The $16 TRILLION Race to Mine the Ocean

[Music] I just bought this watermelon for like $8. Maybe a little expensive to pay for a watermelon, but not bad. I was curious about the price of a watermelon because recently I saw a photo of a watermelon on a supermarket shelf that costs 61 Australian, which is like $37 US. $37 for a watermelon. This photo was taken right here in this supermarket on this island, a country called Naru that sits in one of the most remote patches of the South Pacific, a world of just ocean. That watermelon had to travel a long way to get

to Naru. And that's because they can't grow watermelons on the island itself. In fact, these days, they can't really grow much on their island. Not anymore. Most people don't know much about Naru. It's a tiny little country, but I've become obsessed with their story. They used to be one of the richest countries in the world, and then they lost it all. And in their desperation, looking for an economic miracle. They made some pretty sketchy deals. I'm making this video because Nau is in the process of their next big deal, their next economic miracle. And it

has to do with these apples-shaped metal balls. And this guy who is the CEO of the company that wants to harvest these from the bottom of the ocean. Hey Jared, how you doing? I see the tiniest island nation in the world and just wonder how they will be able to stand up for themselves when they really don't have any other option. Well, billions of these apples sit on the ocean floor, 4 km underwater. So, we've been mapping this patch of ocean, looking at all the lines and boxes that different countries and international bodies have been

drawing around this patch of ocean as they prepare to potentially harvest all these metal apples. And while these little metal rocks sit quietly on the ocean floor, the humans up on the surface are debating fiercely about what to do with them, who's entitled to them, who's allowed to make money off of them, what will happen to this ecosystem that we don't really know much about if we harvest these little balls. And right when we were about to publish this video, the new administration in the United States changed everything, saying that they're making plans to potentially

bypass the rest of the world and just go down here with no one's permission to harvest all of these metal balls. And I think people's patience are running out. If they overplay their hand, then it will be on their watch that lawlessness might come back to the high seas. Wow. I mean, I would love some more specifics on that if you could give me anything else. That's all I got for you now. This is from an interview like months ago and I didn't know what Jared meant by that, but now I do. President Trump signing

an executive order to fasttrack deep sea mining off the US coast, bypassing a global review process which is still under debate. And strangely, Nau with their expensive watermelons and remote location is right at the center of this debate. Even though they're thousands of kilometers away from this patch of ocean, I promise it'll all make sense soon. We have been working on this story for like a year now. have gone deeper and deeper than I ever thought we could. We've been talking to all sides to people who deeply disagree with each other. From the environmental experts

to the international law experts to a billionaire ocean explorer to the president of French Polynesia. There is so much at stake. I mean, yeah, it's the last frontier, but it's the last frontier of human madness. And of course to the CEO of the company that most eagerly wants to harvest these little metal balls. I had a lot of help for this story from my friend Joss over at Howtown and my producer Mariana who has been investigating this for years. We've been working on it for a really long time and I want to show all of

this to you. So, let's start with the story of Naru itself because understanding that explains how this island, this patch of ocean, and this company all got wrapped up with one another. And ultimately, I'm trying to figure out if going after all these little metal apples on the sea floor is a great idea or a horrible one. [Music] Let's really quickly go way back, like millions of years ago, and look at what was happening here in this deep ocean. Today, it's called the Clarion Clipperton zone, but back then, humans and their labels didn't exist yet.

But deep underwater, something was forming. Get ready to have your mind blown at how deep the ocean really is. There's the World Trade Center. And soon after here at 1,000 meters, there's no light. So, we're going to fake the light just so that you're not looking at a black screen. And now we're kind of in an alien world. And you see some weird looking fish. And yet, we just keep on going. Here's where the Titanic eventually would end up once humans come 3,800 m below the surface. We keep going and eventually we arrive at this

zone about 5 km under the water. The water is almost freezing down here and it's incredibly quiet because of course it is. There's not much going on. The weight of all of this water makes the pressure down here unfathomable. So, does anything live down here? There's a low abundance of life, but a high diversity. That's my friend Joss. Her and Adam Cole run the YouTube channel Howtown and they made a video about life down here and how we know it exists, how we study it. We'll be talking more to Joss later on. But for the

purposes of this video, a lot of what you find here on the seabed are these lumpy, often applesized balls of metal just chilling on the seafloor. These are called polytallic nodules. And look, there's just billions of them down here. These things have been slowly growing a millimeter or two every million years as flex of metal float to this deep sea and clump together layer by layer for millions of years. But back up on the surface, some clever primates are shedding their fur and standing upright. They're growing remarkably large brains. And before long, they'll take over

the whole planet. They'll map it and control it, and they'll start fixating on this remote ocean, on these little balls down here, partly because they think they need them to save themselves from a disaster in the climate. But not yet. So, while all these little metal balls were forming, another very slow process is happening up on the surface. Birds are pooping on an island. This island will someday be called Nau. And this bird poop will someday be very valuable. Because this island is the only land for hundreds of kilometers, it's a popular rest stop for

