Five thousand new species were discovered earlier this year on a single research expedition to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone—a 1.7 million square mile area between Hawaii and Mexico. A steady stream of studies like this one reveal that from the darkest depths to the shallows by our shores, there are a multitude of undiscovered species in our oceans.

But the Clarion-Clipperton Zone also possesses a high concentration of minerals, and has therefore captured the eye of a risky new industry: deep-sea mining. If zones like this one are opened up for full-scale industrial mining, numerous newly discovered and undiscovered species will be at risk. Mining threatens to permanently destroy vast sea floors, undersea mountains, and otherworldly hydrothermal vents.

We urge U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration to call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, and stop this destructive industry from wreaking havoc on our seas. Right now, mining the deep seas is largely illegal under international laws, which means we can still prevent the destruction of untouched ocean areas and the multitudes they contain.

In short, deep-sea mining is an unnecessary threat to our global climate, the stability of our oceans, and the economy that depends on them.

But time is running out. At the end of July, nations will come together in Kingston, Jamaica at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which oversees commercial seabed mining in international waters, to advance draft mining rules. While the U.S. is not a member of the ISA, a U.S. moratorium would send a strong message that it supports neither destructive seabed mining nor creating a new domestic market for minerals sourced from the ocean. Twenty-five member states of the ISA—along with an increasing number of environmental, scientific, and Indigenous groups—already support a moratorium.

Yet the ISA is on track to allow deep-sea mining to begin–with increasingly lax regulation. In a recent draft of the ISA’s Mining Code, environmental protections for sensitive ecosystems had been stripped out. And in a breach of transparency norms, the identities of those proposing language to accelerate the approval of commercial mining licenses were omitted.

Some in the U.S. Congress are encouraging the acceleration of industrial deep-sea mining in U.S. federal waters, and federal agencies are preparing for the possibility of mining applications in the country, including an........

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