Antigua & Barbuda prepares for the possibility of exploring deep-sea mining

The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition places Antigua and Barbuda among 46 countries calling for a precautionary pause on commercial deep-sea mining (DSM) or the extraction of minerals from the ocean floor. 

On September 26, 2025, Prime Minister Gaston Browne stated during Antigua and Barbuda’s address to the UN General Assembly that the country supported a moratorium on deep-sea mining.  

Yet, behind closed doors, the government has spent the past two years drafting legislation that would allow it to regulate seabed mining, license exploration and even sponsor companies to mine in international waters under the rules of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) – the intergovernmental organisation established under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to regulate mineral activities in the international seabed and protect the marine environment. 

At first glance, the two positions appear difficult to reconcile.

But interviews with government officials reveal that the country is preparing for the possibility not because it has abandoned its precautionary stance, but because waiting until the industry arrives could leave one of the world’s smallest island states without the tools to protect itself.

Director at the Antigua and Barbuda Department of the Blue Economy, Ann-Louise-Hill calls DSM a “controversial topic” and insists that the department wants to get the legal framework in place before considering the possibility of supporting deep sea mining.

“We want to get the legal framework finalized before we even touch on deep-sea mining. So, we are still kind of in a precautionary mode, you can say.”

According to Marver Woodley, Acting Senior Policies and Operations Manager at the Department of the Blue Economy, Antigua & Barbuda is not rejecting deep-sea mining permanently, but it is not ready to support it without more information, laws, scientific research and safeguards. 

“In our approach, we see that eventually we may get into deep-sea mining, but we would need legislation, she notes.

Woodley says strong governance will be critical, particularly because deep-sea mining involves complex environmental and scientific considerations.  

For example, Woodley says the department is aware that polymetallic nodules containing valuable minerals such as cobalt and nickel exist within Antigua and Barbuda’s maritime area but noted that no scientific exploration has yet been conducted to determine the quantity, composition or economic value of these resources.

“If we grant a contract to an entity or a business, how do we make sure that we have the local expertise on the ground to help manage that?” she questions.

Before We Mine the Deep Sea, Do We Know What We’re Losing?

She therefore notes that developing local expertise will also be essential if the country ever considers granting contracts to external companies.

Currently, there are no plans for deep-sea mining in Caribbean waters. But with exploration already taking place in the Pacific and the International Seabed Authority continuing to develop the rules for future commercial exploitation, the possibility of the industry expanding into other regions cannot be ruled out.

For Antigua and Barbuda, that possibility helps explain why the government is developing legislation now.

Building a Legal Framework

Antigua and Barbuda’s Department of the Blue Economy, established in 2020, has made deep-sea mining preparedness one of several emerging ocean policy areas alongside marine spatial planning, aquaculture, mariculture and sargassum management.

In 2024, the department began working with the Commonwealth Secretariat on draft seabed mining legislation, while then President of the 30th session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador Dwight C.R. Gardiner helped align national discussions with evolving international rules.

To date, the effort to put mechanisms in place before commercial pressure arrives includes two major pieces of draft legislation – the Blue Economy Bill of 2024 and the Antigua and Barbuda Seabed Minerals Act of 2025.

The Blue Economy Bill and the Antigua and Barbuda Seabed Minerals Act are intended to provide rules and guidance before any mining activity is considered.

Why scientists say caution is necessary

Environmental scientists warn that the deep ocean remains poorly understood, and commercial extraction could create impacts that are difficult to reverse. The concern, they say, is that damage could occur in ecosystems that humanity is only beginning to understand.

Marine ecologist Ruleo Camacho said the first question the government must answer is not whether it should mine, but whether it understands what exists beneath its waters. He says that Antigua and Barbuda currently lacks sufficient baseline data about its deep ocean ecosystems.

“In my personal opinion, we are very unprepared. We lack the technology and capacity to monitor such activities.”

Antigua and Barbuda is considered a large ocean state with a land-to-sea ratio of approximately 1:254. Camacho said the country’s deep ocean could potentially provide opportunities related to food security, medicine, energy and economic diversification. 

“I’m not against it as a concept, and I will not pretend that it cannot contribute immense value to the country, but we have not carried out the groundwork to understand what we have in our deep ocean space to justify deep-sea mining activities, which are known to have significant environmental impacts,” he explains.

