Regulatory frameworks for deep-sea mining (DSM) treat the ocean as a space to be measured, governed and economically valued. DSM proponents claim that this form of mining avoids many of the negative impacts associated with terrestrial extraction (such as displacement or land use changes), working from an assumption that deep seas are largely inert or empty spaces.
What such frameworks, and proponents’ views, fail to accommodate is an ocean that is already inhabited. Not merely by ecosystems, but in many Indigenous contexts by ancestors, by spirits and by God, and thus by moral obligations that predate any regulatory regime. This is not a problem of cultural inclusion. It is an ontological conflict. It is a profound disagreement over what kind of being the ocean is before it is rendered legible in regulatory systems.
