Enabling Ecosystem Based Management: New Ways to Conduct Deep Sea Minerals Exploration

The Cook Islands (CI) possesses within its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) a massive field of polymetallic nodules representing one of the world's largest undeveloped cobalt deposits, along with large quantities of other metals critical to achieving global energy transition targets. In February of 2022 the Seabed Minerals Authority (SBMA) of the CI granted licenses to three companies to conduct nodule exploration programs. This paper describes the process adopted by Moana Minerals, one of the license holders, to define new ways of conducting exploration which are focused on addressing the greatest challenge to Deep Sea Mining (DSM) development – that of securing the social license to advance to eventual mining of the resources. While it is generally true for any DSM project, obtaining license to operate within the EEZ of a sovereign nation requires even more focus on socio-economic and cultural concerns. Hence Moana Minerals invested even before exploration license award in the completion of an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) scoping study. This exercise helped to define the key questions and concerns, the range of stakeholders in the ESIA process, and began to construct the Ecosystem Based Model which is the heart of our ESIA program. We describe our employment of the increasingly adopted best practice of Ecosystem Based Management (EBM), which considers the entire ecosystem and its services, and the complex associated interactions for a "whole of system" approach. We discuss how this model is used to help communicate relationships between potential stressors associated with seabed mining and ecosystem responses, as well as how it is used to identify thresholds and guide development and adaptation of ecosystem management approaches. Given the challenges of the remoteness of the Cook Islands, limited exploration assets in the region, and ongoing supply chain delays and limitations, our early analysis of how best to execute an EBM-based program concluded that a dedicated research vessel properly outfitted with a full suite of scientific gear would be key to success. We describe our program to economically develop such an exploration system through repurposing an offshore support vessel, with an aim towards maximum suitability for Cook Islands-based exploration and other deep sea exploration work in the region as well as other potential high value regional applications. Finally, we discuss operations to date using this critical exploration-enabling asset.