In 2021, when The Metals Company was formed through a merger between DeepGreen Metals and Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Corp, Industry observers questioned the company's "green" positioning.
Baird Maritime noted that The Metals Company had no revenue or production as of April 2021, and highlighted the company's risky commercialization efforts: "Nobody has successfully managed to commercially harvest the nickel, copper, manganese, and cobalt from the nodules in 4,500 metres of water since interest was first stimulated in seabed mining in the 1970s."
The Wall Street Journal pointed out the challenges experienced by CEO Gerard Barron's previous deep sea mining company,
Nautilus Minerals; Many scientists expressed concerns over the risks of deep-sea mining. In response to DeepGreen's efforts in
Nauru, over 400 scientists signed a statement in opposition, alleging that it would result in the "
loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning that would be irreversible on multi-generational timescales." In 2021, DeepGreen published an open letter defending its practices after four multinational corporations –
BMW,
Volvo,
Google, and
Samsung SDI – supported a
World Wildlife Fund call for a moratorium. In November 2023, The Metals Company published an open letter to advocates of ocean conservation, calling for open dialogue on deep-sea mining, emphasizing environmental responsibility, transparency, and collaboration to balance sustainability with resource needs for the
energy transition. In February 2024, Seaver Wang, ocean scientist and Co-Director of
Climate and Energy at the
Breakthrough Institute, published an article arguing for "open mindedness toward seafloor mining" given the various potential advantages over land-based mining, and warning that "calling for immediate moratoriums on deep-sea mining is not only premature, but a circumvention of constructive dialogue and negotiation." This view was later supported by the
Federation of German Industries – which represents 38 industrial sectors, including automotive – who argued that "a precautionary pause or a unilateral moratorium will neither lead to less extraction of raw materials in the deep sea nor to more environmental research or the development of high environmental protection standards", and that small-scale operations should begin promptly to allow for the collection of further impact data. The Metals Company says the harvesting in the ocean is less damaging than the land-based mining activities. Opponents to deep sea mining counter that the damage to the fragile ecosystem at the bottom of the ocean is irreversible and such mining is no guarantee that land-based mining will be slowed; however, a review of 11 separate seafloor disturbance experiments and test mining work shows positive – but not full – recovery for fauna after 26 years. Opponents say the ocean floor contains sea life that does not exist elsewhere and should not be disturbed. The speed of life and development on the ocean floor is very slow, disturbances, even minor, may have long-lasting effects. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has been negotiating regulations for deep sea mining for over a decade and have produced four drafts, including the consolidated draft, published in February 2024. The ISA stated in 2023 its intent is to adopt mining regulations in 2025. The Metals Company says it's leaving ample time for those rules to be finalized, but opponents say the company is bolting ahead of the collective efforts to come to a consensus about regulating the deep seas. However, the idea of metallic nodules as a photosynthesis-independent oxygen source has been questioned by scientists who point out "poor-quality lander experiments leading to faulty oxygen flux measurements" and unusable data, and that claims of electrolysis are unsupported by voltage measurements which undermine the authors' own conclusions. They also highlight an inconsistency with decades of existing research, notably that deep sea ecosystems constitute an oxygen sink. In 2024, the company was subject to scrutiny on an episode of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. It questioned the costs versus payoffs of deep sea mining and pointed out how The Metals Company used its financial leverage to strike a deal with the country of
Nauru, stating, "While Barron has insisted that Nauru is no one’s puppet, there is a clear power disparity between an international mining firm hoping to make billions of dollars, and an environmentally ravaged island with a population of just 12,000 people." The episode was criticised in an article by
The Breakthrough Institute, an institute widely criticised for opposing advocates for meaningful climate action. The article claims that the segment repeated exaggerated misconceptions commonly circulated by opponents of deep-sea mining, especially regarding carbon storage and sediment disturbance, and that studies have shown otherwise. However, the institute is aligned with an
ecomodernist philosophy, and still states that, "Other claims John Oliver made are somewhat more fair." This included the point made on the exploitation of developing countries such as Nauru. In 2025, a study funded by The Metals Company showed that the Company's mining vehicles caused extensive harm to deep-sea animals. One month after a mining test was carried out on a deep ocean seabed, the number of animals in the mining area declined by 37% and the number of species in the area declined by 32%. In January 2026 The Metals Company was sued by another deep sea mining company, American Metal Inc. The lawsuit alleges that The Metals Company engaged in "unlawful intimidation" related to competing proposals by each company to mine in the Clarion Clipperton Zone. ==References==