Abstract
This article follows US senator Lee Metcalf in his role as a promoter of deep-sea mining in the 1970s. By analysing his embrace of the deep sea as a new frontier for mineral resources, the author highlights a broader post-war development of the emergence of an imagination of the deep ocean as a potential solution for terrestrial problems. In the imagination of Metcalf and others, the deep sea came to be seen as a new and exciting space that could form an alternative to land-based mining. However, to make this possible, a clear legal framework regulating this unruly space was necessary. By the late 1970s, it had become clear that dreams of swiftly mining the deep seabed were futile. Nevertheless, as recent developments show, notions of the deep sea as a mineral-rich space have not disappeared but instead been temporarily dormant, to reappear now.
Introduction
In this article, I will explore how a senator from land-locked Montana became the leading congressional proponent of legislation to mine the deep sea in the early 1970s. In tracking his activities, I will tell a broader story of how the deep sea came to be imagined as a new frontier for resource extraction in the post-war United States. For Metcalf and other deep-sea mining enthusiasts, the ocean floor became a potential source for much-needed metals in the face of exhausted land-based mines and looming shortages. Furthermore, to the Montanan, it appeared as a way of sparing terrestrial environments in his home state and across the country from environmental degradation by mining. To realize deep-sea mining, Metcalf and others envisaged using the legislative powers of Congress to help industry – and, by extension, the United States – to stake claims to resources on the sea floor beyond national jurisdiction. This is why he used his leading role in the Senate's Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs to hold regular hearings on deep-sea mining and introduce legislation. In the process, Metcalf invited companies and a wide range of experts, including lawyers, economists and environmentalists, to these hearings. In doing so, he made his committee room into a meeting place for different perspectives on the economic viability of deep-sea mining, its legal implications and – most novelly – its potential environmental impact. 1
By researching Metcalf's embrace of manganese nodules, this article will contribute to the work of several historians who have tried to encourage more engagement with the deep ocean. While it would be a caricature to say that the depths beneath the ocean’s surface have been a complete blind spot, it is fair to say that most of our attention has focused on human activity on and around the sea surface. Of course, this is understandable, given that most of our interactions with the ocean have occurred on its surface and in coastal settings. Indeed, as Helen M. Rozwadowski has argued, the deep sea is an exceptionally extreme environment, and human knowledge of it is inevitably mediated by technology. 2 As detailed by Rozwadowski and Antony Adler, scientific knowledge of the deep sea(bed) was non-existent until the nineteenth-century advent of oceanography. 3 Crucially, their work has also detailed how, in a context of scarce knowledge – scientific research was complex and remained expensive – the depths of the oceans gained a role in the imagination of the oceanic environment as a simultaneously alluring and dangerous place. In her reconceptualization of Frank Broeze's definition of maritime history, Gelina Harlaftis made ‘in the sea’ one of the five dimensions of the field, linking it not only to long histories of fisheries but also to more recent historical developments that have focused attention on the seabed as both an environmental space and a site for the extraction of mineral resources. 4 Although plans to mine manganese nodules stalled in the late 1970s before any full-blown commercial operation occurred, this article will help us understand the emergence of the deep sea as an imaginative frontier for resource extraction. This is especially important as plans to mine manganese nodules have recently resurfaced, with a leading company describing deep-sea mining as essential to ‘securing a stable supply of responsibly-sourced critical minerals’, while environmental groups like Greenpeace sound the alarm about the imminent ‘plunder’ of the seabed. 5
The discovery and rediscovery of manganese nodules
Manganese nodules, potato-like mineral concretions, have been found across the world's oceans. These nodules, often partially buried in soft sediment, form through a long process. Metal compounds dissolved in seawater, either in the water column or within the sediment, deposit themselves around a nucleus on the seabed. These nuclei can vary, ranging from sharks’ teeth and bone fragments to pieces of debris. The growth rate of these nodules is 10 to 100 millimetres per 1 million years. Environmental factors such as water depth, bottom currents and sedimentation rate influence their size, abundance and exact mineral composition. Manganese nodules contain many metals, including manganese, iron, nickel, copper and cobalt. Manganese is the most abundant component, which explains the original name; however, the nodules are technically polymetallic. This is why, nowadays, most geologists prefer the term ‘polymetallic nodules’. 6
