it's the least worst, if you're still opening the gates to the worst, then it's not helping anyone. Exactly. So like that, I've seen that transition happen among a lot of a lot of people. And like, you know, the mining companies are, you know, not every mining company, obviously, like, capitalism is
a thing that drives and motivates people for reasons other than the environment. But like, The people I know on the ground who do the environmental work for these companies, who are writing the environmental impact statements, who are leading their initial research programs, they care about the environment. And they learn things, and they fund environmental research, and they fund a lot of environmental research that ultimately says, don't mine here.
Right. Yeah, it's an interesting concept. It's really weird in this position that we're in where it seems like, as you mentioned, Norway starts off January saying, hey, yeah, we're going to explore. And then by the end of December, the government's like, as they put their budget through, no, there's a small contingent that says, no, we don't want it in there. And they have to pass the budget. So that's just the way it goes. Then the other side, as you mentioned, there's
a geopolitical side to it. And that can drive a lot of movement on a side for, say, the US or anybody else to activate some deep sea mining or at least refineries and see how that works. It seems like because it's such a global issue, How do you expect people to react and what do you expect them to do in this situation? The audience members here, just like me, are really scratching the surface of deep sea mining and
just really understanding. Obviously you coming on really helps in finding out the three main different types of ways to mine it and what's the least amount of harm and then the most amount of harm that we see. And so we get that knowledge in there. But for the audience member who's listening to this and just being like, OK, so now I'm educated on how this all works. I'm educated on the different things that can play
a role in whether this goes forward or it doesn't go forward. What do you suggest that people do with this So it's tricky because it's not the kind of thing where you can write your congressman. Well, especially not because we're not part of UNCLOS, so our congressmen are useless. More useless than usual. If you are a citizen of a country that is a signatory to UNCLOS, which...
Honestly, most of your listeners probably aren't, because I'm guessing you have a pretty big But, you know, if you are the citizen of a country that is a signatory to UNCLOS, you write your representatives, however you're represented, if it's an MP or a parliamentarian or a congressman or, you know, an alderman or whatever, you write whoever represents you in the highest level of government. and urge them to adopt the position that either
you do or do not want to support deep sea mining. Because ultimately, this is international negotiation. It's happening at the level of
a State Department. And so whatever is your most direct line to the State Department of your country, which is usually through your elected representative, if you're in the U.S., like the U.S. does go to the ISA and that we do have representatives that intervene there that we can't vote on ISA issues, you can write directly to the US State Department and be like, hey, I'm worried about this. Right. But in terms of like direct action, it's a trickier one because it's not like
you can oppose it in national waters. Yeah. If your issue is primarily with deep sea mining and national waters, which very few countries are looking at deep sea mining in their own waters. Japan is doing a little bit of work on that. China is doing development on that, but mostly to test technology for high seas work. India is kind of in the same boat. They have nodule fields
in their territorial waters. They do a little bit of work there, but they're not In those cases, it's less about the commercialization and more about testing of technology before they go out into the high seas. New Zealand is a very active back and forth in their parliament over deep sea mining and some of the shallower water mining projects like Iron Ridge Sands. So for national waters, it is, I mean, in all cases, it's right your representatives. You
know, there's not like, it's a small industry, it's a small world. So it's not hard to keep track of who's trying to do deep sea mining. It is hard to get involved unless you're a subject matter expert. If you're a scientist, if you're a practicing marine scientist and you're opposed to deep sea mining, there is a scientist sign-on letter for support of a moratorium that they are collecting signatures for. I think it's hosted by the IUCN right now, or possibly the Worldwide
Fund for Nature. Can't remember who's currently hosting it, but if you Google scientist sign-on letter. I'll put the link in the show notes, yeah. So there are things to do if you are a practicing scientist that carry Okay. Now, one more question about what people can do. So is it bad to have an EV right now? Just knowing, you know, like from an ethical standpoint, you know, we look at how cobalt is mined now, as you mentioned, in the Democratic Republic
of Congo. But but plus with the possibility of deep sea mining, if you are an environmentalist, or you want to do something good for the environment, and you are buying a car, is it bad to have an EV? Is it bad to have a hybrid vehicle? I mean, it's good for the environment. We know that. But then there's also the fact of what goes into it. And this is an ethical point. I guess it's more of your opinion kind of
piece. But what would you say for people who are like, well, why would you get an EV with all this So no, absolutely not. There is no projection that has EVs coming out worse than a new gas car. If you are shopping for a new car or a new used car, EVs are always going to be, hands down, a better choice for the environment. The best choice for a car is always the car you currently have. Drive it till it dies, make it last as long as possible, and then replace it
with the most energy efficient car you can. My family has had to do that twice in the last two years. We've had two cars totaled. I drove mine until it died. My wife drove hers until it died. We got hundreds of thousands of miles out of both of them. And now we have two EVs. So we went the EV route, and we went with a Hyundai Kona, and we went with a Ford Escape plug-in hybrid. So depending on your personal politics and other motivations, there are certain
car companies you may want to avoid. Um, and I, you know, I have a, I have a personal beef with Tesla that is not related to politics, but it's related to how they do battery storage and how they do, um, uh, access to, um, uh, the hardware that you've already bought. So if you buy like a base level model Y, there's more battery capacity in that model Y than you're allowed to use.
