Every year since 2020, Fan Zhihan has made a two-week voyage to a deep-sea mining site in the Pacific Ocean.
“The whole trip usually lasts about 60 days,” says Fan, who is based at the College of Environmental Science and Engineering at Qingdao’s Ocean University of China. “While sailing across the ocean, I feel particularly in awe of the deep sea,” he says. A specialist in the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining, he undertakes these annual journeys as part of a Chinese mining company’s explorations.
“Sediment samples we took from elsewhere are usually just earth. But once we arrive in the mining zone, all the samples we’ve got are full of nodules,” says Fan, who wishes not to disclose the specific site or company he is working for.
These potato-sized nodules are packed with minerals and scattered on patches of the seabed thousands of metres below the surface. Growing demand for critical minerals such as nickel and cobalt has pulled countries and companies into a hugely controversial global race to harvest these polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor.
China is playing an increasingly important role in the policy and practice of this deep-sea push. Experts have told Dialogue Earth that Chinese companies may not wish to mine imminently but are positioning themselves at the head of the future race to do so.
Pacific trials move forward
Currently, two Chinese state-owned enterprises are preparing to trial deep-sea mining equipment in the Pacific Ocean next year. “This would be momentous progress and China’s first step towards the commercialisation [of deep-sea mining],” says Fan, who has witnessed the country expand its deep-sea research and mining equipment development over the last decades.
China Minmetals and BPHD (Beijing Pioneer Hi-Tech Development Corporation) are preparing to conduct trials of mining vehicles in their Pacific exploration zones next year, according to announcements they made in April and May this year respectively. Fan, who is participating in a project assessing environmental impacts for China Minmetals, describes these as China’s first trials of such scale in international waters.
Both companies state they will collect environmental data alongside the equipment trials. BPHD says the research conducted during the trial could provide “a basis for formulating regulations for future deep-sea mining activities and the development of environmentally friendly technologies.” Dialogue Earth contacted the companies but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Many scientists fear the effect mining will have on deep-sea ecosystems that remain understudied. Duncan Currie, a legal adviser to the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition, says: “There isn’t enough scientific information to be able to assess the effects of a test, let alone full mining.”
While progress has been made in recent years on developing mining equipment in China, Fan says he hasn’t noticed equivalent headway in working out environmental impacts. “Our current understanding of the deep-sea environment is particularly lacking, and we have relatively few means to understand it,” he adds.
Driving a 20-tonne truck, 5km down
China Minmetals recently developed a collector vehicle of 9 metres long, 5 metres wide and weighing 40 tonnes. Such a vehicle would be deployed several kilometres below the surface, where it would scrape the seafloor to collect mineral-packed nodules. The trial the company is planning to launch next year will mainly involve this vehicle.
In a commercial operation, these rocks would be lifted to a support vessel through an extremely long pipe. After some processing on this vessel, unwanted material would then be discharged back into the sea.
This discharge, along with the direct disturbance of the seabed during collection, and the light and sound pollution generated by the vehicle, are some of the impacts scientists are trying to study. But they are only beginning to understand them, Fan says.
Before commercial mining happens, to establish these impacts scientists are relying on indoor experiments and small-scale sea trials. How accurately these can model full operations is “still arguable”, Fan adds.
One 2019 study found that 26 years after an experimental deep-sea mining operation in the Pacific, the diversity of seabed life remained significantly lower than before it.
In 2016, China brought into force a deep seabed law to boost deep-sea scientific and technological research and protect the ocean by regulating resource-exploration activities under the country’s sponsorship.
Fan says the law has effectively made environmental assessment compulsory. He said it emphasises the importance of environmental protection but does not go into details on the rules and requirements. He believes the government will roll out more detailed guidelines as research advances and international regulations are finalised.
China’s researchers go deeper
An entrepreneur, who works closely with the deep-sea mining industry in China, also says there has been major research growth.
“The deep-sea mining research development of the past five years was the fastest since China first ventured into the field,” says the anonymous entrepreneur.
