Earlier this summer, the Trump administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that it is considering opening Virginia’s federal waters to large-scale seabed mineral development. The process began after Odyssey Marine Exploration, a U.S.-based ocean exploration company, submitted an unsolicited request to lease an area of seafloor off Virginia’s coast for exploration and potential development of mineral deposits. BOEM subsequently initiated a formal review process, and the agency is now seeking public input.
The proposed area covers roughly 2,764 square miles—larger than the entire state of Delaware. That is an enormous stretch of ocean floor to place at the center of an emerging and largely untested industry. While no mining has been approved, this proposal deserves serious scrutiny now, before decisions are made that could put Virginia’s marine ecosystems, fisheries, coastal economies, and communities at risk.
Deepsea mineral exploration and extraction, while totally untested in US Waters, is being fast-tracked by the Trump Administration in the name of national security and access to critical minerals for our AI and data obsessed society. On April 24, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources, to streamline permitting processes. The irony here is that this same administration has terminated offshore wind leases and halted projects under construction to protect the environment. Without going into the complexities of offshore wind, isn’t curious that now the administration is all-in on strip-mining the seafloor, an activity that at it’s face seems far more intrusive and harmful than sticking windmill in the sand.
Whatever your views on offshore wind, it is worth asking: Why are we rushing to industrialize the seafloor before we fully understand what that means for the ocean?
The process of seabed mining is globally untested at scale, and the ecological impacts have potentially catastrophic impacts. If approved, Odyssey would essentially dredge large swaths of seafloor and process the dredged material to extract rare earth elements, titanium, and zirconium. The impacts in the immediate habitats would be major–those complex habitats would be destroyed and the fisheries and ecosystems that rely on those complex bottom habitats would significantly impacted. Further, this activity would create massive sediment plumes that can choke out ecosystems and disrupt natural behaviors from fish species, marine mammals, invertebrates…essentially the entire food chain.
“Opening up the coast of Virginia to seabed mining is an irresponsible decision that will harm our ocean, coastal economy, and way of life,” said Sam Burton, Southeast Regional Manager with Surfrider Foundation. “Virginia and the entire Eastern Seaboard relies on a healthy marine environment for their economic security. Mining the seabeds off Virginia will disturb tuna and sea turtle populations, change the topography of the seafloor, and potentially cause serious problems to Virginia’s coastlines. The widespread consequences associated with seabed mining ought to cause our country’s leaders to pause and gather more information about how this decision might impact Americans in the years to come,”
The comment period for this project closes on August 22nd–so, consider submitting a comment to protect these sensitive habitats and halt this misguided project until this technology and potential impacts are better understood. The US Federal Register is hosting a comment portal with more information on this stage of the leasing process. Virginia’s seashore is one of the more unique and wild seascapes on the Atlantic coast, abutting the Chesapeake Bay, the Nation’s largest estuary. Do we really want to gamble with an untested industry like deepsea mining that could have such grave consequences before understanding the real impacts? I hope not, but if the administration was truly worried about marine ecosystems they would not be pursuing commercial leases…