seabirds. So over thousands and thousands of years, all these bird droppings start to pile up into white mountains that grow on this island layer after layer. And with time, the bird poop starts to harden and chemically transform into a rock-like formation. Okay, we're now at the point of the story where the humans enter the scene. Our ancestors came on those double hill canoes and they crossed the biggest ocean in the world. We are people of the ocean. There's no separation between land and sea. Micronisians and Polynesian settlers. They come to Naru. They live off the

ocean. They cultivate the land. But with time, adventurous Europeans would be exploring the world. And they would happen on this impossibly remote island. It's the late 1700s and Germany has an empire. And in the late 1800s, they annex this little island. And they do what Europeans are doing everywhere at this point, bringing with them city diseases, wiping out traditional customs and leadership structures, and telling themselves that they're civilizing these locals. And after a while, they start focusing on this mountain of bird poop, realizing that time has turned this white mountain of droppings into rich phosphate,

which is a valuable form of fertilizer to make their farms way more productive. Here's a survey map of Naru. Tiny little island. It's got this lagoon, but this shape right here, everything within this shape is phosphate. It's almost the entire island. Most of the people live out here on the periphery. Now, again, there was phosphate here, but there was also, you know, trees and shrubbery, and it was a lush island. But once they discovered how valuable this phosphate was for farming, I mean, you know what happens next? Germany lets a British company come in and

start chiseling off this phosphate to ship it to the farms in their empire. Then Germany gets defeated in World War I and the British Empire takes over Nau, continuing to mine this white gold bird droppings turned phosphate. Hundreds of thousands of tons every year by the early 1900s. And this wasn't like a small drop in the bucket. One historian summarizes it by saying, "Without access to phosphate, neither Australia nor New Zealand would have been able to establish the industrial agricultural systems that were fundamental to their demographic, economic, and societal expansion." Going so far as to

say without this phosphate, agriculture in Australia and New Zealand may not have been viable. Like the British Empire is growing their colonies in Australia and New Zealand with this phosphate that they're getting from this tiny island. Naru was able to get those countries to where they are obviously at the expense of their own country. When you read the accounts of all the people doing this mining, the British folks, you see that they are giddy about all of this phosphate. Here in Naru, we have an unlimited supply and that it is coming in at the lowest

possible cost to the user. Cheap unlimited phosphate fueling the rise of the British Empire in Australia, New Zealand. What did the strip mining do to the landscape? completely destroyed it, removed what they said was like the lush flora, all of the trees, everything that was there. They essentially like destroyed all of that and it made the land completely useless. A National Geographic photographer visits the island in the 20s and documents it documents the people, their customs and explores what all this phosphate mining is doing to this island. He describes how phosphate mining is turning this

lush island into a quote dismal, ghastly, tract of land with its thousands of upstanding white coral pinnacles from 10 to 30 ft high. People were making a lot of money off of phosphate. But those people were not the locals of Nau, but rather British businessmen. That is until 1968 when Nau gains its independence. And alongside it, it gains control of the phosphate trade. And what happens next is Naru gets rich and fast. This little island went from exploited colony to super rich phosphate producer. And by the 1970s, Naru literally has the second highest GDP per

capita in the world, only behind Saudi Arabia, who's cashing in on their own resource gold [Music] rush. So this gray is how much phosphate had been mined by 1967. And here is how much had been mined by 1998. Basically everything, 80% of this island completely stripped away. If you even look on Google Maps and you like drop the little man there, it's just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen cuz you're in the middle of the Pacific. The sand, the the coconut trees, the palm trees all there. And then suddenly it's just a big nothing.

You take into account that like the country should look like that little plot that's left. It would have been incredible. The phosphate was totally depleted. And where once there was lush island vegetation, now stood only desolate, jagged limestone spikes, some up to 15 m high. And here on the periphery of the island, a population that had grown accustomed to being rich. The government scrambled, attempting to use the money reserves from the phosphate trade to make investments in luxury real estate in Australia. They made some bad bets, like funding a play in London that was a

total disaster. These investments were poorly managed and resulted in failure. So for a century, it was empires who cashed in on this resource. And the money that the locals got when they finally got their hands on the resource quickly evaporated, leaving them with nothing else, almost no ability to grow anything on this [Music] island. But somehow this story gets worse because Nau with no good options now had to find something to replace their phosphate economy. They ended up making a lot of bad investments which led them to then be in a situation of desperation. People

in our isolated island nations sometimes think that salvation will come from outsiders. So they start selling passports to their country which attracts everyone from Russians to Chinese to even alleged al-Qaeda terrorists who were seeking visa-free entry or lower taxes or escape routes from oppressive regimes. They began offering offshore banking licenses with minimal regulatory oversight, turning their island into a giant tax haven. Like this tiny island at one point was operating 400 offshore banks that eventually attracted $70 billion of Russian money. A lot of it thought to be moneyaundering by the Russian mafia. Then came Operation

