An upgraded transparency portal from Global Fishing Watch and UC Santa Barbara brings unprecedented visibility to deep-sea mining, tracking vessel activity, exploration zones and emerging industrial impacts across the world’s oceans. Global Fishing Watch and the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at UC Santa Barbara have introduced a major upgrade to Deep-Sea Mining Watch, an open-access platform that reveals – in real time – where vessels linked to seabed mineral exploration are operating across the globe. The newly-refreshed portal offers a window into deep-ocean industrial activity, enabling users to trace vessel movements by region, timeframe or speed; overlay exploration routes with…
Author: TJ Markle
The US government plans to take more equity stakes in critical minerals companies, a White House official said Thursday, calling the once-rare move necessary to counter China’s dominance in the raw materials used in everything from semiconductors to MRI machines. “I think they’re the norm from our perspective,” said Jarrod Agen, executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council, speaking at a forum in Washington. “There is a broad scope of different companies who are coming to us. They’re making the right case.” Critical minerals such as gallium and cobalt are used in products ranging from iPhones to industrial magnets.…
A rock on Mars spilled a surprising yellow treasure after Curiosity accidentally cracked through its unremarkable exterior. When the rover rolled its 899-kilogram (1,982-pound) body over the fragile lump of mineral in May of last year, the deposit broke open, revealing yellow crystals of elemental sulfur, known as brimstone. Although sulfates are fairly common on Mars, this represented the first sulfur in its pure elemental form found on the red planet. What’s even more exciting is that the Gediz Vallis Channel, where Curiosity found the rock, is littered with objects that look suspiciously similar to the sulfur rock before it got fortuitously crushed…
Russian aluminium producer Rusal is making a calculated entry into the East African market, going into partnership with Ethiopia’s sovereign wealth fund to build an aluminium smelter with capacity for 500,000 tonnes per year. With a projected timeline of three to four years and an expected operational life as long as 50 years, the first phase – valued around $1 billion – was expected to be 70% debt-financed, Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH) said on Friday November 14. The project will combine substantial industrial potential with the operational and market complexities typical of large-scale ventures in emerging economies. The Rusal smelter…
Scarcity of water is emerging as a defining constraint of the 21st century. As one of the most notoriously water-intensive activities, the mining and metals industry sits at the heart of this challenge. In the United States alone, mineral extraction consumes an estimated 4 billion gallons of water a day, equivalent to the daily use of 13 million households.1 Downstream processing and refining operations add further to this demand, significantly increasing the sector’s total water footprint.2 This immense demand for water has fuelled a growing market for water management in the mining industry, currently valued at US$8 billion globally and is anticipated…
One small Indigenous territory is currently the site of roughly 70% of deforestation in Indigenous territories across the Brazilian Amazon due to illegal mining over the last two years, according to government data. The Sararé Indigenous Territory in Mato Grosso state is home to about 200 Nambikwara people. From January 2024 to August 2025, illegal gold mining razed more than 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of forest within their territory — more than 4% of its total area of 67,000 hectares (165,600 acres). The aggressive encroachment of illegal gold miners into the Sararé territory is relatively recent. According to a Greenpeace report, just 78 hectares…
Abiding by international law is the only path to peace and sustainable development at sea, China’s foreign vice-minister Hua Chunying said on Monday in a veiled swipe at the US over its unilateral exploitation of seabed minerals. “The oceans are not calm. Certain countries have resorted to the unlawful use of force at sea under various pretexts, posing a serious threat to regional peace and security,” Hua said on Monday. She was delivering opening remarks at a forum in Beijing focused on international ocean dispute resolution and international law. “Some have unilaterally enacted and implemented ‘deep-sea mining regulations’, eroding the…
The bill would create a new legal shield for people who own former phosphate mining land. It helps owners remove what’s called “strict liability” if someone sues over harms caused by pollution. A bill is making its way through the Florida House that could impact Floridians’ houses — if they live on or near former phosphate mines, at least. Those mines — from extracting the phosphate rock commonly used in fertilizer — create pollution concerns like elevated radiation levels. Supporters say the proposal will address the legal fallout and health concerns from where the mining occurred, predominantly in phosphate-rich Polk,…
Convention, attendees heard firsthand the message that would be widely reported by digital newspapers the following day: “Marcelo Ebrard, minister of economy, announced at the International Mining Convention in Acapulco that large-scale mining exploration will resume in 2026, pending permits will be expedited, procedures streamlined, and investment facilitated.” This announcement might appear promising, were it not for the sobering memories of November 2018 when the mining sector celebrated the creation of the Undersecretariat of Mining, only to feel deceived 21 months later when, in September 2020, the position was eliminated, and its short-lived holder departed for Germany as Mexico’s ambassador, remaining…
States Should Support Colombian Initiative for Minerals Treaty. When 29-year-old Norbert Amoya went to fetch water from a river in northern Zambia earlier this year, he found large numbers of dead fish and the water had a strange smell. The cause was a major mining disaster. On February 18, a dam at a Chinese copper mine had burst and released toxic waste into a tributary of Zambia’s largest river, threatening the ecosystem, the livelihood of millions, and putting communities at grave risk of cancer and other ill-health. Such disasters can be prevented. This week, states coming together for the United Nations Environment Assembly, the world’s top…