End of Summer Review: Nodules Reach the Federal Register, the Companies Raise

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, put both of TMC’s seabed mining applications into the Federal Register in the space of three days in August. GoldCoast Resource began trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange on August 10, and The Metals Royalty Company closed a US$165 million financing on August 24. At the Department of Energy, a US$500 million critical minerals funding round came with a statement that the only cobalt refinery in the United States could in time process deep-sea nodules. Here is where each story stands.

The companies

The Metals Company (Nasdaq: TMC)

Both of TMC’s applications moved into formal public process in the second half of the summer.

• August 13: TMC reported a net loss of US$60.1 million, or US$0.14 per share, for the second quarter, with about US$143 million of liquidity at June 30. The company said funding processes are underway with U.S. agencies named in Executive Order 14285 and that it does not currently intend to pursue other capital markets transactions until one or more of those processes are completed.
• August 17: NOAA published a Notice of Intent in the Federal Register to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the USA-B exploration application, which covers about 122,000 square kilometers of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone and, on TMC’s estimate, 1.02 billion tonnes of nodules. The notice follows NOAA’s certification of the application on May 26, and set a comment deadline of September 16.
• August 19: NOAA published TMC USA’s consolidated application for the USA-A area in the Federal Register. TMC describes the consolidated commercial recovery area as about 65,000 square kilometers, up from about 25,000 square kilometers when the application was first filed in April 2025, holding an estimated 619 million tonnes of wet nodules with potential upside of a further 200 million tonnes. The notice set a comment deadline of October 19 and scheduled a virtual public hearing for October 13.
• Ahead: scoping for the USA-B Environmental Impact Statement, and NOAA’s decision on the commercial recovery permit, expected before the end of the first quarter of 2027.

GoldCoast Resource (CSE: GCR)

GoldCoast completed its move to the public market and released its first exploration dataset over the same period.

• July 27: the amalgamation with Psyence Group closed and the company was renamed GoldCoast Resource Corp.
• August 10: the shares began trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol GCR.
• August 18: a corporate update put money raised to date at about C$10.7 million, including a C$9.07 million private placement completed in April, and said about 50,000 line kilometers of airborne magnetic data now cover the full 10,000 square kilometer Ghana license, with interpretation underway.
• Ahead: marine geophysics and bathymetric mapping in the second half of 2026, followed by seafloor coring and grab sampling. The company’s target for starting near-shore contract dredging is 2028.

The Metals Royalty Company (Nasdaq: TMCR)

TMCR raised and deployed US$165 million inside four days.

• August 21: the company announced the financing fully allocated: a US$140 million offering of 8.00 percent convertible senior secured second lien notes due 2031, converting at roughly US$8.66 per share, a 37.5 percent premium to the US$6.30 reference price, plus a US$25 million senior secured term loan.
• August 24: TMCR closed its option to buy an additional 1.0 percent royalty on the Mesabi Metallics iron ore project, doubling its interest to 2.0 percent. The company expects roughly US$22 million a year in royalty revenue at a 7.28 million tonne annual rate over a 23 year mine life, rising toward US$26 million if the project expands to 8.5 million tonnes. It also holds a 2.0 percent royalty on TMC’s NORI nodule project.
• Ahead: Mesabi is about 99 percent complete, with first line commissioning targeted for the third quarter of 2026 and first production in the fourth quarter.

Deep Sea Minerals (CSE: SEAS)

Deep Sea Minerals spent the period building U.S. market access while its NOAA application stayed under review.

• July 27: at the request of the British Columbia Securities Commission, the company issued a clarification of its disclosure and promotional activity, covering promotions run from February 26 to July 10.
• July 30: it received a final receipt for a C$50 million short form base shelf prospectus.
• August 4: it filed a Form F-10 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under the multijurisdictional disclosure system, becoming a U.S. reporting company.
• August 25 to 27: the company attended the Defense Industrial Base Accelerator in Philadelphia.
• Ahead: a full compliance determination on its NOAA exploration application, followed by certification.

Impossible Metals (private)

Impossible Metals put its recovery system on video, and the modeling behind its plume claim came back into view.

• August 24: the company released footage of its Eureka II vehicle recovering itself from open ocean off Halifax with no operator input, using acoustic positioning to locate its surface vessel, visual guidance to align, and an integrated smart hook to attach.
• August 27: the plume numbers behind that design came into focus. Modeling prepared in October 2024 by DHI Water and Environment for Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, BGR, and cited by chief executive Oliver Gunasekara in testimony to the House Natural Resources oversight subcommittee on April 29, 2025, puts the seabed sediment discharge of the production-scale Eureka III at approximately 46 kilograms an hour. The only nodule collector independently measured in the field, Global Sea Mineral Resources’ Patania II, discharged about 43,000 kilograms an hour in 2021 trials monitored by the MiningImpact consortium and published in Nature Communications in 2025. Because the Eureka design has no riser and no separation at the surface, it produces no midwater discharge plume, and the company designs it to leave 30 percent of nodules by mass in place.

Glomar Minerals and Cobalt Blue (ASX: COB)

• July 29: Glomar subsidiary UK Seabed Resources departed Tahiti aboard the research vessel RV Tangaroa for a 65 day geological and environmental survey of its UK2 license area in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, run with Earth Sciences New Zealand. The subsidiary’s two license areas cover about 133,000 square kilometers.
• Ahead: the campaign runs into early October.