While, in 1959, the Inter Daily Lake characterized manganese nodules as a new source of metals, we have known of their existence since the late nineteenth century. Scientists first encountered them during the British HMS Challenger expedition (1872–1876). 7 However, the dredged-up nodules were not considered a source of mineable metals but instead displayed in museums and expositions, where their presence attested to a zeitgeist of intense interest in the natural sciences and expeditions into the unknown world. 8 Manganese nodules were only really imagined as a potential source of metals in the 1950s. This rediscovery of nodules should be situated within a broader post-war context of fears about resource scarcity and an interrelated intensified engagement with the ocean. Following the Second World War, in the context of the emerging Cold War, the availability of natural resources became a prominent concern for American policymakers. Notions of the nation's material wealth rapidly depleting also found their way to the broader public, fuelling fears of a global crash driven by resource depletion and population growth. 9 In 1952, during the Korean War (1950–1953), which heightened concerns about resource scarcity, President Truman established a government panel on natural resources – the President's Materials Policy Commission. This commission outlined a set of recommendations to secure a steady supply of minerals in the future. One of its novel suggestions was to extract minerals from the ocean floor. It suggested that such an industry could be operational by the mid 1970s. 10
While not much was done immediately with the commission's suggestion, deep-sea minerals remained in the picture. As part of the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958), scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego dredged the sea floor about 200 miles east of Tahiti. They recovered some 40 kilogrammes of manganese nodules. These nodules were subsequently subjected to X-ray analysis to determine their mineral composition. The discovery of high metal grades in the samples eventually led to the funding of a project to investigate the possibility of mining and processing nodules. John L. Mero, who later emerged as the leading authority on mining manganese nodules, was appointed as the principal investigator. 11 In 1959, Mero published A Preliminary Report on the Economics of Mining and Processing Deep-Sea Manganese Nodules, the first scientific study on the feasibility of mining nodules from the deep sea. While he acknowledged that many of his findings relied on speculation and projections, he nonetheless framed deep-sea mining as a solution to looming metal shortages on land, arguing that nodules could supply the United States with manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper for many hundreds of years. 12 He continued working on deep-sea mining and eventually published his most well-known work, The Mineral Resources of the Sea, in 1965. 13 Mero also emerged as an important promoter of nodules to the business community. He began working as a consultant for the International Nickel Company of Canada in 1959, where he led investigations into the feasibility of mining nodules. During the 1960s, Mero also worked for other companies interested in deep-sea mining. During this period, several American and foreign companies conducted research cruises, and manganese nodules were dredged up in copious amounts from various locations in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 14
However, not just industry had an interest in the ocean's resources. On 10 January 1966, Stewart L. Udall, Secretary of the Department of the Interior, delivered an address at the annual meeting of the American Mining Congress, the interest group representing the American mining and mineral industry. 15 Udall's speech highlighted the ever-increasing consumption of materials. He referred to a recent survey at the World's Fair in New York, which indicated that ‘the people now living in the United States would consume in their lifetimes: more than 90 million tons of copper, 7 billion tons of iron ore, 1 billion tons of phosphate rock, and 528 billion barrels of oil equivalent’. 16 He added that these ‘staggering figures’ did not even take into account population growth or increasing per-capita consumption. 17 To meet these growing demands, Udall advocated for a peaceful symbiosis between industry and the federal government to ensure the nation's continued supply of essential raw materials. More efficient mining techniques and metallurgical processing methods were also needed to meet the challenge. Furthermore, Udall discussed the need to explore new sources of metals. These should not only be terrestrial, as he highlighted the exploration efforts of the US Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines in respect of marine mineral deposits. While the exploration of the seabed conducted so far had been focused on coastal deposits, the oceans’ resources were clearly in view. 18 This expansive view of the Department of the Interior's scope, extending well beyond the terrestrial domestic interior, aligns with historian Megan Black's characterization of the department as operating beyond national boundaries to project and protect American global hegemonic power by opening up new mineral frontiers. Regarding seabed mineral resources, Black highlights the department's close cooperation with private interests to make deep-sea mining a reality. 19 Indeed, the Department of the Interior acted as a stalwart defender of companies interested in manganese nodules – albeit with limited success.