Weasel, which boy, I could make an entire video about Operation Weasel. Not much is known about it. It's this top secret operation reported by this Australian newspaper. But allegedly in 2003, the US offered Naru cash to set up an embassy in China. But the embassy was apparently only staffed by Westerners and ended up being a front to help smuggle North Korean defectors. Again, probably a lot more there, but remember, we're focusing on how Naru tried to save its economy after phosphate went away. So, let's keep going. They also start taking money from countries in exchange

for recognition. Recognition is a big deal within the international community. Countries only exist if other countries recognize them. So, China pays Na to stop recognizing Taiwan and to recognize China as the real China. Russia pays Na to join in on the few other countries that recognize the territories that they declared after they invaded Georgia in 2008. Another clever way to get cash, I guess. Again, they didn't have anything else here. And then, of course, their biggest deal that lasted more than 20 years. And then Australia just swooped in and they were like, "We have a

solution for you. We're just going to dump all these refugees that we have into your land." Naru took an estimated $3.3 billion from Australia to set up these prison looking camps on the [Music] island. This is where Australia sent refugees or asylum seekers that they didn't want to hold on their land, so they sent them to this tiny island. These camps have become notorious for the deplorable conditions. We've got incident reports, tons of documents, tons of photos, and primary sources from people here. The detention center that we are living in in Naru is like a

prison. We're living behind fences. But again, we are not going into this right now. It's a total story and one that's been reported on. I tell you all of these things to show you what Naru was willing to do in search of a new economy after phosphate went away. Eventually, each of these schemes failed or were shut down. The US labeled Naru a moneyaundering state. Made them get rid of their tax haven [Music] banks and the country slipped deeper and deeper into a financial depression. GDP per capita went from 50,000 in the 70s to 12,000

today. A quarter of the population lives under the poverty line. The island is rife with pollution and they basically can't grow anything, making it very difficult to eat fresh food, most of which has to be imported. which gets us back to this $61 watermelon that we started the video with. It's kind of a symbol of where Naru ended up after this troubled history of exploitation and then desperation. Today, the locals diet is mostly cheap processed food, which is why they have some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes. The smallest island nation in the

world is going through a hard time, and this is the context. They're looking for their next economic opportunity. And that gets us back to this patch of ocean where billions of apples-shaped metal balls sit 5 km under the water. These are suddenly really valuable, and I'm going to explain why in just a sec. But the upshot is that Naru has unique rights to this bed of ocean. And once again, they are making a deal with a powerful outsider, a company who stands to make a lot of money off of these little metal apples. It looks

a lot like a repeat of history. It looks like a big powerful organization coming in and Nau in its desperation seeding power to a much more powerful entity. How do you respond to that idea that this is just a repeat of the same dynamic? Well, I' I'd respond to say, um, I think you've got it wrong. Do I have it wrong? I'll let you determine that once we move on with this story, which by the way gets really juicy because there's a bunch of updates. I'm recording this moment like months later because there's a bunch

of updates and you will see those soon. Right now, I need to thank today's sponsor because sponsors are how we're able to make these videos. Lately, I've been noticing that I have been on public Wi-Fi a bunch. Kind of been traveling a lot lately. I'm like in hotels or in coffee shops and kind of coming to terms with how unsafe that has become. And this is why I use NordVPN, who is the sponsor of today's video. A VPN, as many of you will know if you've watched the videos or any videos on YouTube, is a

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back guarantee if it's not a good fit for you. And one account covers 10 devices. So, you can have it like everywhere with one account. If you want to try this out, please use my link. It's nordvpn.com/jny harris. Use that link and you will be supporting this channel, but you will also get the 2-year plan plus four extra months at a massive discount. Again, that's nordvpn.com/jny harris. Thank you nordvpn for sponsoring today's video and for supporting our journalism generally. And with that, let's continue this epic story because it just gets more and more juicy. Okay,

so that's our context here. Uh, it's a big story and originally I kind of wanted to just focus entirely on Naru and its history. Alas, we must move to present day because Naru is making its next big bet to try to save its economy. And that's where these little metal apples finally come back into the story. By the way, I'm going to stop calling these little metal apples because they're not called that. They are called polytallic nodule or just nodules. It is a word we should become familiar with because we're going to be hearing about

them a lot more. So billions of nodules are sitting 4 and a half kilometers under the ocean surface on the seabed. Enter the Metals Company. That's literally what they're called, the Metals Company, TMC. They're Canadian-based company founded to do one thing, which is to harvest these nodules, which as you will see is incredibly controversial. So this is what it looks like with the light shone on it. I've been talking with the CEO of TMC to try to understand how they plan on even doing this. He's been showing me imagery of how they send these huge

vacuums down to the seafloor to suck these nodules up. You can see how the nodules get sort of plucked off the surface. Now TMC is not allowed to harvest these nodules yet. No one is. So what they've been doing for the last 10 plus years is investing a half a billion dollars in preparing, in researching, in developing technology and undergoing all of the complicated rules and requirements necessary to start this harvesting. To fuel all this investment, they went public on Wall Street a while back. They raised more money. But the way capitalism works is when

