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Mining Tech / Marine Mining


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  • Satellite view of Minami Torishima island.

    Deep dive: Japan's rare earth mining trial

    K. Warner, Metal Tech News|Updated Jul 16, 2025

    Test near remote island marks a first in ultra-deep critical mineral recovery. Japan is set to commence a trial representing the world's deepest attempt at rare earth element (REE) extraction from the ocean floor. Scheduled for January 2026, the operation will involve the retrieval of mineral-rich sediment from a depth of 5,500 meters (3.4 miles), marking an unprecedented milestone in subsea mining. Currently, China dominates the global rare earths market, controlling nearly...

  • Green coastline of Aoloau, Western District, American Samoa.

    Deep-sea mining: two paths, one goal

    K. Warner, Metal Tech News|Updated Jun 24, 2025

    An outcome that will redefine regulations, international goodwill, and environmental impact. Two companies are taking bold but divergent steps into deep-sea mining – one navigating U.S. territorial waters, the other operating in the legal limbo of international waters. With the International Seabed Authority (ISA) stalled on mining regulations and the Trump administration aggressively advancing domestic resource development, the forward momentum of private interests is f...

  • A mound of polymetallic nodules in a ship’s hold.

    Japan's undersea critical mineral jackpot

    K. Warner, Metal Tech News|Updated Jul 11, 2024

    Japan's exclusive economic zone sports polymetallic nodules, which would support domestic battery mineral requirements for decades. While the worldwide debate for and against harvesting critical minerals from international waters rages on, Japanese researchers have discovered their own massive mineral resource in the Pacific and are free to do as they please with it. "Polymetallic nodules" (also known as manganese nodules) are essentially concentric layers of iron and...

  • The globe showing the Pacific Ocean overlaid by statistics.

    Impossible Metals top-rated in green tech

    K. Warner, Metal Tech News|Updated May 3, 2024

    You won't find many miners on TIME and Statista's inaugural list of 250 companies reducing environmental impact, but one green mining tech company has arrived. Sailing in alongside several hydrogen producers as one of America's top green-tech companies of 2024, deep-sea mining firm Impossible Metals is one of the rare few resource-related organizations to be granted the honor. This year, TIME launched its inaugural list of America's Top GreenTech Companies from an intensive...

  • A Norwegian flag dips into the blue waters of the North Sea.

    Norway's stormy deep-sea mining vote

    K. Warner, Metal Tech News|Updated Feb 6, 2024

    This week, Norway's parliament, with cross-party support, voted 80 to 20 in favor of opening roughly 108,000 square miles of Arctic seabed to mineral exploration and potential mining between Norway and Greenland near the Svalbard archipelago. Energy transition minerals cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, and manganese can all be found in greater quantities than in our terrestrial mines as potato-sized nodules scattered across the abyssal depths of the seafloor. These accretions are...

  • Impossible Metals co-founders Jason Gillham, Renee Grogan, Oliver Gunasekara.

    Sustainable deep-sea mining needed

    K. Warner, Metal Tech News|Updated Jan 29, 2024

    Metal Tech News Q&A with Oliver Gunasekara, CEO Impossible Metals. As an entrepreneur and business development executive, Oliver Gunasekara has left his mark on the tech world over the past 30-plus years. His latest project, Impossible Metals, is poised to be a real game-changer in the quest of deep sea mining for minerals critical to clean energy – which can and should maintain equal ESG standards to land-based mining. Rather than dredging the seafloor for precious p...

  • Hydrothermal black smoker vent in ocean emits metal laden sulfide fluids

    Mining goes 20,000 leagues under the sea

    Matthew Lasley, For Metal Tech News|Updated Jul 2, 2022

    Reminiscent of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a small submersible scours the inky depths of the ocean, not in search of seams of coal, but towering spires created by thermal vents. The remotely operated sub's lights splash across the cluster of vents that spew mineral rich plumes of super-heated water from deep in the earth into the chill of the ocean depths. The ROV moves into position, its clawed arm reaching out and breaking off a sample of mineral rich rock...