How To Protect The Ocean

Deep sea mining is no longer theoretical. In this episode, Andrew sits down with Matthew Gianni, co-founder and Political and Policy Advisor of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, for an in-depth look at what's actually happening on the seafloor and in the negotiating rooms deciding its fate. Matthew spent years as a commercial fisherman, including five years as a deep sea trawlerman off the Central California coast, before moving into ocean conservation with Greenpeace International and eventually co-founding the DSCC to fight destructive bottom trawling on seamounts. That history shapes everything he has to say about what's coming next.
The conversation covers the science and the politics in equal measure: what seamount trawling studies off Tasmania revealed about how quickly deep coral ecosystems can be destroyed, why the deep sea is far from the "biological desert" some mining proponents describe, and the 2024 discovery of "dark oxygen" being produced by the very polymetallic nodules that mining companies want to extract. Matthew also walks through the current state of play at the International Seabed Authority, including a fresh update from the July 2026 meetings in Kingston, Jamaica, the leadership change from Michael Lodge to Leticia Carvalho, the legal fight over The Metals Company's push for a US mining license outside ISA authority, and why the economics of nodule mining may not add up even on the industry's own numbers.
Whether deep sea mining moves forward is still being decided right now, and Matthew makes the case for why the decisions being made in 2026 will shape the deep ocean for generations. This is a dense, detailed update for anyone trying to understand where deep sea mining policy actually stands, straight from someone who has been in the room for over a decade.
Takeaways:
Matthew Gianni co-founded the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition after years as a commercial fisherman and deep sea trawlerman, then a career at Greenpeace International running its ocean program.
Seamount trawling studies off Tasmania showed how fast deep coral ecosystems can be wiped out once bottom trawling begins.
The 2024 discovery of "dark oxygen" production from polymetallic nodules raises new questions about what deep seabed mining could disrupt before science even understands it.
The International Seabed Authority is legally obligated to act "for the benefit of humankind as a whole," which is central to the current fight over mining regulations.
The Metals Company is pursuing a US mining license through NOAA to bypass ISA authority entirely, a move Matthew calls "unilateral mining" that risks undermining the Law of the Sea Convention.
The economics of nodule mining are being challenged even within the ISA's own analysis, with mined metals representing a small fraction of global terrestrial supply.
A leadership change at the ISA, from Michael Lodge to Leticia Carvalho, has shifted the tone of negotiations, though Matthew says the fundamental disagreements remain unresolved.
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In September 2021, Time magazine profiled Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company (TMC), and his push to mine the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a stretch of international seabed between Hawaii and Mexico. In that profile, Barron called the CCZ "the most desert-like place on the planet," arguing that mining the deep sea does less environmental harm than mining a rainforest because there's supposedly so little life down there to disturb. That single line has been repeated for years as justification for deep sea mining. Andrew puts it to the test.
The science tells a very different story. A 2016 survey of the CCZ measured real, on-site abundance of larger seafloor animals and found meaningful densities of megafauna, plus hundreds of individuals per square meter of smaller sediment-dwelling species. A 2023 species inventory led by the UK's Natural History Museum and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts documented more than 5,000 species in the CCZ, with the large majority entirely new to science. New species are still turning up, including a batch of amphipods described in 2026. And a landmark study on nodule-dependent species found that more than half of the megafauna living in these nodule fields rely directly on the nodules themselves, the very rocks TMC wants to extract, as the only hard surface available to grow on in an otherwise soft, muddy seafloor.
Andrew walks through what happens when the nodules are removed, why TMC appears to be pursuing a path through the Trump administration rather than the International Seabed Authority, and what's at stake for communities near the Northern Mariana Islands, where a new mining lease is moving forward despite more than 60,000 public comments in opposition. This is a fact-check episode: quote first, then the evidence, so listeners can judge for themselves whether "desert" is an accurate description of one of the most biodiverse deep-sea ecosystems studied to date.
Takeaways:
Gerard Barron (CEO, The Metals Company) told Time magazine in September 2021 that the Clarion Clipperton Zone is "the most desert-like place on the planet."
A 2023 Natural History Museum / Pew-funded inventory documented more than 5,000 species in the CCZ, with the large majority new to science.
A 2016 study found meaningful abundance of both megafauna and smaller sediment-dwelling species across CCZ survey sites, not the near-absence of life the "desert" framing implies.
More than half of the megafaunal species in CCZ nodule fields depend directly on the polymetallic nodules as a hard surface to grow on, the same nodules targeted for mining.
A 2025 study of an actual industrial mining trial found significantly lower animal abundance at the disturbed site compared to untouched seafloor nearby.
TMC is pursuing a mining pathway through the Trump administration rather than the International Seabed Authority.
A proposed lease near the Northern Mariana Islands and the Mariana Trench marine protected area has moved forward despite more than 60,000 public comments opposing it.
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Why would someone who watched one deep-sea mining company collapse go back and try it again? That's the question at the center of this episode, and it's not hypothetical. It happened, with the same industry, some of the same licenses, and the same person at the center of it: Gerard Barron, now CEO of The Metals Company (TMC), one of the most prominent and best-funded companies pushing to start commercial deep-sea mining today. This isn't framed as an accusation against Barron specifically. It's a documented sequence of decisions, and by the end, you can decide for yourself what the motive looks like.
Before TMC, Barron was an early investor and promoter behind Nautilus Minerals, a company that pursued seafloor mineral deposits off Papua New Guinea. Nautilus raised hundreds of millions of dollars, including investment from the PNG government itself, before its costs spiraled, it was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange, and it filed for bankruptcy in 2019. Barron reportedly sold his shares years before the collapse, walking away with a return as high as $30 million, while PNG's government and environment were left holding the damage. Years later, people connected to Nautilus, including Barron, regrouped as Deep Green, which became The Metals Company, and picked up exploration rights in the Clarion Clipperton Zone that had once belonged to Nautilus.