you raise money from investors, those investors want a return. TMC has a lot of pressure to make money off of this venture that they've sunk a half a billion dollars into. How much money is down there if you were to translate that into dollars? I I've heard estimates of something like $16 trillion. Now, these nodules have been down there for millions of years, as we saw. But only recently have they become super valuable. And for this, I turned to my friend Joss. They're nodules down there, and they're basically lumps of metal that are sitting in

the dark on the floor of the ocean. The nodules are valuable because they contain nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese. Nickel and manganese are used mostly in steel production. Copper is in basically all of our electronics and cobalt is actually used in jet engines and like our phone and laptop batteries. But the reason why there's a lot of urgency around this right now is that all four of those metals are currently used to build electric cars. What's attractive to a mining companies is that it's kind of like you get four mines for the price of one

because you've got four big metals that you can sell into markets. We need more of these metals. We need billions of tons more of these metals. And so the question that society has to answer is where are we going to get them from? And what will be the impact of getting them both to the environment and to the people living on the planet. This is not about we need these metals and we can't find them anywhere else. This is about whether we want to have another source of the metals as the they expect the demand

to continue in the future. So, you've got TMC and a couple dozen other mostly government subsidized companies out there in this zone where there's a ton of these nodules preparing to harvest them, but they can't yet. They're really close to being able to go down there, but they can't yet for two main reasons. The first is that we're not sure what damage this will do to this ecosystem that we've just barely started studying. They are putting down harvesters, those heavy machinery that will just scrape the bottom of the ocean. You know, anything that gets sucked

up with the nodules will die. What happens if humans start kicking up storms of sediment? There's going to be a cloud of dust. Oh, there's creatures that live on the nodules. Clouds of dust. Dust clouds. Cloud of mud. A cloud of sediment behind this collector vehicle. Noise. Noise pollution. A bunch of artificial sound where it's been totally silent forever. That's a vast area to expose to a new industrial activity. Vibrations introduced into the ecosystem. A plume of plumes. plumes. The plumes, plume flows, plumes coming from the discharge from the ship. Doesn't sound good. That ecosystem

is going to be impacted. And then there's all of the the microbes. Oh, a bunch of microbes. You know, there's there's a big microbial communities inside that play a role in, you know, how our carbon cycle works. Actually, carbon absorption. Oh, and this is a carbon sink. The oceans absorb about 25% of the carbon that we pump into the atmosphere. Usually, when humans mess with things, we find that one thing triggers another that we didn't anticipate. This is an untouched part of the world. We don't have a lot of those left. Going, you know, 4,000

m down to mess with that after everything that we've already done. There are creatures that live directly on the nodules. So, every time these researchers go down there to take a look, how do they even research all this stuff in the dark? They're basically coming back with some new cool looking invertebrate that no one has ever named or seen before. My god, the creatures down here are wild looking. These aren't things with faces. Things like corals and sponges and sea anemmones, translucent and slow growing. Whoa. Squid worms, gummy squirrels. Gummy squirrels sounds like a candy.

And all kinds of weird and interesting fish and other sorts of creatures. We haven't found these anywhere else on the planet. And so the idea of possibly destroying some of them before we've even known them, I think rubs a lot of biologists the wrong way. Okay. Um, yeah, there's a lot going on down there. I mean, it's not a lot of density of life, but the complexity, diversity, and potential domino effects here are not well understood and potentially way bigger than first meets the eye. It's not just a desert down there. Thank you to Joss

who actually taught me how to be a journalist back in the day and is very good at what she does. She has a whole channel called Howtown where her and Adam Cole explain how we know things. They made a whole video that is live right now about how scientists are researching this ecosystem, how we know what animals live down there 4 km under the ocean surface. So go check that out over at Howtown. [Music] But there's another reason why companies aren't allowed to start mining the nodules yet, and it has to do with who gets

the money. There's a lot of value in these little metal balls, and the question is, who has the right to exploit them for profit? Back in the old days, the answer to that question was easy. Whoever was the most powerful and technologically capable country would just go down and take all the resources. But our modern world is one of international laws. However weak they sometimes are, we have a framework for deciding what we do with a patch of ocean like this. A patch of ocean that by the way doesn't belong to any one country. Okay.

So this document, this is basically the rule book for how the law of the sea should work. It's called UNCLOS, the UN convention law of the sea. We talk about this a lot on the channel. It's a big part of this story starting now. This treaty that the entire world has signed besides a few countries including the United States who doesn't like to be constrained by international organizations says that anything found in this water is the common heritage of mankind. It belongs to everyone. It's the world's resource. And to that end, any money made off

of this should benefit everyone. The benefit of mankind as a whole is the verbatim language. Benefit of all mankind as a whole. There we go. The law says that anything found out here in the deep ocean that doesn't belong to any other country belongs to the whole world. Everyone should benefit. Anything mined or exploited from this area, this international seabed must be to the benefit of everyone and it specifically puts emphasis on developing nations. This is trying to level the playing field and make sure that we don't just repeat the same old story of the

past. Now, they have a couple ways of making sure that this happens. Number one, in this law, it says that if a rich country wants to go out here and explore for nodules, they have to explore not just the area they want, but an additional area that has nodules in it that will be reserved for a developing country. This frankly took me a minute to get my head around how it actually works. And here's Mariana drawing a graphic during one of our calls to help explain it. The point is, if you're a developing country, you