Jurisdictional matters complicated the extraction of resources beyond coastal areas. The view that states had some control over their continental shelves – the seabed around large land masses where the sea is relatively shallow compared with the open ocean – had been generally accepted since 1945. This was when Truman proclaimed US control over its continental shelf and the resources therein. 20 However, Truman's proclamation led to competing and contested claims over the width of the zone of the continental shelves over which states would exercise control. Some states’ claims went beyond the actual geological occurrence of the shelf, laying claim even to seabed areas beyond. 21 Thus, there was no actual agreement over its delimitation. While the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf codified the principle of coastal states’ control over shelves up to 200 metres deep, it also left the door wide open to more expansive claims, stating that states also had control over the area of the shelf beyond that depth which ‘admits of the exploitation of the natural resources’. 22
The status of manganese nodules on the deep seabed was arguably even more unclear. The issue of the ownership of and jurisdiction over these resources was put in the spotlight internationally after Arvid Pardo, Malta’s Ambassador to the United Nations, gave a speech in 1967 in which he designated the deep seabed as the ‘common heritage of mankind’. Pardo had just learned of the American industrial interest in manganese nodules and used his speech to call for the creation of a new international authority to manage the exploitation of the deep seabed and ensure its peaceful use. 23 Following the speech, the United Nations General Assembly created an Ad Hoc Committee in 1968 to discuss Pardo's proposal. It soon became clear that the Group of 77, the body representing the interests of developing states at the United Nations, embraced Pardo's ideas. These states viewed a powerful international authority as a way of ensuring they would not lose out on the deep sea's riches, given that they did not yet possess the capital or technology to compete. Furthermore, for some countries, the international authority could prevent the flooding of world markets with deep-sea minerals, which could hurt their land-based mining industries. In contrast, the United States and other industrialized states interested in manganese nodules sought an international legal regime that would provide them and their companies with straightforward access to the deep seabed. 24
These developments also caught the attention of the Democratic senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington, who, as the chairman of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, was concerned with mineral supplies and the development of new resources. Jackson, a Cold War hawk, had drawn praise from environmental groups for his work on the Interior Committee in expanding US national parks and introducing the National Environmental Policy Act in early 1969. At the same time, Jackson was not unsympathetic towards industry, as he sought to ensure that environmental protection would be balanced with the development of natural resources and continued economic growth. In 1973, for example, he drew the ire of environmentalists by supporting a law that authorized the construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. 25 In 1969, referring to the international efforts to negotiate an international regime for the exploration and exploitation of resources on the deep seabed, Jackson argued for the necessity of the action of US legislators, as establishing such a regime would, by definition, also mean the delimitation of national sovereignty over the seabed. This is why he instated a new subcommittee of the Interior Committee, which would deal with these questions. He highlighted that an international regime would impact both the development of natural resources and efforts to protect the environment. 26
‘Earth's last frontier’
Jackson appointed fellow Democrat Lee Metcalf as the chairman of the new Special Subcommittee on Outer Continental Shelf. Jackson argued that Metcalf's long history of ‘interest in minerals and the Nation's energy supply’ made him the ideal candidate for this role. 27 Indeed, as historian Frederick H. Swanson has argued, while Metcalf is mainly remembered as a stalwart proponent of conservation efforts, the Montanan had also always been greatly concerned with developing America's resource wealth. 28 Therefore, Swanson characterized Metcalf as a ‘man torn between the conflicting goals of resource development and environmental preservation’. 29 As chair of the committee, Metcalf would work closely with US companies seeking to mine manganese nodules. As Metcalf would discover, just as with land-based mining, plans to mine the deep sea also had to contend with tensions between resource development and conservation.
In his letter asking Metcalf to serve as subcommittee chairman, Jackson posited that because of the Interior Committee's responsibilities, they should help the executive branch formulate a US policy to oversee the development of seabed resources. He also highlighted that there was no specific outer boundary to the US claim over its continental shelf but that the limits were essentially those of the exploitability of its mineral resources. 30 Interestingly, despite the subcommittee's name, most of Metcalf's efforts as chairman would revolve around supporting the development of manganese nodules on the seabed in areas beyond the (outer) continental shelf. This is not to say that these issues were unrelated because establishing an international regime would, by definition, also mean delineating the zone of national control. However, Metcalf focused on the deep sea primarily because the most economically viable nodule deposits turned out not to be on the continental shelf but on deeper seabed areas much further from the US coast. Thus, he turned the subcommittee's hearings into a forum for a wide range of issues surrounding deep-sea mining, ranging from political, economic and legal to environmental concerns.
The fact that a senator from landlocked Montana would emerge as the major congressional proponent of deep-sea mining might, at first glance, seem strange. Metcalf addressed his distance from the ocean in his opening statement of the first committee hearing at the end of 1969: Many of us on this subcommittee come from land-locked homes, which preclude our discovery of the oceans until later in life. Despite our more senior years, we still revel with child-like amazement at the sight of the sea, and we fantasize about its romance. The romance of the ocean cannot be disputed; it is in fact its major attraction. But despite its romance, there are serious problems developing in the oceans.
31
It would be easy to dismiss Metcalf's reflections as merely a circumlocutious introduction. However, the role of the ocean in his imagination was one shared by many Americans. The work of ocean historians Gary Kroll and Rozwadowski has shown that a new cultural imagination underpinned the increasing importance placed on the ocean and its resources in the decades following the Second World War. The fame of ocean explorers like Jacques Cousteau and Americans’ intensified engagement with the sea more generally turned it into an exciting ‘frontier’ – a lawless space full of resources to be exploited or preserved. 32
This view of the ocean as a frontier also implied great uncertainty, given that much about the ocean – especially the deep seabed – remained unknown. As Philip E. Steinberg argues, the becoming of the ocean as a frontier meant that – from an economic perspective – the deep seabed started to look a lot more like land. It was now seen as claimable, controllable and governable. However, this necessitated a degree of ‘enclosure’; it would only be through the establishment of sovereignty and legal codes that exploration would be encouraged and investment protected. 33 Metcalf acknowledged as much when he argued that while some of the problems they were discussing stemmed from conflicts that arose out of the actual way in which the ocean was used, others stemmed ‘purely from some of man's fantasies about who has what rights and who lacks what rights to do business in the ocean and on its floor’. 34 To Metcalf, addressing this uncertainty and preparing the deep seabed for exploitation was a vital task of the US Congress and government.
