NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the regulator of deep seabed mining in the United States. Under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980, DSHMRA, it is the only body that can license an American company to explore for or recover polymetallic nodules in the ocean beyond any country’s jurisdiction. It issued two exploration licenses in 1984, both still held by Lockheed Martin, and has never issued a commercial recovery permit. In 2026 it is processing the first new applications in decades, from The Metals Company (Nasdaq: TMC), Deep Sea Minerals (CSE: SEAS) and several private American companies.
Its second role is exploration. NOAA Ocean Exploration runs the ship Okeanos Explorer and funds the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, and since 2025 that program has been pointed at seabed minerals: mapping and sampling nodule fields off American Samoa, around Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll, and in the Cook Islands’ exclusive economic zone at that government’s request.
News and articles
Overview
- DSHMRA dates from 1980, when the United States expected to mine nodules outside the Law of the Sea Convention it never ratified. It lets NOAA issue exploration licences and commercial recovery permits to US citizens and companies for areas beyond national jurisdiction. It is not a claim of sovereignty over the seabed, and the International Seabed Authority does not recognise it.
- Executive Order 14285, Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources, signed April 24, 2025, told NOAA to speed the process up. NOAA’s own release the next day called deep seabed minerals the next gold rush.
- The rules were rewritten in nine months. A proposed rule went out on July 7, 2025, with comments to September 5, and the final rule took effect on publication on January 21, 2026. Its main change is a consolidated application: a company can apply for the exploration licence and the commercial recovery permit at the same time.
- Four applicants have been published for public comment. TMC USA has two applications in public process, USA-B and the consolidated USA-A.
- American Metal Resources and SeaX, two subsidiaries of American Metal, were published on March 23, 2026, and American Deep Sea Minerals Inc., a private company founded by Graham Goulet, on June 2, 2026. All three are exploration license applications whose comment periods have closed.
- Deep Sea Minerals’ subsidiary American Deep Sea Minerals Corp. holds a substantial compliance determination of May 26, 2026, filed an amended application on July 17, 2026, and is waiting for the full compliance determination that precedes publication.
- American Ocean Minerals has two further applications, through AOM Area-1 and AOM Area-2, which NOAA has not published in the Federal Register.
- NOAA does not mine, hold contracts or take an interest in the minerals. It also does not decide alone: a permit under DSHMRA needs an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act, which is why the USA-B file starts with a Notice of Intent rather than a decision.
- The mapping side runs on Executive Order 14285 as well, through the Department of Commerce’s Offshore Critical Minerals Mapping Plan. NOAA ships are surveying the US exclusive economic zone in the Pacific for the first time with minerals as the stated purpose.
The TMC applications
| Application | What it is | Area, per TMC | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA-B | Exploration licence | About 122,000 km² of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which TMC estimates holds 1.02 billion tonnes of nodules | Certified by NOAA on May 26, 2026. Notice of Intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement published August 17, 2026; scoping comments closed September 16, 2026. |
| USA-A | Consolidated exploration licence and commercial recovery permit | About 65,000 km² of commercial recovery area, up from about 25,000 km² when first filed in April 2025 | Found in full compliance with DSHMRA’s information requirements and published August 19, 2026. Comments close October 19, 2026; a virtual public hearing is set for October 13, 2026, 3 to 5 pm Eastern. |
The area figures are TMC’s. The Federal Register notices describe the applications and set the comment periods; they do not restate the tonnage. TMC has told investors it expects NOAA’s decision on the commercial recovery permit before the end of the first quarter of 2027, and that is the company’s expectation rather than a NOAA commitment.
The mapping programme
| Where | When | Ship | What |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Samoa, federal waters beyond the territorial sea | From January 2026 | NOAA survey vessels; the 2026 American Samoa ROV and Mapping Exploration followed | More than 30,000 square nautical miles to map and characterise. First nodule images and box-core samples released April 17, 2026. The Okeanos Explorer ROV and mapping expedition ran from August 20 to September 17, 2026, with USGS sampling for radon as a possible tracer of nodule fields. A further mapping leg began on September 24, 2026, before the ship transits to Honolulu. |
| Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll | From April 2026 | NOAA Ship Rainier | More than 8,000 square nautical miles. Multibeam mapping on the first leg, Orpheus Ocean autonomous vehicles on the second. |
| Cook Islands exclusive economic zone | October 2025 | E/V Nautilus, Ocean Exploration Trust | Three-week mapping and ROV mission led by NOAA Ocean Exploration through an OECI grant, with priorities set by the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority. |
| Cook Islands, abyssal plains and the Manihiki Plateau | July to August 2026 | NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer | 28-day ROV and mapping expedition with the Seabed Minerals Authority. The first leg mapped 24,253 km² and reported dense polymetallic nodule fields. |
The Cook Islands work is the unusual part. The country holds the licences and the nodules; NOAA is mapping them under a partnership with the Cook Islands government, in waters where American companies have no rights. The American Samoa and Kingman-Palmyra surveys are the domestic side, inside the US exclusive economic zone, where any future leasing would run through the Interior Department rather than DSHMRA.
The equipment
- NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, the agency’s dedicated exploration vessel, with remotely operated vehicles and live-streamed dives.
- NOAA Ship Rainier, a hydrographic survey ship crewed by NOAA Corps officers, mapping with multibeam echo sounders in deep water.
- Orpheus, a small autonomous underwater vehicle built by Orpheus Ocean and rated to 11,000 metres. It imaged nodule-covered seafloor near the Mariana Trench on a 2025 OECI expedition and flies the second Rainier leg.
- E/V Nautilus, operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust, used for the 2025 Cook Islands mission.
The long record
NOAA’s own archive reaches back to the first American nodule test. In 1970 Deep Sea Ventures ran a pilot on the Blake Plateau off the Carolinas, airlifting sediment and manganese nodules up a pipe to test equipment in shallower water than the Pacific sites it had in mind. USGS revisited the site in 1982, and a 2019 NOAA expedition went back to look for the tracks. In 2021 a NOAA expedition found fields of ferromanganese nodules on Gosnold Seamount in the North Atlantic.
Ownership and listed exposure
NOAA is an agency of the US Department of Commerce. It has no owners and takes no interest in the minerals it licenses. Listed exposure to its decisions runs through the applicants, The Metals Company (Nasdaq: TMC) and Deep Sea Minerals (CSE: SEAS), both of which have profiles on this site.
Documents
What to watch
- October 13, 2026: virtual public hearing on the USA-A consolidated application.
- October 19, 2026: comments close on USA-A.
- Results from the 2026 American Samoa expedition, including whether radon works as a tracer for nodule fields.
- Deep Sea Minerals’ full compliance determination, the step before its application is published for comment.
- NOAA decisions on the American Metal Resources, SeaX and American Deep Sea Minerals Inc. exploration applications, whose comment periods have closed.
- The first commercial recovery permit decision under DSHMRA, which TMC expects before the end of March 2027.