A Bay Area financial analyst wants a piece of this mineral-rich seabed surrounded by three Pacific nations
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- American Deep Sea Minerals applied for a U.S. permit to explore 25 million acres of international seabed in the Eastern High Seas Pocket 3, a region surrounded by French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, and Kiribati, with public comment open until August 3
- Graham Goulet, a Bay Area financial analyst and CEO of American Deep Sea Minerals, submitted the application under the name Kraken Metals in August 2025 and paid $100,000, which a legal expert described as minimal in financial terms
- Trump administration began accepting deep sea mining applications under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, allowing U.S. entities to pursue high seas mining without awaiting international consensus or ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea
- Coalter Lathrop, an international ocean law lawyer, stated that American Deep Sea Minerals lacks mining equipment or technology and appears to be seeking speculative value through a U.S. license rather than immediate operations
- French Polynesia banned seabed mining in 2022 and established Tainui Atea, the world’s largest contiguous marine protected area, with President Moetai Brotherson calling deep sea mining a dangerous interference with the cradle of life
- Pradeep Singh of the Oceano Azul Foundation emphasized the ecological importance of the area due to migratory tuna stocks and warned that mining waste could disrupt marine food webs, including commercially valuable species
Why it matters: The U.S. permit could grant a speculative venture exclusive rights to a biologically and economically critical zone without revenue sharing or environmental safeguards, undermining Pacific nations’ sovereignty and the ‘common heritage of humankind’ principle upheld by the International Seabed Authority, while risking irreversible harm to tuna fisheries and deep-sea ecosystems.