Dr. Diva Amon, chief scientist on the groundbreaking Trinidad and Tobago deep-sea exploration, says the Caribbean region remains largely unexplored beneath the surface. 

If mining occurs close to sensitive ecosystems, she insists that harmful impacts on seafloor animals and organisms in the water column will be “near certainty”.

“The Caribbean is 86 percent deep ocean,” she says. “That means that we have explored next to none of it.”

She describes deep-sea mining as an “incredibly destructive activity” and warns that many deep-sea organisms recover extremely slowly.

The Sea I Remember

Eli Fuller spends his life on the water. 

It has taken him through almost every aspect of life on the sea, from spearfishing and fish-pot fishing to sailing and operating businesses built around the marine environment. 

“Without the ocean, my business wouldn’t exist,” he says.

But decades on the water have given Fuller something more than a livelihood. They have given him a front-row view of a marine environment that, in his lifetime, has changed dramatically.

And much of the sea he remembers is becoming increasingly difficult to find.

Places where Fuller snorkelled during the 1980s and 1990s, he says, have become almost unrecognisable.

“Our sea has changed so much in my lifetime and in a very short period of time,” he says. “Entire reefs, entire ecosystems become unrecognisable.”

Seagrass beds and other interconnected marine habitats have changed. Invasive species have appeared. Ecosystems that once existed in balance are, in his view, increasingly out of balance. 

That sort of transformation, he notes, is evidence of a widening distance between Antiguans and the natural systems that have sustained them.

He compares it to watching a rainforest slowly disappear as it is cleared and replaced by a city or a farm. 

As society has become more developed and less directly dependent on nature, he says, the connection between environmental health and human survival has become harder to see.

And that, he fears, carries consequences.

If people no longer recognise the ocean as part of their own survival system, Fuller believes they may become more willing to treat it simply as a resource to be exploited.

History, he says, offers a warning about what can happen when exploitation begins before the value of an ecosystem is fully understood.

He points to deep-sea trawling and to seamounts – underwater mountains that can support extraordinary concentrations of marine life.

In the example he recounts, scientists studied previously untouched seamount ecosystems before commercial fishing began. Trawlers later moved across the seabed, dragging heavy chains and nets across the bottom.

That lesson, Fuller says, is about how difficult it can be to understand the full value of an ecosystem until it has already been altered. 

That is why he believes Antigua and Barbuda should be thinking in generations rather than election cycles or short-term economic returns.

The question, he suggests, is what kind of inheritance today’s generation intends to leave behind.

“The very survival, the very health, the very wealth of future generations may be directly related to the health of these ecosystems.”

His fear is that by the time the next generation fully understands what has been lost, there may be nothing left to recover. 

The Economic Gamble

Most of the debate surrounding deep-sea mining has focused on environmental impacts. But some experts argue that other risks are equally uncertain. 

According to Ghazal Zazai, Senior Associate for Global Outreach and Engagement at the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA), “There are considerations, there are some significant challenges in terms of technology failure, unforeseen risks and expenditures and some litigation battles.”

There’s also the question of whether seabed mining makes financial sense. 

Attorney Bobbi-Jo Dobush, Ocean Policy Consultant at Salt Horizon, LLC says historically, seabed mining was promoted as a way to extract wealth from the ocean and help developing countries. 

But by examining the industry through the lens of environmental liability and financial due diligence, she argues that the commercial case for seabed mining remains far less certain than industry narratives suggest. 

Her concern is that the industry has yet to demonstrate the entire commercial chain at scale, from extracting minerals thousands of metres below the surface, to transporting them to the surface, processing them and ultimately producing commercially viable metals.

And the operating environment itself creates substantial risk. Equipment must function under extreme pressure, at extreme depths and for extended periods. Failures, delays and accidents are therefore not simply technical problems; they can become major financial liabilities.

Dobush argues “The only way these economic models make sense is if everything goes perfectly”.

That, she says, is a particularly risky assumption for an industry operating in an environment where equipment failure and unforeseen technical problems are difficult and expensive to resolve. 

There’s also the question of who carries the financial risk if the project fails.

