‘On board’ deep-sea mining. An ocean-based perspective

Abstract

Today, the extraction of minerals from the seabed is increasingly seen as the new frontier in the push to transition to a “low-carbon economy” that requires larger quantities of metals. It therefore becomes anthropologically salient to ask: what are the political, epistemological, ecological, and economic consequences of a mining future that promises to be bound up with autonomous machines and increasingly sophisticated technologies? How does engagement with mining change when extraction takes place in the deep sea? How does our relationship with the ocean change? In this article I go virtually ‘on board’ DSM, as a first theoretical step towards designing innovative research on this emergent sector.