Greenpeace International has challenged a UK Royal Research Vessel in peaceful protest as it returned to Costa Rica from a 7-week long expedition to areas of the Pacific Ocean targeted for deep sea mining. One Greenpeace activist scaled the side of the vessel to unfurl a banner reading “Say No to Deep Sea Mining”, while two Māori activists swam before the Royal Research Ship James Cook, one holding the Māori flag and the other holding a flag reading “Don’t Mine the Moana” [1].
Images and video available here.
The “Smartex” expedition (Seabed Mining And Resilience To EXperimental Impact), is publicly funded by the UK government via the Natural Environment Research Council. Partners include the Natural History Museum, British Geological Survey and Joint Nature Conservation Committee as well as a number of UK universities.
But, in what campaigners are calling a “smokescreen”, the project also forms a crucial part of the deep sea mining industry’s development programme. UK Seabed Resources, which holds two mining exploration licences covering an area of the Pacific larger than England, sponsored by the UK government, is a Smartex project partner. The website of its former parent company, Lockheed Martin [2], says this expedition is “the next phase of its exploration programme” making it a necessary step towards planned mining tests later this year and ultimately a commercial mining licence application [3].
The protest comes in the middle of a crucial 2-week meeting at the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica as world governments debate whether to approve commercial plans to mine the seabed in the face of industry ambition to get a greenlight this year [4].
This is not the first time concerns have been raised during ISA meetings to distinguish between research to enhance humanity’s understanding of the deep sea and exploration activities for deep sea mining.
Professor Gretchen Früh-Green, from the Department of Earth Sciences at the ETH-Zurich said in a letter to the ISA signed by 29 scientists: “The international seabed belongs to all of us collectively. We recognise the privilege and responsibility of studying deep ocean systems for the benefit of human knowledge. Scientific research to understand how deep-sea ecosystems function and support vital processes is distinct from activities carried out under exploration contracts granted by the International Seabed Authority.” [5]
More than 700 scientists from 44 countries have also already opposed the industry by signing an open letter calling for a pause.
“Marine ecosystems and biodiversity are in decline and now is not the time to start industrial exploitation of the deep sea. A moratorium is needed to give us time to fully understand the potential impacts of deep-sea mining to make a decision as to whether to go ahead with it. I personally have lost trust in the current management of the ISA to make this decision, and it is very clear that a few people, driven by economic interest, have distorted a process which should represent the interests of all of humankind,” said Alex Rogers, professor of biology at Oxford University and Director of Science, REV Ocean.
International opposition to the deep sea mining industry is also continuing to grow with businesses including BMW, Volvo, Google and Samsung having committed to exclude the use of ocean-mined minerals as well as many governments now calling for a ban or moratorium. The UK government is becoming increasingly isolated in calling for rules to be agreed to allow deep sea mining to begin.
“The government’s funding of this expedition makes a mockery of its claim to be a global leader on marine protection. Deep sea mining threatens marine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and possibly the ocean’s role as a carbon store. There’s no place for it in a sustainable future. The UK should be calling for a ban on this dangerous industry at the ISA, not funding expeditions to advance its development,” said Ariana Densham, Greenpeace UK’s head of oceans.
As well as visiting one of the areas licensed to the UK for exploration, part of Smartex’s mission this time was to revisit a site where previous test mining took place in 1979 to produce new images. Thousands of photographs showing the seafloor before and after the 1979 mining tests have been kept in Lockheed Martin’s corporate archive for over four decades – despite calls for its release [6]. Greenpeace International is calling for all data relating to the ecosystem impact in that area to be released to help inform governments debating at the ongoing ISA meeting.
“This clearly isn’t a scientific research partnership to simply explore the wonders of the deep sea. It’s an exploration partnership that the UK deep sea mining industry is relying on to get a commercial greenlight. The UK government is acting as an enabler for this destructive new industry, throwing millions of pounds of public money at it and working flat out to put its player, UK Seabed Resources, ahead of the game,” Ariana continued.