are entitled to one of these reserved areas that's already been explored by a rich country, but you are entitled to exploit it. Okay, that sounds like leveling the playing field. The other big rule is anyone who goes down here into this part of the ocean that the whole world owns and exploits it and makes money off of it has to pay a bunch of that money to the international seabed authority who then distributes it out to all of the member countries which is another way that developing countries are supposed to get in on the riches

of the ocean even if they don't mine it themselves. The other big rule here that affects Naru and TMC, and you'll see why in a second, is that if a corporation like TMC wants to go out here and harvest all these nodules and make a bunch of money, they can't just do that on their own. They need to be sponsored by a country, a country that is a member of this treaty, like 170 of them. That country has to be their partner. The corporation can't just like do it alone. The sponsor country is very important

and stands to benefit from this relationship but also has a big responsibility to regulate the corporation to make sure that they are following all the rules that they are making sure that it doesn't destroy the environment. Okay. So that is how this is supposed to work. That is how this treaty says that the nodules and any resources we find in this international water is to benefit all mankind and level the playing field for developing countries. But those rules are currently being stress tested. So TMC really wants these nodules, but they're going to have to play

by all these international rules we've talked about. And one of those rules is that they need a sponsor. The corporation can't just go out and do this on their own. They need a country to sponsor them. And remember how developing countries are entitled to these reserved patches of already surveyed ocean floor? Well, TMC made the rational business decision and instead of choosing its home country of Canada to sponsor them, they chose three developing countries, these three tiny island nations, Tonga, Kiribas, and one country whose story you know very well now, a desperate and exploited island

nation who is looking for their next potential economic miracle by getting a developing country and in this case Na to sponsor them for an exploration licenses that they would be guaranteed nodule rich areas without having to go look for any nodules whatsoever. So, here are all the countries that are out here. Most of these again are state-run enterprises. And here are all the patches of ocean that TMC has been allocated thanks to their sponsors. It's nearly half of the reserved areas that have been allocated to developing countries. So, they're all out here surveying, preparing, doing

a bunch of research while the ISA is finalizing the regulations, the environmental protections that any mining operation needs to follow. They can't mine yet. They're getting close, but they can't yet. So, this is what it looks like with the light shone on it. Well, jeez, there's a lot of them. Yeah. The whole point of this sponsorship arrangement is it's a layer of accountability for TMC. NARU is liable to keep TMC compliant with any environmental regulations in mining the deep sea. So NARU is required to have enough people and experts and infrastructure to be out there

checking in on their operation, visiting them out of the blue to make sure that they're complying. It's a big job and it's an important job. If they don't do it, they could be screwed if TMC doesn't comply and someone else catches them. The ISA emphasizes this point over and over. They say that the sponsoring country must have effective control over the company. Effective control. Effectively controlled. Effectively controlled. It says this everywhere. You can't kick them out of the driver's seat. Effective control just means that Naru has to be in the driver's seat on how this

goes down. Effective control. I swear I've been hearing the word effective control as I fall asleep at night because I have been looking at so many documents about the definition and interpretation of what effective control means. What does it really mean for Nau to effectively control this big Canadian corporation? All the issues somehow go back to effective control. There's no international police force in the high seas. And so effective control is the mechanism we will use to make sure that the big corporation doesn't destroy the ecosystem. The sponsors are responsible for this. Naru is responsible

for this. Now Jared insists to me that despite now we're being this tiny country, they have effective control over TMC. Effective control is very clearly defined in UNL. It's regulatory control. You know, Naans do have a seabed authority. But others worry that this relationship is actually a recipe for disaster. The main reasons that TMC went to NARU to sponsor it was number one, it would not be able to exercise effective control over the activities of TMC. A lot of question marks have been raised about sponsorship arrangements with the likes of La Ru and whether or

not they're actually in charge. To what extent is the sponsoring state liable for damage? Hello. Hey, how's it going? So, I got like I got a hold of this cuz I was interviewing Praep and his whole thing is he knows about ocean law. There's the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea. Tribunal of law of the sea. And in 2011, they put out an opinion specifically on responsibilities and obligations of sponsoring states. And in one of the articles, they mention essentially this term that is the sponsoring states of convenience. A company that is from

a developed country, a wealthy country will partner with a smaller country to get sponsorship for something like deep sea mining. But what they say is the sponsorship is essentially a setup where they will like register something be that like a local address one house that like is that company have one employee and that's sort of it and it boils down to like a financial deal that it's like I give you money you give me sponsorship and they mention it there that like these developing nations don't have the resources they don't have the systems to essentially

do the job of a sponsoring country. And I think bigger than that, like it sort of breaks the system as a whole cuz suddenly you're impacting like the global regulations that you have. The spread of sponsoring states of convenience would jeopardize uniform applications of the highest standards of protection of the marine environment, the safe developments of activities in the area, and the protection of the common heritage of mankind. Now, here's what's tricky is that TMC hasn't broken any rules here. But the reason why the ISA raises this idea of sponsorship of convenience is because they're