Eco Minerals (private)

• August 10: the company procured a Kongsberg HUGIN Superior autonomous underwater vehicle, rated to 6,000 meters, through its survey subsidiary Deep Sea Vision.
• August 13: Christopher Bauer was appointed president of Deep Sea Vision, effective August 1, joining from Ballard Marine Construction.
• August 25: Deep Sea Vision signed a contract with Deep Reach Technology of Stafford, Texas, supporting a deep-sea environmental impact assessment inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, covering a support vessel, AUV systems, geophysical surveying, and environmental and geotechnical sampling.

American Ocean Minerals (private)

• August 7: Chairman Tom Albanese presented President Trump with a solid gold replica of a polymetallic nodule at the American Mining Roundtable, held at the U.S. Department of State.
• August 10: Paul Warme was appointed Chief Financial Officer, after more than 25 years in mining and industrial finance at Rio Tinto, Iluka Resources and BlueScope Steel.

Wetstone and the Cook Islands

• August 22: the Cook Islands Investment Corporation signed a partnership with Wetstone that splits its seabed interests into two ventures: Cobalt Seabed Resources for the exclusive economic zone, in which CIIC keeps 51 percent and Wetstone takes the 49 percent stake formerly held by Global Sea Mineral Resources, and Te Moana Seabed Resources for the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

Where the US regulatory process stands

The summer’s second half was the period in which the American process moved from agency decisions to public paper. NOAA’s two Federal Register publications for TMC, on August 17 and 19, opened the formal comment and environmental review stages for the most advanced applications in the system. Deep Sea Minerals holds a substantial compliance determination and is waiting on the next step.

On August 7, the administration convened the American Mining Roundtable at the State Department, announcing, on the White House’s account, more than US$2 billion in financing commitments for critical minerals and battery projects and more than US$180 million for mining education and workforce development. According to Deep Sea Minerals’ account of the event, President Trump said his administration had authorized deep-sea mining to unlock resources off the U.S. coast.

The Marine Minerals Administration, MMA, the Interior Department bureau that still files in the Federal Register as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, published a Proposed Leasing Notice on August 17 for a potential minerals lease sale offshore the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, its second island territory process after American Samoa, with an Environmental Assessment complete. The notice appeared in the Federal Register the next day, gives the territory’s governor until October 19 to comment, and proposes to hold the sale on December 16. On August 20, the Department of Energy awarded US$500 million to seven critical minerals and battery projects, including US$100 million to Jervois for what Reuters reports would be the only U.S. cobalt refinery. Assistant Secretary Audrey Robertson told Reuters the plant could in time process deep-sea nodules.

Where the ISA stands

The International Seabed Authority’s summer sessions closed at the end of July with the mining code still unadopted. The next fixed date belongs to the courts: under the Seabed Disputes Chamber’s July 18 orders, compliance reports from TMC’s subsidiaries NORI and TOML and from the ISA itself were due by August 31. None had been made public by the time of writing. The compliance inquiry that produced those orders remains open, and NORI’s exploration contract now runs to July 2031.

The rest of the world

Japan set the date the sector will plan around. On July 25, the Cabinet Office and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, JAMSTEC, confirmed a full-scale mining test off Minamitorishima for February 2027, aiming to lift up to 350 tonnes of rare earth bearing mud a day from about 6,000 meters of water. Medium and heavy rare earths make up 54 percent of the rare earth content. Eco Minerals’ new survey contract inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone shows the preparatory work is already being contracted out.

Norway’s first deep-sea mining license round has 386 blocks proposed and is ready to be dispatched, according to Green Minerals’ first half presentation on August 20, with WWF’s legal challenge to the opening decision still pending. In Namibia, the Environmental Commissioner issued a three year environmental clearance certificate for the Sandpiper marine phosphate project on August 6; the company said the grant does not mean mining begins, with monitoring programs and terrestrial permitting still outstanding.

China’s contribution to the period was industrial rather than regulatory. On July 29, the dredging research center under CCCC unveiled what it describes as the world’s first land-based pilot platform to join up a complete deep-sea mining system, linking excavation, vertical lifting, sorting and tailings treatment rigs into a closed loop in Shanghai. In Indonesia, PT Timah (IDX: TINS) reported first half net profit above its full year target on tin prices up 57 percent, then declared an emergency on August 8 after violent protests in East Belitung, where demonstrators burned a supervision office and looted an ore warehouse.

Scheduled and expected catalysts

• September 15: comments from the Governor of American Samoa due on the proposed lease sale there.
• September 16: comments due on NOAA’s scoping for the USA-B Environmental Impact Statement.
• October 13: NOAA’s virtual public hearing on TMC’s consolidated USA-A application.
• October 19: comments due on the USA-A application, and comments from the Governor of the Northern Mariana Islands due on the proposed lease sale there.
• Early October: UK Seabed Resources’ 65 day Clarion-Clipperton Zone survey concludes.
• Third quarter of 2026: first line commissioning at Mesabi; first production expected in the fourth quarter.
• Second half of 2026: GoldCoast’s geophysics interpretation and first offshore sampling; the MMA’s final leasing notices for American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, each due at least 30 days before its sale.
• November 3: U.S. midterm elections.
• November 19: proposed date for the American Samoa lease sale, PACM-1.
• December 16: proposed date for the Northern Mariana Islands lease sale, PACM-2.
• February 2027: Japan’s full-scale mining test off Minamitorishima.
• By the end of the first quarter of 2027: NOAA’s decision on TMC’s commercial recovery permit.