James Deckelman on Deep Sea Minerals and the Strategic Push Into Seabed Critical Minerals

“The oceans comprise 70% of the Earth’s surface,” Critical Minerals Institute (CMI) Co-Chair Jack Lifton said as he opened his interview with James Deckelman, Chief Executive Officer of Deep Sea Minerals Corp. (CSE: SEAS | OTCQB: DSEAF | FSE: X45). “We’re talking about the bottom of the oceans.”Deckelman said the company was formed in response to what he described as a convergence of demand growth, supply constraints, price escalation and U.S. regulatory action.“What really attracted me to the sector was three things,” Deckelman said. “One, what was happening in the sector itself. Two, the moment that we're experiencing now in the sector — and the sector in particular right now, we are experiencing extreme demand surge, a period in which we're seeing unprecedented demand for these critical minerals.”He cited the International Energy Agency. “The IEA — the Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization — is forecasting demand to double by 2040.” At the same time, he said, there is “a supply gap” and “no viable alternative sources. Terrestrial mines simply can't deliver what's going to be required to meet future demand.”Deckelman pointed to commodity prices. “Copper up 40%, for example, in 2025; cobalt up about 160% in the last 12 months.” He added that “one of the world's largest suppliers of cobalt, the DRC, has halted exports for four months, sending cobalt up 70% in Europe.”He described U.S. regulatory momentum as “really quite staggering,” referring to “the Trump executive order enacted in April of last year declaring seabed minerals a national priority.” He said there is “a U.S. realization that both the U.S. economy and the U.S. defense systems are held hostage to offshore producers,” and cited “AI-driven demand in the U.S.” tied to data centers and the electrical grid.Deep sea nodules have been studied “since the 1970s, for example, in an area that we call the CCZ in the Eastern Pacific,” Deckelman said. “But the industry was always one of the future. And now all of a sudden, the future is essentially today.”Lifton characterized the resource as polymetallic nodules resting unattached on the seafloor. “You're not going to be drilling into the bottom of the ocean,” he said. “You're harvesting one of nature's very unusual deposits.” He described “manganese nodules” containing “manganese, nickel, copper — those transition metals,” and stated that in the Cook Islands’ economic zone “there's more cobalt there, for example, in these nodules than there is in the Congo.”Deckelman said the company is “focused on polymetallic nodules that occur on the seafloor, unattached,” containing “cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese, and some rare earths as well in some cases,” concentrated “into a single ore body.”“When we're offshore harvesting these nodules from the seafloor, there's no cutting, there's no blasting, there's no tunneling, no overburden removal, no tailings, and no water and other waste discharge — no waste streams,” he said. The nodules occur at depths of “around 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 meters.”He said technology developed in the offshore oil and gas sector “has been transferred to this industry,” alongside sector-specific innovation “to optimize operations, but also to mitigate any sort of environmental effects.” He credited The Metals Company as “a pioneering company in this space” and referenced its work with Pamco in Japan on pilot processing facilities. Deep Sea Minerals has not yet selected its harvesting or processing technologies. “We are still in the early stages. We're in the exploration license application phase at this point,” he said.Operationally, Deckelman said the company has applications in progress “in two domains: one is the CCZ, the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific, as well as in the Cook Islands,” and is “also evaluating opportunities in American Samoa.”