And you have to pay Tesla for permission to use an extended range, but that, that battery, capacity is already built into your vehicle, which means you are driving around with a third of an electric vehicle's worth of cobalt and nickel that is not being used. So in that case, and that's changing too because Tesla has switched its battery chemistries to lithium iron phosphate for those vehicles. So
that was more of an issue four years ago than it is today. So there are, if you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty and look at battery chemistries and compare battery chemistries, and OK, you want to avoid the potential for creating demand for deep sea mining. There's no battery on the market right now that uses metals from the deep sea. But if you want to avoid creating that demand, you can look for batteries that use lithium iron phosphate rather than lithium polymer
or nickel-based or cobalt-based batteries. So you can do that. But at the end of the day, The car you have, drive it until it can't be a reliable car anymore and replace it with a used car that is as efficient as possible is almost always going to be the best choice. Electric vehicles, especially the used electric vehicle market is great right now. This is a fantastic moment in time to get a used EV. A used EV is going to be hands down always the most environmentally
Yeah, true, true. Awesome. Is there anything, I know a lot happened last year, is there anything that we missed talking We have barely scratched the surface. Oh my gosh! I have not even talked about the usurping of the Secretary General of the International Space Agency. Yes, yes, let's talk about that, let's talk about that. So I think this is important because I think this is the biggest a policy change to happen in the ISA in the last eight years.
So Michael Lodge was the previous Secretary General of the ISA. He took over in 2016. And he was very pro-mining. He really saw it as his mission to get the mining regulations done. and to get deep sea mining started under his watch. It seemed like he wanted that to be his legacy, which of course, if you're the Secretary General of the ISA who's tasked with creating a deep sea mining industry,
of course that's the kind of legacy you want to create. His leadership was mired in a couple of scandals, which – all of which are like allegedly at this point, and the new secretary general has said that there will be investigations. We'll see how far that goes. There were accusations that he was cozying up with specific mining companies. and preferentially favoring them. There were accusations that he was passing privileged
information on to third parties in those mining companies. There was accusations during the last election that he was attempting to bribe his opponent by offering her a job within the ISA if she would drop out of the election. And there were overall a lot of moments of dissatisfaction with his leadership, I think is probably the most diplomatic way to say it. His handling of the COVID pandemic wasn't particularly inspired. He actually, you know, I was at the very last in-person ISA
meeting before the pandemic shut everything down. And the delegation for, this was February of 2020. The delegation from China had a long intervention where they basically said, this is going to be bad. We need to put provisions in place to have remote meetings. And the secretary general said, we are not equipped to have remote meetings and we will not do No, it was happening. The first cases were out. They knew. It was blowing up in Wuhan. They were like, this is bad. The first
cases in Italy had hit, so they knew. And so because of that, they basically shut down negotiations for two years, obviously. And they put some provisions in place to have like sort of remote, but not really kind of sustaining meetings. But like, you know, I think generally speaking, a lot of delegations were dissatisfied with his leadership. And so there was a vote on the new secretary general
at the last ISA meeting of 2024. Everyone thought it was going to kind of be a nail-biter and it was going to come down to like the pro-moratorium countries versus the pro-mining countries. But it actually ended up being a blowout and Secretary General Lodge was voted out of office and Secretary General Letitia Carvalho was voted into office. Secretary General Carvalho is going to be the first oceanographer to leave the ISA. She's a
scientist. She worked for the UN Environmental Program, so she's a very seasoned administrator with these kinds of programs. And she's the first woman and the first Latin American to lead the ISA. So it's a very – MR PALLADINO She's from Brazil? MR KIRBY She's from Brazil, yes. So it is a very significant change in leadership that will really shape how the next four years of ISA negotiations go. I don't know how they will be reshaped yet because she's
Started at the beginning of January. So we will see at the first ISA meeting what kind of changes we can expect to see. There seems to be, because she's an oceanographer and her experience with UNEP, there seems to be a bit more of a positive outlook when it comes to, as you mentioned before, of taking advantage of looking at policy before this extraction happens. and being proud of putting together a very comprehensive strategy and policy before we go out, especially because she's