worried that a big corporation like TMC gets sponsored by NARU and that NARU won't actually be able to hold them to account. Do you think NARU has the capacity to effectively monitor and regulate TMC the way they should as a sponsoring nation? Well, at the moment, I think they are pretty weak in that sense. They've not set obligations in their sponsorship agreement. Praep Singh is really deep in all of this. He's sort of the bullseye expert for this very topic. So Mariana posted the question to him. At the moment it's just about getting their sponsorship

and doing the minimum possible domestically but really not being the type of sponsoring state that would actually go out there conduct surprise visits. It does not have the capacity to be a proactive regulator. So Jared says that this is effective control. Praep says it's not. The best way to answer this question would be to talk to the government of Nau. Yeah, they won't talk to us. It's basically impossible to get a hold of Nor Ruben. No response. The clerk on the website, I emailed them. No response. Every person that I could click on on LinkedIn,

Instagram, Tik Tok, no response. No response. No response. We're not going to hear from Nau unfortunately from the story. I'm not optimistic. It's a bummer cuz that ultimately that is a central voice here and like we're going to have to just read between the lines. Yeah. So, looks like we're not talking to Naru which we asked TMC to connect us and they said that uh Naru doesn't want to talk to Western journalists because they're tired of being portrayed uh in a negative light and in an unfair light which maybe that's fair. I think there is

some like caricatured coverage of Nau. But in this case, we are earnestly trying to understand and ask the question of how this small country is planning on effectively controlling and regulating the mining operation of a massive corporation that is going to potentially be a billion dollars in the hole with a lot of investors who want a return on their money. It is a big job, but it looks like we're not going to hear from N. So, in addition to talking to experts, we've been deep in every document we can possibly find that paints a picture

of whether or not Nau has effective control over TMC. Now, we'll put all this stuff in our citations so you can look at it for yourself and love your feedback if you have different interpretations. But from SEC filings to the agreement between TMC and Nau to the lawsuit where TMC investors sued the company for misleading claims, all of this paints a picture of a corporation who is not giving up much control at all to Little Nau. And of course they're not. We should assume that TMC's lawyers are going to do their job and protect TMC

as much as they possibly can without violating the rules. Just like an accountant tries to get you the maximum tax return you possibly can going right up to the line without crossing it. This is rational behavior. And because effective control is up to interpretation, lawyers could argue that Naru does have effective control. Not to mention Nau by its own free will and choice entered into this agreement with TMC. They calculated that this was worth it to them. No one twisted their arm. But the picture this all paints to me is not the effective control that

the ISA envisioned which could spell a lot of trouble for NARU if TMC does break the rules and NARU doesn't catch it. One can see a lot of NOS's like the World Wildlife Fund like Greenpeace filing lawsuits not just against the companies that are going to extract the minerals but the countries that are sponsoring them. So while NARU and other countries that are sponsoring deep sea mining may think that there's zero risk to them and maybe if it works out they'll get a little bit of money but the issue is they could become legally liable

for some of the damages. These NOS's are going to be extremely aggressive legally when these operations begin. It looks a lot like a repeat of history. It looks like a big powerful organization coming in and Nau in its desperation seeding power to a much more powerful entity. How do you respond to that idea that this is just a repeat of the same dynamic? Well, I' I'd respond to say um I think you've got it wrong because let's think about the benefits that Naru are getting. He took this opportunity to NARU to allow them to have

a participation in it. And so, you know, the benefits will include, as I outlined, jobs, training opportunities, royalties, and taxation. So, those benefits are going to be quite enormous. I actually went into this interview kind of pushing Jared on whether or not Na itself will actually benefit from this relationship. And I I'm actually convinced that they will to some degree. Again, they don't have a lot of options. What being in all these documents has done for me though is created a much bigger worry about the system as a whole. This international framework that was meant

to safeguard this part of our world that belongs to all of us. I worry that a relationship like this, yes, it might benefit both parties, but it might lead to substantial harm, irreparable harm to a part of our marine environment that we don't really understand. And I'm not even saying that I think TMC will commit this harm. It's more that it sets a precedent on how this should work. My biggest worry is one shared by the former ISA representative from Belgium who told the New York Times that TMC is relying on a legal loophole here.

They've chosen a tiny island nation to gain access to the reserved areas. It is exactly the opposite of what the law of the sea intended. And I've been focusing a lot on TMC because they are like the biggest private company I hear. But there's other private companies too. There's four private companies. All four of them based in rich countries. And three of them have partnered with developing nations which gets them in on an already explored patch of ocean like Jamaica, the Cook Islands. I mean the Cook Islands has 15,000 people. It's a teeny tiny country

and they will be responsible for regulating and having control over these private corporations raising concern that these companies are choosing these small nations as sponsors of convenience. the rest of the companies out here are state-owned enterprises from rich powerful countries. So there's a lot of critique that the way that this deep sea mining stuff is playing out is like not actually in the spirit of the treaty. It's a complete corruption of the vision that the negotiators in the 1970s had about something that was going to benefit everybody, something that would allow an equal opportunity for