At the end of the 1960s, when Metcalf's engagement with deep-sea mining started, the American industrial interest in manganese nodules intensified. In 1968, Tenneco, a large natural resource firm, acquired Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. This also included the acquisition of its research division, which had been exploring the possibility of mining nodules. Tenneco then created a subsidiary, Deepsea Ventures, which built on the previous research to explore and develop deep-sea mining. Kennecott Copper, an American company that owned copper mines in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Chile, also had a deep-sea mining programme that dated back to 1961. 35 Using the organization of the American Mining Congress, the interest group of the American mining industry, these two companies initiated a lobbying effort. At its annual membership meeting in 1969, at the behest of Kennecott and Tenneco, the American Mining Congress included deep-sea mining for the first time in its yearly ‘Declaration of Policy’, arguing that ‘the oceans offer a potentially large source of some minerals and that their development must be achieved’. 36 The American Mining Congress clarified that the development of this novel resource could only be realized if US companies were afforded legal protection, a favourable tax regime and tenure security. Acknowledging that the deep ocean environment was still largely unknown, it also urged ‘national and international efforts toward enlarging man's knowledge of earth's last frontier’. 37
Metcalf contacted the American Mining Congress to ask if it wanted to appear in hearings before the Subcommittee on Outer Continental Shelf in 1970. His goal was to hear how the mineral industry viewed potential extractive activities in the ocean. In March 1970, C. H. Burgess, Vice President of Exploration at Kennecott, testified on behalf of the American Mining Congress before the subcommittee. Burgess, accompanied by several other industry representatives, argued that the US government should work towards establishing a regime that would facilitate their activities in the deep ocean – where the best nodule deposits were located. He expressed scepticism about the potential of the United Nations General Assembly to institute such a regime, as developing states were using that venue to argue for a strong international authority to protect their interests and control the mining of the deep seabed. Burgess instead suggested that the United States should work towards supporting a regime that would ensure freedom of exploration for companies while also guaranteeing them tenure security for exploitation. 38 From 1970 onwards, Metcalf would regularly invite American Mining Congress representatives to give testimony on the activities of American companies (none of which were Montana-based) interested in manganese nodules.
As nodules became a topic in Congress, US companies were making strides in exploring seabed deposits and developing mining systems. The fact that they had already dredged up some of these nodules helped to make deep-sea mining appear a more immediate possibility. Metcalf said as much when he stated the following: We know that out there on the seabed are these nodules, and they have copper and cobalt and so forth. Those are metals that we need. Those are resources that are available. Now Deepsea Ventures, when they were before this committee and showed us some of the nodules, have a sort of glorified vacuum cleaner that they use to sweep them up from just off the Carolina coast or somewhere down there. Now, how can we justify not spending some money for research and development to try to make those resources economically recoverable?
39
Metcalf was referring to the ongoing exploration and sampling efforts of Deepsea Ventures. Later that summer, that company would successfully conduct an on-sea hydraulic mining test, the first of its kind. Through this, it managed to collect a significant amount of nodules from the Blake Plateau off the coast of the south-eastern United States. While the most attractive deposits were found in even deeper waters in the Clarion–Clipperton Zone in the Pacific, between Hawaii and Mexico, the test provided proof of the technical feasibility of the mining system. 40 This was important, as it helped cement the perception that the commercial extraction of nodules from deep-sea floors was indeed realistic.
Deep-sea mining projects also profited from the general post-war advancements in oceanography and marine engineering in the United States. In the context of the Cold War, science played a crucial role in military strategy, and the US Navy heavily funded scientific ocean research, which it viewed as essential to strengthening its position. Oceanographic research was thus also directed by military priorities. 41 Manganese-nodule research indirectly benefitted from this expansion of knowledge brought about by a windfall of Cold War military funding. 42 However, the US Navy never directly funded research into deep-sea mining. In discussing the Navy's investment in deep submergence projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Naomi Oreskes noted that this was never motivated by a desire to mine the resources of the deep sea. 43 Similarly, in inter-agency discussions in the 1970s, the Department of Defense often clashed with the Department of the Interior on deep-sea mining. While the Department of the Interior was keen to protect the interests of companies seeking to mine the deep sea, the Department of Defense was willing to relinquish some control of mining to an international authority if it would mean it could safeguard US military interests by codifying an expansive interpretation of the freedom of military navigation of surface ships and submarines in an international treaty. 44 Nevertheless, Cold War thinking heightened the salience of the question of resource supply security, as metals came to be viewed by many as essential to national economic security and a functioning military. Furthermore, there was great interest in maintaining the US lead in technological ocean capabilities.
