In 2025, President Donald Trump has aggressively promoted deep-sea mining for critical minerals in the Pacific Ocean, boosting companies like The Metals Company despite environmental and Indigenous concerns. This move disregards international regulations and local advocacy, targeting vast areas rich in cobalt and nickel. Scientists warn of lasting ecological damage, while Indigenous groups fight to protect cultural ties to the ocean.
The Metals Company, a key player in seabed mining, saw its stock surge to $7.89 per share by late 2025, a tenfold increase from its low of $0.55, even as it reports ongoing losses and awaits permits until at least late 2027. Chief Financial Officer Craig Shesky attributed this rise to U.S. efforts to diversify mineral supplies away from China, stating, “We are sitting really in the eye of the storm when it comes to what the U.S. needs to do to diversify supply chains for these metals away from China.”
Trump's administration has targeted over 104.5 million acres for exploration, including the Clarion-Clipperton Zone south of Hawaiʻi (36 million acres), waters near the Cook Islands (35.5 million acres), and areas off American Samoa (33 million acres). In April 2025, Trump asserted U.S. rights to mine international waters, bypassing the United Nations' International Seabed Authority (ISA), where Indigenous advocates from Hawaiʻi, French Polynesia, and the Cook Islands had been influencing regulations. Native Hawaiian advocate Solomon Kahoʻohalahala remarked, “As navigators of Oceania, we are often met with adverse conditions... we understand how to navigate through them, around them, and redirect our sails.”
Environmental studies highlight risks: a March 2025 UK research found a Clarion-Clipperton site unrecovered after 40 years, while November and December 2025 Hawaiʻi studies showed sediment plumes disrupting the food web and a 37% decline in seafloor creatures like worms and mollusks two months post-disturbance. The Metals Company, which funded much of this research, downplays the warnings. Shesky described deep-sea mining as “more like picking up golf balls at a driving range than traditional land-based mining.”
In the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's November 2025 announcement invited leasing in 35 million acres east of the archipelago, near the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. Indigenous Chamorro-Pohnpeian resident Sheila Babauta, chair of Friends of the Marianas Trench, criticized the process as colonial, saying, “I refuse to accept that the waters around us belong to the U.S.... 50 years of a colonial relationship does not justify the extraction and the destruction that is being proposed.” The administration granted only a 30-day extension for public comments despite requests for 120 days from CNMI and Guam leaders.
Similar opposition arose in American Samoa, where leaders rejected mining across 18 million acres due to cultural and economic reliance on tuna (99.5% of exports), yet the proposed area nearly doubled. Blue Ocean Law testified that mining threatens irreversible harm to Indigenous food systems and spiritual practices. Meanwhile, startups like Impossible Metals, led by CEO Oliver Gunasekara, promise minimal impact via robot technology and a 1% profit share, though no such sharing is required. Gunasekara argued, “The world needs these metals,” dismissing delays as NGO tactics.