At a time when Indigenous communities across the Pacific are rising up to rewrite historical narratives about the impact of James Cook and his harmful enduring legacy, sending a ship bearing his name into the Pacific Ocean on behalf of the deep sea mining industry has also enraged Pacific activists.
“As if sending a ship to enable further destruction of our ecosystems wasn’t offensive enough, sending one named after the most notorious coloniser of the Pacific is a cruel insult. For too long, Pacific peoples have been excluded from decision making in our own territories and waters. As representatives of the indigenous movement of the Pacific, we’re here to say that this industry is yet another example of neo-colonial forces exploiting the Pacific without regard to people’s way of life, food sources and connection to the ocean,” said swimmer, James Hita, Greenpeace Pacific deep sea mining campaign lead.
Earlier this week Greenpeace Switzerland activists interrupted The Metals Company CEO’s speech at an international meeting for investors in Zurich to highlight the risks of deep sea mining.
Last week diplomats accused the head of the ISA, Michael Lodge, of having lost the impartiality demanded by his position and of interfering with governments’ decision making to accelerate mining.
Download a full media brief on Smartex here.
Contact press.uk@greenpeace.org or call 020 7865 8255.
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
[1] Moana is the Māori word for ocean. For Pacific peoples, especially in Te Ao Māori mythologies, Moana encompasses the seas from shallow rock pools to the deepest depths of the high seas.
[2] UKSR was, until recently, owned by the UK arm of the US company Lockheed Martin. On March 16, Norwegian company Loke Marine Minerals announced that it had acquired UKSR. Loke’s Chairman, Hans Olav Hide, told Reuters: “We’ve got the approval from the UK government… Our ambition is to start extraction from 2030.” UKSR described its change in ownership as part of transitioning from exploratory activities “towards a credible path to exploitation”. Loke described it as “a natural continuation of the strong existing UK-Norway strategic cooperation in the offshore oil and gas industry”.
[3] Two staff members of UKSR, including its director Christopher Willams, are listed as part of the Smartex project team and UKSR officials have regularly attended ISA negotiations as part of the UK Government delegation – Steve Persall in 2018, Christopher Williams most recently in November 2022. Lockheed Martin’s 2020 environmental summary report details UKSR’s involvement in Smartex from its early stages and refers to the company’s “material commitment” to the project. The company’s desire to move from exploration to exploitation is evident in UKSR’s public calls for governments to allow deep sea mining to start as soon as possible. The expedition website details how the RSS James Cook has been collecting baseline data for potential new tests in the UK’s mining exploration sites with a planned follow-up expedition in 2024.
[4] 31 exploration contracts, covering over 1 million km2 of the international seabed, have been granted by the ISA. Rich nations dominate, sponsoring 18 of the contracts. China holds 5, leaving only a quarter held by developing nations. No African nation sponsors mineral exploration of the deep sea. Only Cuba from the Latin American region partly sponsors a licence as part of a consortium with 5 European nations and only Jamaica from the Caribbean region sponsors a licence.
Nearly a third of the contracts involve private companies headquartered in North America and Europe. These companies (The Metals Company (TMC), DEME and Lockheed Martin) through subsidiaries have sought arrangements with Pacific island nations to gain access to areas of international seabed ‘reserved’ for developing nations. Despite calls for disclosure, details of the arrangements remain secret, making it difficult to ascertain what benefit, if any, the developing States will derive. The obscure workings and acquisitions of Canadian corporation TMC to gain exploration contracts via ostensibly local entities, sponsored by Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga, casts doubt over the extent to which sponsoring States would financially benefit from any deep sea mining. More information here.
[5] Professor Gretchen Früh-Green discovered the Lost City (or Lost City Vent Field) – a series of alkaline hydrothermal vents located in the Mid-Atlantic ocean.
[6] Efforts by Greenpeace to release the historic photographs under Freedom of Information have been rejected. UK Research & Innovation stated to Greenpeace via email, “This information remains with the project partner UK Seabed Resources and will be made available directly to the Smartex team as required throughout the project”. It is unclear whether the current expedition will release the historic images as well as the new images taken during this expedition of the same sites four decades on.