For Metcalf, manganese nodules held the potential to help address looming metal shortages. As described above, fears of resource scarcity due to terrestrial exhaustion were common in the post-war United States. Metcalf was not immune to this. His view was influenced by his experience as a senator from Montana, a state where mining operations had been undergoing significant changes. He referred to these developments during subcommittee hearings in May 1970 when he stated the following: [W]e are opening up a great big pit in Montana, the Anaconda Co., is closing up all the shaft mines; they are taking the overburden off that they didn’t use to be able to handle, and taking low grade ore that was being thrown in the dumps before, to get copper. Every time you open up the financial pages, you see the price of copper has been raised by one or another of the big copper companies. We know that offshore there is copper, and we are going to need it, and we are going to need it as part of our national security. Our demands for these resources are insatiable.
45
The ‘great big pit’ that Metcalf was referring to was the plans of the Anaconda Company to open a new open-pit mine in the Heddleston Mining District near Helena. This area had been exploited since the end of the nineteenth century, and a wide range of metals, including gold, copper, lead and zinc, had been discovered and mined there. However, most high-grade ore deposits were depleted, and therefore Anaconda developed a plan to mine low-grade copper deposits. 46
A similar development had already occurred near Butte, another Montanan town with a rich mining history. There, Anaconda replaced underground copper mining with open-pit mining in the 1950s. The company argued that this was necessary due to the declining number of high-grade copper veins. Through a less selective and less expensive process, open-pit mining enabled the viability of mining lower-grade ores. However, compared to underground selective mining, open-pit operations near Butte left a much larger environmental footprint, with towering dumps and huge pits transforming the landscape and posing a hazard to the city and its residents. 47 Worries about the potentially destructive side effects of establishing an open-pit mine in Heddleston led to public pressure from the burgeoning Montanan and national environmental groups. However, unbeknownst to Metcalf and the wider public, by 1970, Anaconda had already decided to shelve the project because of downward revisions in ore reserve estimates. Anaconda did not publicly acknowledge this and thus allowed politicians and the public to wonder whether environmental concerns had killed the project, when, in fact, it had been the result of simple business calculations. 48 Nevertheless, to Metcalf, the ongoing developments in Montana made it clear that there was an urgent need for alternative sources of copper and other metals, and that the deep ocean could be a potential solution.
The known existence of large-scale offshore metal deposits and the proven feasibility – at least in principle – of the deep-sea mining system did not mean that US companies were on the cusp of setting up commercial nodule mining operations. Most of the deep sea remained unexplored, and there was great uncertainty about the metal grades and quantity of nodules in different areas. Furthermore, considerable technological obstacles remained to be overcome before a commercial mining operation could happen. A limited small-scale test of a few hours in the relatively shallow and calm waters at the Blake Plateau did not necessarily translate well to a full-scale year-round operation far out in the Pacific Ocean. Nevertheless, US companies argued that the mining of manganese nodules was imminent and that they only needed a little support to get started – financially and legally. While these companies engaged in extensive lobbying activities, perhaps even more important was that the industry was, for many years, the primary source of data and statistics on manganese-nodule deposits and mining systems. This is a crucial point, as it allowed companies to shape much of the conversation on the state of development of manganese-nodule mining. 49 Thus, it makes most sense to understand deep-sea mining as part of what Fabien Locher has argued was an ‘economy of promises’, which underpinned ocean projects in the post-war period. While the financial viability of these projects was not proven, the ocean was nonetheless envisioned as a massive source of profits due to its potential energy and mineral resources. 50
Financial and environmental dilemmas
The promotion of manganese nodules did not go unchallenged. Metcalf invited various speakers with differing perspectives to his subcommittee hearings. In 1970, he invited several economists to testify before the subcommittee on the economic potential of nodules. Without fault, they all emphasized the great degree of uncertainty regarding the financial viability of nodule mining. 51 Nevertheless, one economist saw upsides, stating that there was a real potential for nodules to lead to lower metal prices and thus savings, arguing that if technologies developed rapidly, US nodule mining operations might produce $500 million to $2 billion worth of metals annually by 1980. 52 However, two other economists offered a sobering perspective. Leonard L. Fischman, who co-authored a 1963 study titled Resources in America's Future, argued that these minerals were unlikely to have a significant impact on the US economy. Fischman had worked at the Ford Foundation-funded Resources for the Future, an influential think tank founded in 1952 that sought to address questions of resource scarcity. 53 Resources for the Future had been established by members of the president's Materials Policy Commission, the same panel that had first raised the possibility of the US government helping ensure future metal supplies by promoting deep-sea mining. According to Fischman, the hype surrounding nodules was based on a fundamental misreading of basic economics, as people often estimated the worth of ocean mineral deposits by using current market prices for metals. However, such projections failed to account for the difficulties of extraction, the necessary investment in research and development, and the costs of processing and transportation. He argued that if you included all these factors, ‘the actual value … of much of this marine mineral wealth, perhaps one could even say most of it, is less than zero’. 54 Therefore, Fischman specifically warned against subsidizing the endeavours of US companies, stating that this could harm taxpayers by creating an unviable industry. To him, continued and intensified exploitation of land-based mineral deposits was a more economical way of ensuring US supply security.
