Debate over the Trump administration’s plan to make it easier for companies to extract minerals from the ocean floor took a sharper edge this week as environmentalists and mining advocates traded blows over a NOAA proposal to streamline environmental reviews for seabed mining projects.
In a series of public meetings, environmental groups warned that opening potentially tens of millions of acres of largely unexplored ocean floor to recover “polymetallic nodules” presents immense risk to pristine environments that may be fundamental to ocean ecosystems.
“How can we exploit what we barely understand,” Kat Aristi, representing the nonprofit Oceana, told officials at a virtual hearing Thursday, calling seabed mining “a nascent and largely untested form of resource extraction [that] poses a significant threat to our shared marine environment and undermines the oceans’ vital role in sustaining planetary health.”
Oceana was one of more than a half-dozen environmental organizations testifying against easing permitting requirements for seabed mining, along with Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, Deep Sea Defenders and the Surfrider Foundation.