all countries to benefit from and to get involved in. And that simply ain't happening. But some critiques go even further. Like listen to this clip of the president of the small Pacific island nation of Palao. As a small Pacific island nations, we find ourselves once again at the mercy of powerful external forces reminiscent of colonial exploitation that has scarred our history with big mining businesses leveraging the economic vulnerabilities of small Pacific island states to gain access to our ocean floors. Okay, we are done with ISA language, effective control, interpretation. International law is complicated and we're

done talking about it. I'm glad we did talk about it. It was a necessary journey because this is our policeman. We don't have any other authority governing what we do with this patch of water. So, I'm glad we did it. But, I want to zoom out. And the last point I want to make is a reminder of the bigger issue here. We live in a world that needs a lot more of these metals. There's a lot of countries that are going to need lots of steel, a lot of electronics, and then of course the bazillion

electric car batteries that we need to make to decarbonize our transportation. This has to come from somewhere. And a really valid point that TMC often argues is that currently where nickel, for example, comes from looks like this. This is Indonesia. It's home to this rich biodiverse rainforest that is currently being destroyed to make way for these massive mines. These things are growing very quickly. We're having to go and d we're choosing to go and destroy those ecosystems, push out the indigenous people living amongst them to be able to dig up that rainforest, move it aside

to look for the metals containing the nickel particularly, which is what this resource is very rich in. I kind of agree with the CEO of the metals company that land-based mining is a worse way for us to get our minerals. It has lots of problems, you know, toxic pollution. It it happens where people live and often the poorest people are the ones that have to deal with the pollution. It's cutting down trees that suck up carbon. They're processing the nickel in Indonesia with power from coal fired power plants. So, you know, sometimes the quality of

those minerals is lower, which requires more energy to process it. There's lots of problems with terrestrial-based mining. A major talking point for TMC is that we need to be less precious and slow about this place where there isn't as much life, less precious about the worms and the sponges living 5 km under the ocean and start harvesting these nodules sooner. It's less destructive than doing it in Indonesia. And in a world where harvesting the nodules would significantly slow down or even stop terrestrial mining in Indonesia, that would be a very compelling argument. It would be

a hard trade-off, but it would be a pretty logical one. But he's trying to give the impression that we have a choice between these two, and we don't. The way these things work is that prices decide what gets mined. And so, if the deep sea mining operations were to ramp up really quickly and be pretty uh cost effective, then maybe they would slow the growth of mines in Indonesia, for example. It's hard for me to imagine that that's going to be just like a slam dunk. Shut down all the mines. Probably we'll have just both

going at the same time. Even the most optimistic projections don't show terrestrial mining declining in any meaningful way if we start mining from the deep sea. Might be able to slow the expansion, but especially because the economics of deep sea mining are so fraught with all these international hoops to jump through. It's going to be hard to shift the market to the deep sea instead of the rainforest. I think we can certainly slow down Indonesian nicolaterite expansion and our plan is very much to do that. You know, we we don't think we can stop what's

already moving, but we think we can slow down or stop expansion. So instead of rushing into this, the member countries of the ISA have preferred to take it slow, to keep studying the marine environment, to keep working on the details of how enforcement will work, what effective control means, how the money will be split up, and how we do all of this without destroying the ecosystem and causing domino effects that we can't foresee right now. So as the ISA slowly works through the complicated rule book of how deep sea mining should go down in the

CCC, TMC is eager to get going. In June 2021, TMC's sponsor NAU officially triggered a rule in the treaty that would force the ISA to finalize regulations within 2 years. The clock started ticking and after 2 years, even if they don't finalize the regulations, TMC or anyone could apply for a license to start mining. Now, why would Nau trigger this 2-year rule? I asked TMC if they put pressure on their sponsor to do so. Of course, we were consulted on it. Of course, we had some role to play in it, but this was a decision

taken by the people of Nau, but others don't believe it. I can tell you this 100% for sure that if PMC didn't request Nau to do it, Nau wouldn't have invoked it. So, you know, it's it's very obvious where the pressure is coming from. Anyway, the 2-year rule got triggered one way or another. And guess what? The ISA didn't finish the rule book. They didn't finish the regulations. So now as of 2023, people can start applying for provisional licenses to start mining these nodules in the deep sea. There would still be some process around it,

but the fact is like it would start the race for actually starting to mine these things before we have all the regulations worked out. Why are we rushing the whole process just because one private company wants to start deep mining? And TMC has said that they're going to do it. They say that by the end of June 2025, like in a few months from when I'm filming this, they're going to apply for license. Meanwhile, the ISA is going to keep trying to create the regulations necessary to protect the marine environment. But when you've got hundreds

of nations in a room trying to agree on something, it doesn't move quickly. I don't imagine them agreeing on all of this anytime soon. Okay, there's new developments. Like, we were just about to publish this video and something big has happened. First off, Kitty Boss cut ties with TMC. So, they are no longer sponsoring TMC and apparently they're talking to China about deep sea mining. The bigger news is that the Trump administration has come out and issued an executive order paving the way for the US to go after deep sea minerals without any approval from