Walter J. Mead, Professor of Economics at the University of California Santa Barbara, whose research focused on natural resources and public policy, also shared Fischman's views. Mead warned Metcalf and the other senators against the inordinate promotion of deep-sea minerals: ‘We have a lot of science fiction going on in this area, partly by promoters of marine stocks and partly by people who ultimately hope to get subsidies to do various things in the ocean’.
55
While Mead admitted that technological innovation could lower the costs of mining and processing manganese nodules, he emphasized that this was unlikely to make deep-sea mining more competitive compared to land-based mining, as similar innovations were bound to happen there, too. Despite these warnings, Metcalf seemed ensnared by the lure of nodules. He responded to Professor Mead's cautionary remarks as follows: I think your point is well made, but we still have to do something about having the resources that we know are there, recoverable sometime in the future, if we don’t do it, there are great nations in the world that are going to do it.
56
During their testimony, Mead and Fischman also raised concerns about the potential environmental impact of deep-sea mining. Mead, himself from Santa Barbara, expressly referred to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill as a clear example of environmental problems that new extractive ocean industries could cause.
57
This environmental catastrophe was a seminal event in mobilizing and expanding the American environmental movement.
58
Metcalf, a staunch conservationist, wholeheartedly agreed with the importance of considering the potential effects of deep-sea mining on the environment. However, he preferred a comparison closer to home to emphasize the destructive side effects of extractive industries: If you drive through West Virginia and Pennsylvania and Kentucky and Ohio in the coal mine areas, or through Montana and see what the gold dredges did to the valleys of that State, there have been quite a few spillover costs that we haven’t paid adequate attention to.
59
According to Metcalf, a lesson was to be learned from this, and it was the task of Congress to institute environmentally sound legislation to guide resource extraction. 60
One year later, in November 1971, Metcalf introduced S. 2801, a bill authorizing US companies to mine the deep seabed, in the senate subcommittee. The American Mining Congress had drafted this piece of legislation at Metcalf's request. While this might give the impression that he was directly representing the interests of the deep-sea mining companies, the reality was more complicated. Metcalf explicitly stated that he did not necessarily support the exact details of the bill but argued that he wanted to initiate a discussion and signal his dissatisfaction with the direction of international negotiations.
61
In an interview with the president of the American Mining Congress, J. Allen Overton Jr., in its monthly publication the Mining Congress Journal, Metcalf explained his rationale: I have been disappointed in the delays and lack of real progress being made by the UN [United Nations] Seabed Committee to develop an ocean mining treaty. US deep ocean technology has progressed to the point where it is now ready to undertake mining operations. I don’t think it is fair to hold it back until an ocean mining treaty enters into force. That might take ten years.
62
Clearly, to Metcalf, nodules were an obvious source of much-needed metals, and he had been convinced that US companies were on the cusp of commercial mining operations – despite several economists questioning the actual viability of nodule mining. Furthermore, in the interview, he outlined his fears that the desire amongst developing states for a strong international authority to regulate deep-sea mining might hinder US companies. To him, there was ‘increasing evidence that some of the more militant nations represented on the UN Seabed Committee would deny US industry effective access to the minerals of the deep seabed’. 63 Metcalf was keen to create a regime that would enclose this unruly oceanic space and provide companies with favourable conditions that would allow them to mine the deep seabed. According to Metcalf, this would also help the United States to maintain its Cold War lead in oceanic technologies. 64
Metcalf's introduction of deep-sea mining legislation in his committee was also a signal to the executive branch. The issue of regulating deep-sea mining had led to disagreements between different governmental departments. The Department of the Interior and the Department of Commerce strongly favoured the US government protecting and nurturing its domestic industrial deep-sea mining interests. In contrast, the Department of Defense and the State Department held a more internationally oriented stance, as they were convinced that American military and strategic interests could be best protected through international negotiations and treaties. For most of the 1970s, the internationally oriented position had the support of the White House, and government policy was generally oriented towards negotiating internationally acceptable compromises.
65
This became even more important after 1973 when negotiations started at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1973–1982). This international conference followed the expansion of the work of the United Nations Ad Hoc Seabed Committee. Whereas the Seabed Committee had previously been solely focused on questions of the deep seabed, its mandate evolved to prepare for UNCLOS, which was a broader reworking of the law of the sea through negotiating a new treaty. In addition to deep-sea mining, issues such as the breadth of coastal territorial zones, pollution control, the freedom of marine scientific research, and access of land-locked states to the sea were discussed. This meant that access to deep-sea minerals became just one of many goals – albeit an important one – that US negotiators sought to realize. Ultimately, this meant that, for most of the 1970s, the White House would oppose unilateral deep-sea mining legislation out of fear that it would prevent US negotiators from realizing other important objectives at UNCLOS.
