About the Report
America’s next great industrial opportunity may lie beneath the ocean.
Ocean Minerals Forward examines the enormous potential of ocean minerals and what their development could mean for America’s economic and national security. From growing critical mineral demand and China’s dominance of global supply chains to American offshore innovation, environmental science, and domestic processing, the report explores the resources, technologies, and industrial capabilities shaping this emerging industry.
Discover how ocean minerals could help build a stronger American supply chain, from the seafloor to the factory floor.
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One Resource, Multiple Metals
One of the world’s greatest untapped mineral resources lies beneath the ocean.
The seafloor holds five resource types with commercial potential — nodules, crusts, seafloor massive sulfides, heavy mineral sands, and rare-earth muds — but three of them account for nearly all of the exploration activity and development underway today.
Polymetallic Nodules
Cobalt-Rich Ferromanganese Crusts
Seafloor Massive Sulfides
Heavy Mineral Sands
Rare-Earth Muds
Ocean mineral resources contain many of the critical minerals essential to advanced manufacturing, energy infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and national defense. Developing these resources could help diversify America’s mineral supply chains and support a new generation of offshore industries.
Below the Surface
Securing America’s Industrial Future from the Seafloor Up
Critical minerals power America’s economy, technology, and national defense. Demand is rising rapidly, yet many of the resources we depend on come through supply chains we do not control.
Critical Mineral Demand
The World Needs More Minerals
AI. Defense. Data centers. Advanced manufacturing. Energy. Transportation. They all require more minerals — often the same ones, at the same time.
America needs secure, diverse sources of mineral supply — the seabed can be part of the answer.
43 of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS’s) 2025 list of 60 critical minerals occur on the OCS
Dependence Has Consequences
China dominates the processing of many of the minerals essential to American industry and defense — and has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to restrict access to strategic materials.
National Security
Mineral Security is National Security
American seabed minerals can help diversify supply chains and reduce our exposure to foreign disruption.
Building domestic and allied processing capacity is equally important to ensuring those minerals can support American manufacturing and defense.
American Innovation
America Has the Tools
Deepwater robotics. ROVs. Autonomous systems. Dynamic positioning. Subsea sensors. Advanced vessels.
America’s offshore industries have spent decades developing the technology and workforce needed to operate in the world’s most challenging marine environments.
From the Gulf of America to deepwater operations around the world, American offshore companies have developed the vessels, engineering expertise, and specialized workforce that can help bring ocean mineral resources within reach.
Economic Opportunity
From the Seafloor to the Factory Floor
American ocean minerals can support a new industrial supply chain — creating opportunities for offshore workers, ports, shipyards, processors, manufacturers, engineers, and communities across the country.
Realizing that opportunity will require investment across the full value chain, including the domestic processing capacity needed to turn recovered minerals into materials for American industry.
Responsible Development
Science Leads the Way
Responsible development starts with understanding the ocean. Mapping, environmental baselines, autonomous vehicles, subsea sensors, and real-time monitoring give scientists, regulators, and operators an increasingly detailed view of the deep sea.
More than five decades of deep-ocean research and collection trials have helped build the scientific foundation for evaluating ocean mineral development. American offshore experience provides a strong foundation for applying rigorous environmental standards, monitoring, and operational oversight.
American Leadership
The Race Has Already Started
Other nations are investing, exploring, mapping, and building. The technologies, supply chains, and standards that will define this industry are being established now.
The United States is moving forward. Federal agencies are advancing ocean mineral leasing, updating permitting regulations, reviewing applications, and expanding deep-ocean research. These efforts build on a U.S. legal framework established in 1980 and decades of American offshore expertise.
What Comes Next
Beyond the Metals
The opportunity is bigger than the resource itself.
The vessels, robotics, autonomous systems, sensors, mapping technologies, data, and deep-ocean expertise developed for ocean minerals can strengthen America’s ability to understand and operate in the deep ocean.
Those capabilities can extend across science, infrastructure, national security, offshore industries, and technologies that are only beginning to emerge.
What Comes Next
America’s Opportunity Is Below the Surface
America has the resources. The technology. The offshore expertise. The industrial base. The scientific foundation.
The opportunity is to bring those pieces together — building a mineral supply chain that runs from the seafloor to the factory floor while expanding America’s ability to understand and operate in the deep ocean.
The United States has an opportunity to lead in an emerging industry that strengthens critical mineral supply chains, supports American offshore jobs, and advances technologies with applications far beyond mineral recovery.