the ISA. Wait, wouldn't that be illegal? Um, technically depends who you ask. The United States, if you remember, hasn't signed UNCLOS. They're one of the few countries in the world that is not a member nation of the ISA. So, yes, this would be illegal under international law. Back in the 1980s, the US passed a law that would technically let US companies apply for licenses to go mine in international waters, not having to go through the ISA, but they've never used it. It's sort of this US policy of being like, we'll play by UNCLOSS rules, but

we'll have this in our back pocket in case we need it. Well, the Trump administration has deemed that we need it. The need to secure rare earth minerals, and TMC is first in line to apply. This is a huge blow for international maritime law and it's getting a lot of backlash from the international community. And now I finally understand this moment in this interview that I had with Jared a few months ago when we were talking about the ISA. And what do you think? Do you think that it is on a track to be the

proper regulatory body to to make sure that it's done safely and fairly? It could go either way. And I think people's patience are running out because some of the wrong people are asserting too much control. And they're going to have to be very careful because if they overplay their hand, then it will be on their watch that lawlessness might come back to the high seas. Wow. I mean, I would love some more specifics on that if you could give me anything else. That's all I got for you now. And he's right. If the US decides

to give TMC and other corporations licenses to go mine in the CCC, this water that most of the world has signed a treaty saying belongs to everyone and that needs to be subject to very specific regulations. If the US does this, then it kind of represents some version of lawlessness. By some technical definition, they would be considered pirates, at least according to those who signed the Unclaus treaty, which is most countries in the world. So this story which started out as an interest in Nau and then got into deep sea mining and ISA regulations is

kind of ending with the US challenging the very basis of international maritime law. Looking back at my conversation with President Brotherson, it sounds like he also kind of saw this coming. We live in a very challenging times. We don't really know what's the next decision will be. Will ISA or the UN be able to prevent uh deep sea mining in international seas? Now we we might very well become uh the stage for a conflict around those resources that are at the bottom of the ocean. Okay, so all of this gets us back to where we

started this story. The story of Nau, a country that was left devastated after years of exploitation by outsiders rushing in for resources and mining them in an unsustainable way, leading them to become a party to another rush for resources. This time at the bottom of the sea. A rush that many worry will have similarly unforeseen devastating impacts on our environment. This time with global ramifications. It's an irony that's actually not uncommon in a postc colonial world where even though we have changed a lot of the system, the effects and the power dynamics still reverberate between

the powerful and the weak. I haven't seen anything that says that Nau or TMC or anyone out here in the CCC is acting nefariously or illegally. They're acting rationally, responding to the incentives and pushing up against the regulations that govern this international body of water. And if anything, they're exposing the weaknesses in this framework of trying to protect the environment and trying to make sure that this benefits all of mankind. And nothing is for certain. We don't know how this is going to play out. We don't know the environmental impacts. And we don't know if

mining the deep sea will be an economically viable endeavor that will actually change where we get these metals that we do indeed need for our future. So now we wait and see how this little country, this big corporation, and everyone out there teams up to go after these little metal balls. And whether or not that does end up benefiting all mankind, or if, as many fear, this is a repeat of the exploitation and destruction of an ecosystem that has unforeseen effects. Effects that will not be good for all mankind. here happening in this piece of

ocean that belongs to all of us. I leave you with one of the many legends that we have in our country. There's an island and it's the the island from which the all the migrations has started to populate aloa New Zealand Hawaii Easter Island and that island is called Leatea. So back in time there were two brothers, two fishermen. So they went out on their canoe and they started they they got fish. They caught fish but uh they thought it was not enough. So they went to another place and continued fish and you know their

canoe was already full but they it was not enough. They wanted more fish. So they went to another place but they didn't know that was the sleeping ground of Ruahaki the god of the ocean. and he was uh taking a nap at the bottom of the ocean. And Ruhatu has this very curly and abandoned hair. So they they were fishing just above Ruhatu and the lines got caught in his hair. So he rose up from the ocean very angry because he was awakened and he told the two fishermen, "Who are you to disturb the god

of the ocean? who are you? They got scared and they presented excuses, but it was not enough. And Ruhat told them, I'm going to punish you and I'm going to flood the island up to the highest mountain called Mount Tahani. So he told them, you go back to the island and you tell all the population that they should gather on a small islands. All the people who won't go to that small island will be flooded and die. So they went back to the island of Rayata and went to see Princess Aaru. And Princess Aaru listened

to them, but they didn't care. They went home and ate all the fish. But Aaru, she started to gather her people and tell them, you know, we've angry the god of the ocean. We should go and we should listen to him. And so her people, the small group of people went to that small island and surely enough started to rain and the ocean rose and the whole island was flooded and everyone died. everyone but that small group of people around Princess Aaro that listened to the words of the the god of the ocean because that

that island was in fact a canoe that floated as the water rose. The question to us children of uh humanity is who do we want to be? Do we want to be those greedy fishermen that never had enough? Or do we want to be the followers of who listen to the god of the ocean?