As Norway Considers Deep-Sea Mining, a Rich History of Ocean Conservation Decisions May Inform How the Country Acts
In the past, scientists, industry and government have worked together in surprising, tense and fruitful ways
As Norway Considers Deep-Sea Mining, a Rich History of Ocean Conservation Decisions May Inform How the Country Acts
In the past, scientists, industry and government have worked together in surprising, tense and fruitful ways
A variety of marine creatures and unique features can be found in the deep sea off Norway, including the dumbo octopus, colorful anemones and venting chimneys.
Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz / CDeepSea / University of Bergen / ROV Aegir6000
At the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge off the Norwegian coast, molten rock rises from deep within the Earth between spreading tectonic plates. Black smoker vents sustain unique ecosystems in the dark. Endemic species of long, segmented bristle worms and tiny crustaceans graze on bacteria mats and flit among fields of chemosynthetic tube worms, growing thick as grass. Dense banks of sponges cling to the summits and slopes of underwater mountains. And among all this life, minerals build up slowly over millennia in the form of sulfide deposits and manganese crusts.
Those minerals are the kind needed to fuel the global green energy transition—copper, zinc and cobalt. In January 2024, Norway surprised the world with the announcement it planned to open its waters for exploratory deep-sea mining, the first nation to do so. If all went to plan, companies would be issued licenses to begin identifying mineral deposits as soon as spring 2025. To some scientists who’d spent decades mapping and studying the geology and ecology of the Norwegian seabed and Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge, the decision seemed premature—they still lacked critical data on the area targeted for mining. The government’s own Institute of Marine Research (IMR) accused it of extrapolating from a small area where data has already been collected to the much larger zone now targeted
“Our advice has been we don’t have enough knowledge,” says Rebecca Ross, an ecologist at IMR who works on Norway’s Mareano deep-sea mapping initiative. She says the decision was based solely on the geology of the area. Taking high-resolution scans of the seabed and sampling its geology is the first step when research ships enter a new area, but critical biological and ecological research is more difficult and tends to come later—which is the case on the ridge area targeted for mining. Ross says it’s certain that area contains vulnerable marine ecosystems that would be affected by the light and noise pollution and sediment plumes generated by mining. The IMR estimates closing the knowledge gap on the target area could take ten years.
The same conflict, with a partial scientific understanding misinterpreted and used to justify resource extraction, is playing out in the Pacific, where mining pilot projects are already underway in international waters. Years before, scientists funded by industry scouted the seabed there, discovering both valuable minerals and new forms of life.
“I remember them being of two minds due to the fact they realized they were laying the ground for future exploitation and mining, but at the same time, they were learning so much about the environments that were down there,” says University of Tromso natural resource economist Claire Armstrong, who studied their work. “So, it’s clearly a balancing act.”
Research in the deep sea is difficult—it requires lengthy, expensive research cruises and specialized machinery, often planned many years in advance. Scientists frequently work for industry—oil, fisheries, mining—and the government for a chance to access the seabed on shorter time scales and with better equipment. But that relationship between science and industry can lead to conflicts of interest.
Mareano, now in its 20th year, is among the world’s largest and most systemic efforts to map a single nation’s seabed geology and ecology. It’s an outgrowth of a United Nations pact that allows countries to extend their waters to the limits of their continental shelf, which sparked an international seabed mapping race starting in the 1980s. Where the research ships go to map is determined by the government’s resource priorities, to inform oil, gas, wind and fisheries management. Ross, the ecologist, knows her participation makes resource extraction possible, sometimes at the expense of marine ecosystems. But if ecologists aren’t involved in such efforts, who would collect the data needed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of industry?
Answering questions about how scientists can best work with industry when the groups have different aims in mind isn’t always easy. But Norway’s history is an instructive example of how scientists can work with universities, industry environmentalists and the government to find a way forward that satisfies all parties. With deep-sea mining on the horizon, some researchers say Norway would be wise to look to its own past.
Reefs in the deep
In 1982, geologist Martin Hovland sat aboard a research ship owned by the Norwegian oil company Statoil (now Equinor) in the Barents Sea. As he peered at a sonar screen, he saw something strange—a mound 150 feet wide rising 50 feet above the flat seabed.