Dobush notes that a seabed-mining project may promise new revenues and investment, but the financial risks do not necessarily disappear when a private company is involved. If governments take equity positions, provide financing, guarantee infrastructure or enter favourable investment agreements, taxpayers can ultimately become exposed when projects fail. 

Dobush uses Papua New Guinea as a cautionary example where a government-backed seabed-mining venture involving Canadian company Nautilus Minerals ultimately collapsed because the company ran out of money, leaving the government with significant losses. 

Papua New Guinea’s Mineral Resources Authority (MRA), which regulates and manages the country’s mining sector, said in January 2020 that the PNG State had invested about US$120 million (approximately PGK 408.8 million at the time) in the Nautilus Minerals Solwara 1 deep-sea mining project. 

The MRA’s managing director, Jerry Garry, said the government would probably have to write the investment off as debt because the project had failed. 

The Balancing Act

Antigua and Barbuda has built its economic identity around the ocean. Its beaches, reefs, marine biodiversity and sailing culture support tourism, fisheries, coastal protection and national identity. 

According to the 2025 Budget Estimates, tourism accounts for more than 60 per cent of the country’s annual economic income and employs more than half its working population. The Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Fisheries and the Blue Economy is also expected to contribute at least XCD $300 million annually, or between 20 and 30 per cent of GDP.

The government’s own tourism strategy acknowledges that the country’s competitive advantage depends on protecting its natural environment while moving toward a higher-value, lower-volume tourism model.

Hon. Henry Charles Fernandez, Antigua & Barbuda’s Minister of Tourism, Civil Aviation, Transportation & Investment, says that the goal over the next two decades is to expand reef restoration, prevent damage to marine ecosystems and avoid the pressures of overfishing and over-tourism.

“I’d like to see the island sustainable,” he posits, pointing specifically to the need to protect beaches, mangroves and reefs.

He says the country’s future lies in attracting fewer, higher-spending visitors rather than pursuing a model dependent on mass tourism.

“If we can put Antigua in the pinnacle, the high-end market, then we don’t need as many persons because we will still be getting the benefits of the larger share of funds coming in,” he said.

But that vision depends on something Antigua and Barbuda cannot fully control – the health of the wider ocean. 

Although it has control over its territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zone, the Antigua and Barbuda government does not control the international seabed where much of the proposed mining activity is expected to occur.

The seabed beyond national jurisdiction is considered the common heritage of mankind and is regulated through the ISA headquartered in Jamaica. 

Joshel Wilson, Marine Conservation Programme Coordinator at the Environmental Awareness Group (EAG) stresses that while DSM activities occur outside Antigua and Barbuda’s direct control it could still affect local industries.

“Small islands are going to feel the ripple effect,” Wilson says, pointing to industries such as tourism, yachting, fisheries and food security.

He also notes the already difficult tasks of the government to balance revenue with enforcing environmental impact assessments in existing pieces of legislation. 

Therefore, if the proposed national legislation on DSM is to be effective, Wilson believes environmental debates about the issue should not only focus on the impact on wildlife but also include the people whose livelihoods depend on healthy ecosystems. 

Wilson says decisions about emerging industries must involve communities, scientists, government agencies and the private sector.

“The people who are going to be affected must have a say.”

Ultimately, the debate over deep-sea mining may be as much about governance as it is about minerals: who makes the decisions, who bears the risks and who benefits from the outcome. 

That conundrum is not unique to Antigua and Barbuda. It could become the reality for other small island states whose economies, fisheries and tourism industries depend on the health of the ocean, but which may also face pressure to establish the legal frameworks needed to participate in or regulate deep-sea mining. 

And while preparing to regulate an industry that Antigua and Barbuda says should not yet proceed, it cannot avoid the question of whether establishing the systems to govern deep-sea mining may also make commercial exploitation easier to pursue.

For a country caught between protecting the ocean and preparing for what may come, the answer could shape not only its approach to deep-sea mining, but its wider vision for the future of its ocean.

This story was published on Island Press Box and produced as part of the Caribbean Deep Sea Mining Media Fellowship, an initiative by Climate Tracker Caribbean in collaboration with the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), RISE UP for the Ocean, and EcoVybz Environmental Creatives.