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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Greenpeace activists boarded a deep-sea mining ship in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico and said Sunday they would stay to protest the exploration the ship is conducting to support an activity that could destroy marine life.
Australian company The Metals Company, whose subsidiary manages the ship, accused the protesters of endangering the crew and breaking international law.
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The escalating conflict comes as international demand for essential minerals found on the seabed rises, but a growing number of countries say more research is needed into the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining.
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Greenpeace kicked off the protest Thursday by placing kayaks under the ship Coco for up to 10 hours to prevent it from deploying its equipment in the water.
In response, the company’s CEO, Gerard Barron, threatened to impose an injunction Saturday afternoon — according to correspondence shared by Greenpeace and reviewed by The Associated Press — alleging that the protesters had violated international law and endangering the safety of crew members.
During the protest, a kayak capsized due to propeller blast when Coco accelerated without warning, Greenpeace claims. Legal representatives of NORI, a subsidiary of The Metal Company, said this was an example of how the protest was unsafe.
No injunction has yet been filed, according to Greenpeace. The company said it would use all available legal measures to protect the rights of stakeholders.
Later that day, two activists boarded Coco. They will remain camped on the main crane used to deploy and recover equipment from the water until The Metals Company agrees to leave, according to Louisa Casson, head of Greenpeace’s campaign against deep-sea mining.
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“We will continue to try to disrupt as much as possible because we are very concerned that this is a purely box-ticking exercise designed to collect data so they can put an app together mining next year, » Casson said on Sunday. from a Greenpeace ship near Coco.
A subsidiary of The Metals Company has been conducting exploratory research in the Clarion Clipperton area since 2011. It says data from its latest expedition, which studies how the seabed was recovered during last year’s exploration, will be used in an application to begin mining in 2025.
Greenpeace’s « actions to stop the science suggest fear that emerging scientific findings could challenge their misleading narrative about environmental impacts, » Barron told The Associated Press in response to the campground protesters.
He added that if research were to show that their mining would be unjustifiably destructive, The Metals Company is “100%” prepared to walk away.
Casson said the company’s actions suggest that’s not true. « It’s really very questionable that they’re doing this in the interest of science, » Casson said. “There is a clear economic motivation: this is entirely a deep-sea mining company. »
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By vacuuming up the knots from the seafloor, The Metals Company said it mainly expected to find manganese, which President Joe Biden declared last year as a critical mineral. Driven by clean energy technologies, demand for other key battery ingredients like lithium has nearly tripled, according to a July market study.
“It makes sense to be able to extract these raw materials from parts of the planet where there is the least life, not the most life,” Barron said. “We cannot ignore the fact that there are about 10 grams of biomass per square meter in the abyssal plains,” much less than in most landmines.
Casson says it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison, while studies also show that more than 5,000 species inhabit this part of the Pacific that scientists say is affected by light and noise pollution, as well as huge clouds of dust.
On Tuesday this week, Mexico joined a coalition of 23 other countries calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. While France alone sought an outright ban, the other signatories are calling for a pause to continue research into the effects of deep sea mining.
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This version fixed the year where the app says mining would start in 2025, not 2024.
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