a science-based leader. Is that a fair assessment of what we're looking at? Do you feel the I think it's fair to say that she has a much better grasp on what the science is than the outgoing secretary-general. I think she is – and he was a private sector lawyer, so he had a very different skill set. She is a seasoned administrator with the UN, so I think there is going to be a much higher focus on science. the norms and protocols of UN programs that
some people felt was lacking under the last leadership. I don't think she's a pro-moratorium person. I don't think she's, like, trying to shut down deep-sea mining. I know some people are like, oh, yay, the environmentalists won. I think she is going to be the kind of secretary general where we're going to see the best possible mining code get codified under her watch. And a lot of people won't be happy with the best possible mining code because they didn't want any
mining code at all. But the best possible mining code is a heck of a lot better than what was coming out under the How many times have you and I and other scientists have looked at previous extractive activities or other extractive activities and be like, oh, if we only… you know, had these types of regulations before it started, then it would have been – the precedent would have been there and we could fine-tune So this is … Here's something wild. Here's something that we've never
seen before with the new industry. There's an environmental fund Well, the companies, and so, you know, it's weird because there's private companies that deep sea mine, there's also countries. Ah, gotcha. And so they're both kind of working in tandem. And also the ISA gets to have its own mining company too, which is a whole other story. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. So there's a lot of entities that are doing the mining, but if there's a pre-funded environmental fund,
that means when accidents happen, there's already money available for remediation. And that's not something we've really seen before at this scale ever. So just simple things like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's penalize them after the fact, not pre-fund. So those are the kinds of things that I think they lead to a better – and I'm not like – I'm not a super big industry naysayer and I'm also not super rah, rah,
rah, let's go mine. acknowledge begrudgingly that there may need to be a path forward that involves the deep ocean if battery chemistries don't catch up and if we do genuinely need these metals. And like, let's do the best thing we can. Yeah, if we can make the regulations as good as possible. And if you know the negotiation to get those regulations as good as possible takes so long, the battery technology catches up. Great. Yeah. I love this. So this was huge. We'll
stop the interview here. I'd like to invite you back for a part two, because there's more information that we're going to be talking about with deep sea mining. And I would like to invite you back, to be honest, Andrew, on a regular basis. because there's so much going on in the world right now, especially in the US, with ocean policy that we're going to be covering at least over the next four years and
seeing what's happened. And of course, we did an episode previous to this on your article regarding all the different policies that were changed in President Trump's first day after the inauguration. So we're going to be discussing a lot of that over this time and the effect that it'll have Not only on the deep sea, but just on the ocean in general and on people as well. And we'll have a number of different experts that come in to discuss it, but we would love for you to
come back and help us out to detangle everything. So that'd be really great. So thank you so much for coming on this time. Appreciate it. You're very welcome and thank you for having me. Thank you, Andrew, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. So much stuff happened, we didn't even get to cover, we're just scratching the surface. So we're gonna have him back on to get another update on what happened in 2024 and
what continues to happen as we go along. New leadership, which is great to see, only 22 days in, so we're gonna see what
happens having an oceanographer. as a leader uh and and to see like what's going to happen are we going to take advantage of this and say hey we can come up with the best type of uh of policies the best type of regulations before we start this extractive process if we're going to start it and if we're going to see if it's even worth it with the advancement of batteries the way it goes so much is happening so quickly we're going to keep you up
to date in the future But until then, if you have any questions or comments about the episode, you have questions for Andrew that maybe the next time he's on, he can answer, I can ask him, please let me know. Just hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean. And if you have a question or comment and you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, just put your question and comment in the comment section below. And of course, don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification
bell if you haven't already to get all of our episodes. We put out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week. Enjoy. This is the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm your host Andrew Loon. Thank you very much for joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have