66
Metcalf was highly critical of this. He remained an ardent supporter of US legislation. In a new hearing in 1973, when he reintroduced his deep-sea mining law with some changes, he put his criticism bluntly: And this nonsense as far as I am concerned … about unilateral approaches is just that. We are way ahead of a lot of people, and we may lose that lead and our resources if we just sit around here and wait for the State Department to drag its feet while trying to negotiate some international treaty.
67
The continued discussion in the Senate about deep-sea mining legislation also increasingly touched on conservation and environmental protection issues. Since 1968, Mero had regularly highlighted research suggesting that nodules might benefit the environment by scavenging toxic sulphur dioxide or converting unburned hydrocarbons from exhausts into carbon dioxide. 68 In a 1972 symposium in Hawaii, attended by American industry and policymakers, he went even further by hailing nodules as ‘gifts of the sea’, which were particularly fitting for ‘these times of hypersensitive environmental awareness’. 69 According to Mero, not only would there be no measurable environmental damage with deep-sea mining, but the full-scale development of nodules would also allow society to close many environmentally damaging terrestrial mines. Along the same lines, industry representatives testified before Metcalf's committee that deep-sea mining would take place in a barren environment devoid of life, and that the impact of mining nodules would be negligible. 70
Optimism about the environmental impact of mining nodules was not just limited to deep-sea mining promoters. In 1970, independent scientists had observed the aforementioned Deepsea Ventures mining test. However, these researchers hoped that deep-sea mining could have a positive impact on the ocean. They imagined that the side effect of bringing up cold, dense, nutrient-rich water from the deep sea along with nodules could potentially result in a fish boom, which would, in turn, provide cheap protein to feed a growing world population. Unfortunately, their hopes were dashed, as they calculated that a deep-sea mining operation brought up too little water to have a significant effect. 71 Nevertheless, despite this being disproven, some proponents of deep-sea mining would occasionally bring it up again in congressional hearings in the years to come. In contrast, there were also more critical voices about the potential environmental impact of deep-sea mining. Metcalf, who had a long history of working with environmental groups, played a crucial role in amplifying their voices by inviting them to congressional hearings. To him, including their perspective was necessary because, as he stated in 1973, ‘our concern is with harvesting needed natural resources, while at the same time protecting our environment’. 72 While Metcalf had already invited environmental groups in 1970, their responses had reflected low interest, as none of them made the trip to Washington, DC. In 1973, with the start of UNCLOS and heightened international attention to deep-sea mining, representatives from environmental groups began to show increasing interest in the topic. From then on, they testified regularly about the potential impact of deep-sea mining on the environment. Throughout their testimonies, these representatives urged caution in rushing towards legitimizing this new industry. While they did not oppose deep-sea mining per se, and even expressed openness to the possibility that it might be preferable to land-based mining, they first wanted extensive research into its possible impacts. 73
However, Metcalf had become increasingly impatient with the lack of international progress and was eager to help the budding deep-sea mining industry get started. In a new round of committee hearings on his deep-sea mining bill in 1973, he expressed enthusiasm for the potential of this novel industry, suggesting that manganese nodules from the deep sea might be a ‘renewable resource because it is so huge that we never get around to it all before it starts to renew itself’.
74
Mero had been articulating this idea of nodules as a renewable source of metals at least since 1965.
75
Others subsequently repeated this idea of renewability. In 1969, Iron Age, a business magazine for the metal industry, described it as follows: ‘There's … evidence that the rate of deposition of the nodules and trace elements exceeds the rate of metal consumption. This could indicate a constantly replenishing, almost inexhaustible mineral source’.
76
Furthermore, the article even raised the possibility that one could grow these nodules by engineering and controlling the environmental conditions in the deep ocean. Despite the critical testimony of environmental groups, Metcalf seemed to have become enthralled by the perceived potential of deep-sea mining. He said as much at the end of the hearing, when he stated that he hoped that we will stir the water a little bit and hope we won’t do any ecological damage in our proposals and at the same time we will, maybe, help our minerals and our mining community to go forward in its mining.
77
To Metcalf, it was the responsibility of Congress to help provide US companies with a favourable legal framework that would allow them to mine much-needed minerals from the deep-sea floor. To the environmental groups’ representatives, who argued that legislation was premature, he responded: I just can’t quite agree with you that the introduction of this legislation would be premature. As you are aware, companies in the United States are perfecting their technology and have the ability to mine the sea and are impatient about getting forward with the job. … [W]e just can’t have a chaotic gold rush into the sea as we had into California or into Montana or into Wyoming in the last century. We have a responsibility here.