This episode traces that arc from Adstream to Nautilus to TMC, including TMC's push to trigger the ISA's two-year rule, its more recent pursuit of a US mining permit outside the International Seabed Authority process entirely, and Barron's consistent argument that mining the seabed is less environmentally damaging than mining on land. Whether that comparison holds up, and what it means that the environmental cost of Nautilus's failure barely factors into how Barron talks about it now, is the thread running through the whole story.
Takeaways
Gerard Barron, now CEO of The Metals Company (TMC), was an early investor and promoter (not CEO) behind an earlier deep-sea mining venture, Nautilus Minerals, which went bankrupt in 2019.
Nautilus's projected operating costs of about $70 per ton reportedly grew to about $192 per ton, contributing to its delisting from the Toronto Stock Exchange and eventual bankruptcy.
Papua New Guinea's government invested in Nautilus and, according to the country's prime minister, the country spent roughly 300 million Kina (about $72 million USD) on a project later called a "total failure."
Barron sold his Nautilus shares years before the company's collapse, reportedly for as much as $30 million, while PNG's government was still invested.
TMC, which Barron now leads, is pursuing a US permitting path through NOAA and the Trump administration, outside the ISA process.
Long-term recovery data on deep-sea mining damage remains limited; some studies cited in the episode indicate no biodiversity recovery three to four years after mining activity occurred.
Barron has publicly compared seabed mining favorably to land-based mining, but a specific biomass figure he's cited in at least one interview is disputed in this episode as inaccurate.
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Seamounts are underwater mountains that rise at least 1,000 meters from the seafloor without breaking the surface, and they punch far above their weight biologically. Topographic upwelling pulls cold, nutrient-rich water up their slopes, fueling plankton blooms that draw fish, sharks, seabirds, and marine mammals, while their rocky surfaces give slow-growing corals and sponges a rare hard place to root in an otherwise soft-sediment deep sea. Roughly one in five seamount species are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth, which is why scientists call them oases in the deep sea.
That's exactly what made a pair of Australian studies so consequential. In 1997, researchers led by Tony Koslow and Karen Gowlett-Holmes of CSIRO Marine Research surveyed seamounts south of Tasmania to test whether bottom trawling for orange roughy was damaging habitat that had taken centuries to form, and whether a proposed marine reserve would actually protect it. What they found on heavily fished seamounts, compared to lightly fished or untouched ones, was stark: stripped reef, collapsed biomass, and far fewer species per sample. A 2009 follow-up study by Althaus and colleagues went further, analyzing tens of thousands of video frames and photos across 25 seamounts, and found coral cover reduced by roughly two orders of magnitude on trawled sites, with no sign of recovery even five years after trawling stopped.
Those findings are part of what pushed Matthew Gianni, a former deep-sea fisherman, to help found the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and push for international protections against high seas bottom trawling. This episode walks through what seamounts are, what the research actually found, and why damage this far down might be effectively permanent on any timescale that matters to us.
Takeaways:
Seamounts are volcanic underwater mountains that drive upwelling, concentrate biodiversity, and host high rates of endemic species found nowhere else.
Bottom trawling for species like orange roughy drags heavy gear across seamount slopes, destroying coral and sponge habitat that can take centuries to build.
A 1997 CSIRO-led survey south of Tasmania found dramatically lower biomass and species richness on heavily trawled seamounts compared to lightly fished or untouched ones.
A 2009 follow-up study found roughly a hundredfold decline in coral cover on trawled seamounts, with no clear sign of recovery five years after trawling stopped.
Because this damage happens far below the surface and outside any sunlight or recreational diving range, it's often invisible until a dedicated scientific survey documents it.
This research helped inspire the founding of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and international efforts to restrict high seas bottom trawling.
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Before he ever sat across a table from UN delegates, Matthew Gianni spent 10 years working as a commercial fisherman up and down both US coasts. Gillnetting for Spanish and king mackerel in Florida. Bottom trawling off central California, New England, and Florida for sole, redfish, hake, sablefish, shrimp, and other groundfish. Hook-and-lining for salmon and albacore tuna in Oregon and California. Running pots for Dungeness crab and dredging for deep sea scallops on Georges Bank. In today's episode, I trace how that decade on deck, watching coral and glass sponges get shoveled back overboard from trawls that dragged the seafloor a thousand meters down, planted the seed for a career that would eventually take him to the UN General Assembly.
Two fights as a working fisherman pushed Matthew toward advocacy. First, he helped organize fellow fishermen to halt a $110 million plan to dump San Francisco Bay dredge spoils directly onto prime fishing grounds off the Southern California coast, a fight that eventually moved the disposal site off the continental shelf. Second, he represented the fishing industry in efforts to block new offshore oil and gas leases along the central California coast. Both wins showed him what organized advocacy could accomplish, and they set him on a path toward Greenpeace International, where he helped launch the international fisheries campaign, worked on the UN's 1991-1992 moratorium on high seas driftnet fishing [VERIFY dates], and eventually ran Greenpeace's global Ocean Program from Amsterdam.
In the early 2000s, Matthew co-founded the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an international coalition of organizations working to protect deep sea biodiversity from harmful activities, where he now serves as political and policy advisor. What started as a fight against deep sea bottom trawling on seamounts has, since 2014, expanded to include deep sea mining, an industry Matthew argues is moving to tear into the seabed before scientists even have a baseline understanding of what lives there. This is the first episode in a week-long series on the deep sea, building toward my full interview with Matthew, airing Friday.
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