The government of French Polynesia plans to challenge an American startup’s proposal to explore the waters just beyond its maritime borders for seabed mining.
“We were approached, but we were not consulted,” Moetai Brotherson, the territory’s president, told Grist. “We are not remaining passive while industrial activities are proposed immediately next to ecosystems that French Polynesia has chosen to protect.”
As Grist reported last week, a Bay Area investor wants the Trump administration’s approval to explore seabed mining in international waters entirely surrounded by the maritime borders of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, and French Polynesia. The company, American Deep Sea Minerals, has a permit application pending before U.S. regulators and hopes to extract minerals essential to the production of batteries and military technologies. It is one of at least a dozen applications under consideration as President Trump races to make the United States a leader in critical mineral mining.
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