78
Metcalf's support of a US deep-sea mining law was perceived critically by some. Miriam L. Levering, part of a group of liberal, internationalist non-governmental organization representatives who favoured the creation of a deep-sea mining regime through UNCLOS, hoping it would be a harbinger of international peace and cooperation, recalled Metcalf as part of a group of ‘congressional friends’ who were doing the bidding of the American Mining Congress. 79 An article in the Saturday Review, which published an issue centred around the international legislation of deep-sea mining, also critically highlighted the ‘sense of camaraderie’ between Metcalf and American Mining Congress representatives. 80 Richard A. Frank, a lawyer specializing in international environmental law who had testified on behalf of environmental groups in Congress, was also dissatisfied with Metcalf's leadership. In a letter to the Sierra Club, he described Metcalf's actions as ‘generally anti-environmental’. He expressed his suspicion that he harboured ‘some hostility towards one of you or perhaps environmentalists in general’. 81 Michael McCloskey, the Sierra Club’s executive director, urged Frank to be careful about making ‘disparaging characterizations’ of Metcalf based on this specific issue, and stated that he had been ‘anything but antienvironmental in his general attitude in the past’. 82 As McCloskey argued: ‘Conservationists have supported him quite regularly in his reelection campaigns and he has been one of the champions for conservation legislation over the years, particularly on matters of forestry and parks’. 83 Even when it came to deep-sea mining, Metcalf was not immune to environmental concerns, as in 1974 he helped put pressure on the US executive branch to initiate an extensive environmental impact study on deep-sea mining. 84 However, Metcalf had become convinced that deep-sea mining should become a reality quickly and that this could be achieved with minimal damage to the environment.
An abrupt temporary ending
Metcalf would reintroduce deep-sea mining legislation every year until he died in 1978, often in tandem with supporters in the House of Representatives. However, these efforts remained unsuccessful for a long time. This was mostly due to the issue's low salience in Congress and opposition from the White House, which did not want to endanger progress at UNCLOS. 85 Throughout these years, Metcalf remained convinced that deep-sea minerals would be a great source of much-needed metals, and that Congress and the executive should provide US companies with a legal framework to support their endeavours. This was despite the fact that, by 1974, even industry insiders acknowledged that considerable technological challenges still needed to be overcome and that the ‘super profits’ that some had predicted for nodule mining were unlikely to be achieved with the first operations. 86 Nevertheless, US companies’ nodule mining projects were advancing steadily and, by 1976, there were four multinational consortia led by US companies, including Lockheed, US Steel Corporation and Kennecott Copper. These companies formed international consortia to spread the financial risk, combine technical expertise and raise enough capital to develop deep-sea mining operations. 87 In this context, Metcalf continued to favour legislative action to protect their interests. In Senate hearings on deep-sea mining legislation in November 1975, Metcalf assured the representatives of US companies who had come to testify on their ongoing deep-sea mining activities that he was well aware of ‘the dangers of the international community moving in and taking over the areas, refusing to let you mine, or charging you too much or imposing conditions that would make your activities impossible’. 88
In August 1977, when Metcalf again reintroduced the deep-sea mining law in the Senate, the prospects for passing legislation were starting to look a bit brighter. Increasing frustration with the slow progress of the international negotiations among government officials in the executive branch and legislators in Congress slowly decreased the aversion towards national legislation on deep-sea mining. By the end of the year, the Carter administration had decided to support legislation, even if it retained some misgivings over some of the specific provisions in the existing draft. On 23 January 1978, President Jimmy Carter officially endorsed congressional legislative efforts. 89 Metcalf did not witness this, as he had died only 12 days before of a heart attack. Even after the White House's endorsement, significant disagreement about several provisions in the proposed law led to a protracted legislative process. Only on 28 June 1980, almost a decade after Metcalf had first introduced legislation, President Carter signed the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act into law. 90 Ironically, by this time, the prospect of the swift exploitation of deep-sea minerals had started to look increasingly unlikely. Depressed metal prices, remaining technological challenges and revised estimations of nodules’ mineral composition made deep-sea mining a less attractive business case. Furthermore, the conclusion of UNCLOS in 1982 and the refusal of the United States under the administration of Ronald Reagan to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty over objections to its deep-sea mining provisions resulted in competing regimes and a situation of legal uncertainty – never good when attracting investments. 91
Thus, while a law became a reality, Metcalf's hopes for the creation of a new extractive industry that would supply the United States with cheap and steady supplies of metals from the deep seabed failed to materialize. Nevertheless, Metcalf's efforts in Congress helped facilitate elaborate discussions on the financial viability of deep-sea mining, its legal implications and the potential environmental impact of this prospective industry. Now, more than four decades later, the topic of deep-sea mining has returned to Congress. As the Wall Street Journal reported, in March 2024, Republican lawmakers introduced legislation to help fund American industry to invest in the mining of manganese nodules 92 – this time, to provide an alternative source of metals needed for US industry, thereby reducing reliance on China. Their draft law also requested that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy assess its environmental effects vis-à-vis land-based mining. This seems even more urgent now, as research on old mining tracks from the 1970s has highlighted the long-term ecological impacts of deep-sea mining and the lack of swift seabed recovery. 93 However, only time will tell whether the dreams of mining the deep-sea floor will become a reality this time around.
Footnotes
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was generously supported by a Landhaus Fellow grant from the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
