Deep-sea Mining in the Bismarck Sea

After five years, seabed mining returned to deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Bismarck Sea. Communities on New Ireland are responding by organizing community consultations.

The following is reproduced from an information update written for residents of the Namatanai District, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, in advance of anticipated community consultations concerning the 2024 re-emergence of deep-sea mining in the Bismarck Sea after five years of dormancy.

Between May and July 2024, the ship M/V Coco, on behalf of the Company Deep Sea Mining Finance Limited (DSMF), spent almost two months in the Bismarck Sea, in and around the Solwara 1 site only a short distance (~30 kilometers) from West Coast Namatanai. This short report is an update on what the ship was doing, where, and why, and to update you on scientific information about the known and potential effects of deep-sea mining on the ocean environment.

What was the ship doing and on whose behalf?

In the Bismarck Sea, plots have been granted by the PNG government to private companies to explore and extract deep-sea minerals. The plots surround deep-sea hydrothermal vent fields, which are volcanic hot springs where hot and cold ocean water mix in such a way that minerals and metals are deposited on the seabed. Over time, these deposits grow very large and are called Seafloor-Massive Sulphides (SMS). The Manus Basin of the Bismarck Sea contains thousands of SMS, which are also home to unique biological life. The most interesting metals for companies to extract from SMS deposits in the Bismarck Sea are gold and copper, and elements called rare earths, which are used in batteries, electronics, and other high-tech products.

The activity that happened over the summer around Solwara 1 was carried out by the company, Deep Sea Mining Finance (DSMF). Officially, the ship was carrying out exploration activities, which are permitted under its current license granted by Papua New Guinea. However, activist groups like the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, believe that more was happening than just exploration (Alberts, 2024). They believe that the ship extracted more than 180 tons of SMS materials from the seabed and gathered much more in neat piles for easy recovery later. They also believe that the real purpose of the visit in the summer of 2024 was to test out full-scale mining equipment.

It is possible that DSMF is involved in deep seabed mining activities. If this is the case, it is also important to note that the government of Papua New Guinea currently does not have a mining minister or comprehensive seabed mining regulations to sufficiently manage mining activity in the Bismarck Sea. It also does not have the ability to monitor deep seabed mining activity taking place almost 2 kilometres below the sea surface.

Image: Godfrey Jordan Abage, a resident of West Barok area of the Namatanai District, is organizing community consultations in New Ireland
Credit: Godfrey Jordan Abage

Has this happened before, and how is it different?

DSMF is a young company, but exploration of the Bismarck Sea’s SMS deposits date to 1997, when a company called Nautilus Minerals was granted the right to explore for minerals by the Papua New Guinean government. Over the years, Nautilus Minerals’ SMS mining holdings in the Bismarck Sea, and elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, grew to hundreds of thousands of square kilometers.

In 2011, Nautilus Minerals was granted a 20-year lease on plots of the seabed in the Bismarck Sea to explore the potential to extract minerals. However, in the 2010s, successful local, regional, and global activism (to protect the marine environment against DSM) led to the bankruptcy of Nautilus Minerals. Because the PNG government provided financial backing to Nautilus Minerals, they were left with significant debt. Later, DSMF (a group that is 50% owned by Mawarid Mining in Oman, along with several private individuals) acquired Nautilus’s mining license for Solwara 1. In 2023, the government of Papua New Guinea confirmed that the Solwara 1 project would move forward, with DSMF mining the SMS deposits at Solwara 1 under the 2011 mining license originally granted to Nautilus Minerals (Reid, 2020). Before 2011, activist groups raised concerns about the environmental impact assessment, risk assessments, and environmental management plans passed through the Papua New Guinean government. Today, activists again question DSMF’s environmental permits, charging that DSMF is operating under Nautilus’s environmental permits passed back in 2009, when less was known about the effects of deep-sea mining. Also, in the intervening years, the Garry administration has publicly committed to moratoria, standing against deep-sea mining, though how these commitments mesh with DSMF fulfilling Nautilus’s contracts in the Bismarck Sea remain to be discussed.

Image: Deep-sea mining equipment once owned by Nautilus Minerals, Inc., that was to be used to extract hydrothermal vent sulphides from the Bismarck Sea
Credit: Godfrey Jordan Abage

What could be the effects?

Multinational mining companies’ activities have caused devastating environmental impacts across PNG on land, for example at Ok Tedi. Much less is known of the deep-sea environment and the likely impacts that mining will have on deep-sea habitats. Deep-sea mining has also never happened before on a commercial scale. Still, it has a long history of attempts and trials going back to the 1960s and 1970s. We know much about what might happen, and we know more about deep-sea mining’s impacts now that DSMF exists than we did when Nautilus existed. In 2011, Nautilus Minerals concluded that “The extent of the impacts to vents and other seafloor habitats directly mined will inevitably be severe at the site scale (i.e., the area of mining),” and that the wider ecological impacts would be “moderate” (Rosenbaum, 2011). Still, what this means is unclear. The scale of use of deep-sea mining technologies is unprecedented, and uncertainty about its environmental, economic and social impacts remains high.

