An ocean of possibilities: The United States, manganese nodules and the remaking of the deep seabed

Abstract

This article follows US senator Lee Metcalf in his role as a promoter of deep-sea mining in the 1970s. By analysing his embrace of the deep sea as a new frontier for mineral resources, the author highlights a broader post-war development of the emergence of an imagination of the deep ocean as a potential solution for terrestrial problems. In the imagination of Metcalf and others, the deep sea came to be seen as a new and exciting space that could form an alternative to land-based mining. However, to make this possible, a clear legal framework regulating this unruly space was necessary. By the late 1970s, it had become clear that dreams of swiftly mining the deep seabed were futile. Nevertheless, as recent developments show, notions of the deep sea as a mineral-rich space have not disappeared but instead been temporarily dormant, to reappear now.