China began its deep-sea mining research in the late 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s, this mainly focused on designing mining systems and developing prototypes, and progressed gradually. In 2017, the government published a plan to boost work on exploring and exploiting deep-sea resources. The first sea trials for mining systems in its domestic waters followed.
A few years later, in 2021, the China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association and several state-owned companies moved from testing parts to testing an integrated system – the entire mining mechanism. They recovered 1.2 tonnes of nodules from the 1.3km-deep seabed of the South China Sea.
More recently, in June, Shanghai Jiao Tong University tested a mining vehicle in the western Pacific Ocean at a national record depth of 4km. They collected polymetallic crusts and nodules in five test dives, a Xinhua report says.
While being encouraged by government support, the anonymous entrepreneur says the rapid advance of deep-sea mining in China is even more motivated by the progress made by North American and European companies, especially The Metals Company. This Canada-based outfit recovered 3,000 tonnes of nodules from the seafloor in test runs in 2022.
“They took things to such an extent that it makes everyone believe [deep-sea mining] is technically feasible and economically profitable,” he says.
Commercial deep-sea mining has yet to take place. The Metals Company, sponsored by the small island state of Nauru, says it intends to be the first to take that step, and will apply for a licence from the International Seabed Authority (ISA) by this year to begin commercial mining in late 2025.
Countries have yet to agree on a regulation for mining of the international seabed. Discussions on this have been rolling for years at ISA, the UN-affiliated seabed regulator. Last week, ISA wrapped up the second part of its annual meetings. Delegates said they made progress on the negotiation but significant issues remain.
ISA decided to prioritise discussing how to handle a licence application if one comes in before the regulations are completed. But during the meetings, several nation members reaffirmed that no commercial mining should occur without robust regulations.
China’s growing influence
Japan, India, Belgium and some small island states are also queuing for a green light to mine the deep. In parallel with its technological advances, some say China’s representatives have grown more active and vocally in favour of mining at ISA meetings in the last three years.
Duncan Currie of the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition is a long-time observer of ISA negotiations. He says China sent a relatively large delegation of 11 to 12 people to the ISA meetings this year. “They were very, very well prepared,” he says.
China has also increasingly found itself at odds with a growing number of nations calling for a halt to deep-sea mining. Some of these, such as Germany, previously stood enthusiastically at the forefront of deep-sea resource exploration. To date, over 30 countries, including Guatemala, Honduras, Tuvalu, France, Canada and the UK, have called for a pause or outright ban on this kind of mining.
Some scientists and environmentalists are seriously concerned that starting it without proper regulations and understanding of its environmental consequences would cause irreversible damage to deep-sea ecosystems.
China blocking a motion to discuss a mining moratorium at an ISA meeting in July last year drew attention to the country’s position. The discussion finally took place in the meeting last week after a group of nations led by Chile proposed it again. Currie says China initially expressed some concerns but did not block the discussion. “That was certainly a good step from China,” he adds.
The Chinese representatives have also voiced opposition to establishing a standalone inspection regime to enforce compliance with any future mining code. The delegation said its functions would overlap with the work carried out by existing ISA organs. But Currie sees the statement as pushing for less direct oversight over seabed-mining activities.
He also says that those calling for a moratorium are not targeting the economic development of any nation. “It’s just nobody has enough information [on the impacts of deep-sea mining], and the governance is not established properly to address the issue. More time is needed to have these discussions.”
Not racing to the bottom
However, China’s approach and technological advantages do not necessarily mean it is rushing to mine the deep. They could also be read as part of jockeying for position in a global race.
“China wants to be in the driver’s seat. They want to be in the front of the train,” says Currie. “But I am not necessarily as convinced that China wants the train to leave the station anytime soon.”
Fan agrees that the country is not in a rush. He says that although he wants to see deep-sea mining realised in the future, it should be carried out when the environmental impacts are considered low and when there is proper governance under the ISA.
Rushing to commercial mining now without a mining code would be “a bit hasty”, he adds.
Fan still wishes to continue his annual environmental and geological studies on deep-sea mining. He says his tutor taught him that “only when you are out in the sea and do the work in person, can you better understand the ocean.”