“And I said, ‘Stop, stop, stop the boat, we need to find out what that thing is,’” he recalls. “And we took a coring device and we sent it down to the structure at 280 meters [around 900 feet] water depth. And when it came up, it was muddy, and the pieces that fell out of the core went onto the steel floor and sounded like glass.”
Confused, Hovland lowered an early remotely operated vehicle (ROV) into the water and took the first color photo ever of a cold-water coral reef—a rare ecosystem scientists now know exists throughout the Norwegian Sea.
A cross section of a manganese crust at the bottom of the Norwegian Sea.
CDeepSea / University of Bergen / ROV Aegir6000
Over the next ten years, Hovland’s constant access to the deep sea gave him a rare opportunity to collect data on those reefs, often collaborating—with Statoil’s permission—with university and government scientists back on land who, he says, envied Statoil’s ROV. He experienced some award snubs and disrespect for working for the oil industry. But then, in 1991, he ran into a real problem. A proposed natural gas pipeline route on the Norwegian continental shelf crossed directly through a particularly stunning reef. Engineers wanted to go forward with the project as planned. Hovland balked.
“If you had seen this coral reef on land, you would have been amazed,” he recalls telling them. “It’s like being in an aquarium; it’s like coming into a Garden of Eden.” A sample of the coral Lophelia pertusa he collected from the reef turned out to be 8,600 years old—it started growing not long after the first humans came to Norway.
These reefs may lack legal protections now, Hovland argued to his superiors, but once the public learned about them, regulations would surely follow. And in the court of public opinion, Statoil would be judged in the future for destroying them now. So, despite the potential for increased costs, the company changed the pipeline route to avoid the reef. Hovland even convinced them to follow guidelines for coral protection he drafted, which included regular visits to monitor the corals.
Bottom trawling begins
While Hovland balanced his industry job and coral science in the deep sea, bottom trawl fishing was exploding in popularity in Norway. Wheeled “rock hopper” gear allowed ships to pull nets over rocky terrain, bulldozing the seabed and catching all the fish—and other life—in their wake. Small-scale coastal fishermen immediately noticed something was wrong—the fishing hot spots near cold-water coral reefs they had long frequented with gillnets (which hang in the water column like huge, undersea volleyball nets) and longlines (which drag behind ships like undersea clotheslines covered in baited hooks) were coming up empty.
“They realized the trawlers had been there and trawled over some of the cold-water coral in the area,” says Armstrong, the economist. “And they notified the Institute of Marine Research.”
Collaboration between scientists and the fishing industry is older than the independent Norwegian state, says Mats Ingulstad, a historian at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Government-funded research at universities led to a ban on whaling in 1904 when biologists found the whales drove fish to important coastal fisheries.
In this case, deep-sea ecologists at the IMR already suspected trawl fishing operations were damaging reefs, but they couldn’t prove it—they didn’t even know where most of the reefs were. So, they teamed up—coastal fishermen helped identify reef locations for the researchers, and, in at least one case with an ROV borrowed from Statoil and Hovland, they headed out to sea in search of crushed coral.
“And it was in this process they got these very visual pictures of coral trawled over, and it came on national television in Norway and created quite a stir,” says Armstrong. The Norwegian public had just been enthralled by Hovland’s coral imagery on TV—scientists knew images of coral rubble fields would strike a chord.
Under public pressure, the Norwegian parliament reacted remarkably fast, closing major areas to all fishing after just nine months of deliberation. Satellite tracking technology, which arrived around the same time, made enforcement possible. In the end, the trawling industry supported the legislation. Like the oil companies, “the trawl organizations clearly realized they would be on the bad side of history if they went against it,” says Armstrong.
The deep-sea mining dilemma
Deep-sea mining isn’t a new idea. The HMS Challenger research expedition discovered polymetallic nodules—the metal lumps mining operations are now targeting in the Pacific—in the 1870s. Scientists first found deep-sea vents and their resulting massive sulfide deposits nearly a century later. Around that time, the idea circulated around the world—starting in the U.S.—that the ocean contained endless mineral resources, says Ingulstad, who works on a multidisciplinary project studying deep-sea mining.