Other studies of deep-sea mining projects elsewhere in the ocean suggest that the environmental consequences will be large. Critical seafloor habitat will be removed or buried by sediments, and there is the potential for large, suspended sediment plumes on the seabed, as well as dewatering plumes (when water is flushed from mined minerals at the surface) near the surface and in the mid-water area. Deep-sea ecosystems recover very slowly from disturbance, if at all. So, while mining in the Bismarck Sea will not cause such disasters as underwater earthquakes or tsunamis, destruction might still be substantial. Unlike these naturally occurring events, DSM impacts will take place over the long-range 24/7 mining across decades. Scientists have suggested that “noise from one mine will exceed gentle- weather background levels to distances of hundreds of kilometers,” which poses a threat to migrating fish like tuna that travel in the mid-water, deep-diving whales, and even tiny organisms like plankton that feed fish (Williams et al., 2022).

Image: Seabed mining equipment, ashore in Papua New Guinea
Credit: Godfrey Jordan Abage

Though we know that both active and inactive hydrothermal vents host unique and related ecosystems, we still know little about the kinds of organisms that live in these environments, especially in the Bismarck Sea. Solwara 1 is only the first of what could be many similar mining projects and given that scientists predict that a net-loss of biodiversity is inevitable if deep-sea mining proceeds, we could lose ocean environments before we even understand them fully (Niner et al, 2018). Elsewhere, organisms tolerant to the heat and pressure of this environment have been used by companies to make biological products worth billions of dollars.

In the 2010s, community members living in West Coast Namatanai reported, with the Alliance of Solwara Warriors, that coastal seawater color was changing from blue to brown. Also, community members have reported changes in the ability to call and catch sharks in the area (Fainu, 2021). How these changes are or are not related to deep-sea mining exploration activities is unknown, but in a place where a healthy ocean is so important for livelihoods, all possible environmental harms should be discussed and precautions taken.

Image: Godfrey Jordan Abage, Secretary of the Wokisok Shark-Calling Association, stands in front of a billboard erected on the beach at Kono Village calling to “Ban Seabed Mining” on behalf of the Wokisok Association/shark callers of Westcoast coast people of Namatanai District
Credit: Godfrey Jordan Abage

The following are the words of Godfrey Jordan Abage:

Our way forward is to have a strong local resistance group and a well-informed local population who are vibrant and can stand up to the government and company (DSMF) for their rights. There is a huge information gap. By carrying out continuous campaigns and awareness at every level of communication, then we are sure to rally support and rid the company from our beautiful Bismark Sea. As the coastal people of the Bismark Sea, our tradition is decorated with laws that connect us with nature. We are in synch, in harmony, and in balance with our environment. We don’t need to create laws that stand to widen the gap between the poor and the rich, which destroy the environment and yet serve the interests of a few filthy rich people. The shark callers of my village and the neighbouring villages have demonstrated our deep connections with the ocean since the birth of the art of shark calling. My ancestors have always held the concept that the ocean is our garden and we are its guardians. This means that our food is also in the sea, and so the sea must be protected at all costs.

References

Alberts, Elizabeth Claire. “Not Merely ‘Exploration’: PNG Deep-Sea Mining Riles Critics & Surprises Officials.” Mongabay Environmental News, September 2, 2024. https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/not-merely-exploration-png-deep-sea-mining-riles-critics-surprises-officials/

Amon, Diva J., Juliano Palacios-Abrantes, Jeffrey C. Drazen, Hannah Lily, Neil Nathan, Jesse M. A. van der Grient, and Douglas McCauley. “Climate Change to Drive Increasing Overlap between Pacific Tuna Fisheries and Emerging Deep-Sea Mining Industry.” Npj Ocean Sustainability 2, no. 1 (July 11, 2023): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-023-00016-8

Fainu, Kalolaine. “‘Shark Calling’: Locals Claim Ancient Custom Threatened by Seabed Mining.” The Guardian, September 30, 2021, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/30/sharks-hiding-locals-claim-deep-sea-mining-off-papua-new-guinea-has-stirred-up-trouble

Niner, Holly J., Jeff A. Ardron, Elva G. Escobar, Matthew Gianni, Aline Jaeckel, Daniel O. B. Jones, Lisa A. Levin, et al. “Deep-Sea Mining With No Net Loss of Biodiversity—An Impossible Aim.” Frontiers in Marine Science 5 (2018). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2018.00053

Reid, Susan, “Solwara 1 and the Sessile Ones.” In Blue Legalities: The Life and Laws of the Sea, eds. Braverman, R., and Johnson, E. R., 25-44. Duke University Press, 2020.

Rosenbaum, Helen. “Out of Our Depth: Mining the Ocean Floor in Papua New Guinea.” Deep Sea Mining Campaign, October 2011.

Williams, Rob, Christine Erbe, Alec Duncan, Kimberly Nielsen, Travis Washburn, and Craig Smith. “Noise from Deep-Sea Mining May Span Vast Ocean Areas.” Science 377, no. 6602 (July 8, 2022): 157–58. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo2804.