Demand for minerals was high, thanks to the Korean War. The U.S., facing domestic shortages of metals needed for the war effort, invested heavily in foreign mining operations on land. At the same time, a CIA cover story for a secret operation to recover a sunken Soviet submarine featured a flashy (and fake) deep-sea mining test funded by billionaire inventor Howard Hughes. Suddenly, Ingulstad says, commercial deep-sea mining seemed imminent. Some theorized the world economic order would reshuffle based on who controlled minerals at sea.
“Where this fits into a longer historical trajectory in Norway, and elsewhere in the world, is thinking of the ocean as a provider of resources, essentially solutions to contemporary problems and shortfalls on land,” says Ingulstad. “If you lack food, you go to the ocean, you fish. If you lack minerals, the ocean will provide.”
But as suddenly as it coalesced, interest dissipated as mineral prices dropped. The U.S. investment in foreign mines was so successful, strategic mineral reserves were overflowing and the government had to sell off its excess supply. Then, in the early 2000s, when China entered the global market and mineral prices skyrocketed again, Norwegian scientists mapping the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge discovered black smoker vents there, including the group known as Loki’s Castle. Ever since, media and industry have created what Ingulstad calls a “really inflated idea” of the economic and security benefits to be reaped from the ridge’s mineral wealth—a “treasure on the seabed” available at the cost of potentially destroying a unique ecosystem.
The Norwegian research vessel G.O. Sars ventured out to the deep ocean to explore Loki’s Castle, an area of black smoker vents, using an ROV.
Sveter via Wikipedia under CC By-SA 3.0
Norwegian politics are a “many-headed troll,” a saying goes—some politicians see mining as a question of European security, others a new industry for coastal jobs as oil and gas inevitably decline. Deep-sea mining has been something that could happen “soon” for so long that university departments have trained a generation of specialized researchers, some of whom now work for the industry, says Ingulstad. The basic tools and technologies of the trade are well developed, just sitting on the shelf. At this point, mining is technically possible—what’s in question is whether society and the government will tolerate it.
After Norway announced it planned to open a licensing round for the initial step of exploratory deep-sea mining in early 2025, it opened a public comment period—an opportunity for scientists to identify vulnerable areas that shouldn’t be considered for exploitation, like active hydrothermal vents. That sparked backlash from researchers—for one thing, the data to identify where vulnerable ecosystems are just doesn’t yet exist. Assessing ecology requires extensive video surveys with ROVs and physical sampling. For another, it’s hard for scientists to even determine if a given hydrothermal vent is active—they reactivate from dormancy unpredictably and on time scales scientists don’t yet understand. The overall approach—making scientists prove why mining shouldn’t happen in specific parts of a huge area, without the data to do so—frustrated scientists.
Exploration doesn’t mean commercial mining will happen—after companies locate minerals on the seabed, another parliamentary vote followed by extensive environmental reviews would be required before full-scale extraction is allowed. Industry involvement and funding may be the only way to get significant investment in detailed seabed mapping and studies on how sediment plumes from mining could affect ecosystems—studies the government would likely require before mining goes forward. Plenty of opportunities remain for authorities to hit the brakes. But once companies invest in finding good spots to mine, says Ingulstad, the history of oil extraction, which also went through an exploratory phase, shows the government would likely move forward with permitting commercial-scale mining.
But in December 2024, Norway surprised the world when the government canceled the planned licensing round for the exploratory mining phase after the Socialist Left party blocked the country’s budget in general opposition to deep-sea mining. The scientific backlash, lawsuits and international coverage of Norway’s decision to mine the seabed likely played a role in the government making the decision it did, as in the case of the oil and fishery industries and cold-water corals. The final call on opening Norway’s water for mining is delayed indefinitely for now—at least until the next election. But if the past is any indication, Norway may be uniquely positioned for industry, government and university researchers to work together to make an informed decision about deep-sea mining—whether it’s necessary at all and, if so, how it can be done in a sustainable way.
Ross, the IMR ecologist, says the data scientists collect is critical to informing the public debate and government decisions, no matter who pays for it—just think of Hovland and his corals. “If it’s inevitable that we have to [start deep-sea mining], at least we can regulate it and have half an eye on what’s going to happen in the future,” Ross says. “It’s about the sustainability of the industry as well as the sustainability of the biodiversity.”
Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.
