SAIPAN – The CEO of Impossible Metals addressed Northern Marianas community concerns about deep sea mining in an exclusive live interview on NMI News Service Thursday morning, following the regularly scheduled Good Morning Marianas broadcast. Oliver Gunasekara explained how his company’s robotic technology differs from traditional mining methods and outlined a timeline that stretches at least five years before any operations could begin.
Gunasekara, a British-born American who spent two decades in California’s semiconductor industry before founding Impossible Metals five years ago, spoke candidly about the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) Request for Information (RFI) that has sparked intense debate across the CNMI over the past month and a half.
Unlike traditional deep sea mining methods that use tracked vehicles to dredge the ocean floor, Impossible Metals has developed autonomous underwater robots that hover above the seabed and use artificial intelligence to selectively collect polymetallic nodules while avoiding visible marine life.
“We took as input all of the environmental concerns of a tract vehicle, sediment plumes, biodiversity loss, midwater discharge, noise pollution, light pollution, and designed a 21st century underwater robotic system that is trying to minimize all of this,” Gunasekara said.
The company’s “Eureka” collection system features shipping container-sized robots equipped with multiple robotic arms and camera-based AI that can identify and avoid organisms larger than a millimeter. The robots are programmed to leave approximately 94-96% of nodules untouched, preserving habitat and microscopic life.
Polymetallic nodules are potato-sized rocks that lie on the deep ocean floor, containing four primary metals: nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese. Unlike other deep sea minerals that require cutting or blasting, these nodules simply need to be picked up from the seabed.
“The beauty of these is that there’s no cutting or blasting or tunneling. You just literally have to pick them up,” Gunasekara explained, holding up a sample nodule during the interview.
The global market for these metals currently totals approximately $500 billion annually and is projected to grow to $1 billion per year by 2035, with the vast majority currently controlled by China.
Gunasekara emphasized that the process remains in its earliest stages, with at least five years before any mining operations could commence, and that’s if they’re approved at all.
The multi-step process includes completion of the current RFI phase, followed by BOEM’s decision on whether to move forward. Next comes a two-year environmental review and baseline data collection period, then a lease sale where companies can bid. After that, equipment testing and environmental impact assessments must be completed before final permission to begin mining operations can be granted.
“It’s not something that’s going to happen right away, even if it goes through,” Gunasekara said. “It could be anybody. It could be a different company.”
Impossible Metals has already tested a smaller version of its system, called Eureka 2, in the deep ocean off Florida at depths of approximately 2,000 meters. The prototype, about the size of a small car, successfully demonstrated the technology’s viability.
The company is now building Eureka 3, the production-scale version, and has an agreement with Germany’s BGR (their federal research agency) to conduct a full mining test in 2027 in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Mexico, with 30 or more scientists aboard to document impacts.
Gunasekara clarified that Impossible Metals did not specifically request the RFI for CNMI waters. The company had submitted a request to begin the leasing process in American Samoa, which the Biden administration chose not to pursue. After the Trump administration took office, the Department of the Interior independently initiated the RFI for the CNMI area.
“That’s not something that we proactively push,” Gunasekara said. “But we do support at least starting the process.”
The area identified by BOEM is within U.S. federal waters outside the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. However, Gunasekara acknowledged that the company doesn’t precisely know what minerals are present, estimating that perhaps only 5% or less of the identified area is likely to contain nodules.
When asked about economic benefits for the CNMI, Gunasekara outlined several potential impacts. The company has made a direct commitment to voluntarily pledge 1% of profits to the local community. This is not a mandatory requirement but reflects the company’s culture as a public benefit corporation that has already committed to this profit-sharing approach.
Regarding federal revenue sharing, BOEM would collect lease fees and royalties that go to the federal budget. Similar to offshore oil and gas operations, Gunasekara supports Congress creating a mechanism to share federal revenue with adjacent territories, though this would require Congressional action as BOEM doesn’t have independent authority to share revenue.
The operation could create various job opportunities, starting with an initial small liaison team in the community, followed by training opportunities for the local workforce and operations staff for ships and monitoring systems. There’s also potential for supporting service businesses such as restaurants and accommodation facilities.
Infrastructure investment could include use of local port facilities, potential for enhanced Coast Guard presence to combat illegal fishing, and upgrades to federal infrastructure to support the industry.
A commercial mining location could generate at least $1 billion in revenue annually once at full scale, though Gunasekara cautioned that specific projections for the CNMI area aren’t possible without further research.
Gunasekara directly addressed several environmental concerns that have been raised by local groups. Regarding sediment plumes, the hovering robot design avoids creating the large sediment disturbances associated with tracked dredging systems. On noise pollution, by eliminating the need for dynamic positioning thrusters and riser systems, the Impossible Metals approach generates “a tiny fraction” of the noise created by traditional methods, and the company also requires far fewer ships, one versus six in traditional operations.
For biodiversity loss concerns, the AI system is programmed to detect and avoid all visible life, and by leaving 90-96% of nodules untouched, the technology preserves microscopic organisms that make up the majority of deep-sea biodiversity. Unlike traditional mining that discharges filtered material thousands of meters above the seabed, creating settling plumes, the Impossible Metals system has no midwater discharge. With no discharge in the midwater column where plankton photosynthesize, Gunasekara argued there’s no mechanism for fishing to be impacted.
Addressing carbon release concerns, Gunasekara cited MIT research showing nodules don’t contain carbon and deep-sea carbon absorption occurs in other parts of the ocean through photosynthesis.
The company has committed to making all video data from its robots publicly available within hours of recovery from the seabed floor, providing unprecedented transparency in mining operations.
Regulatory oversight would come from BOEM, with companies required to report and subject to audits. However, Gunasekara acknowledged the remote nature of deep-sea operations makes monitoring challenging compared to land-based mines.
When asked about potential equipment failures at 10,000 feet depth, Gunasekara explained multiple redundancy systems built into the design. The robots have large battery reserves with conservative usage patterns, and the system is designed with natural positive buoyancy, meaning the robots float unless water is pumped into buoyancy cylinders. They’re equipped with satellite modems for communication if vehicles surface out of Wi-Fi range, and ping systems with independent batteries help locate vehicles if needed. Recovery protocols using other robots and cables are in place if necessary.
“We’re not going to just leave one of these alone because they’re really valuable,” Gunasekara said, noting each robot costs millions of dollars. “And of course, we don’t want to pollute the ocean.”
Polymetallic nodules exist in multiple ocean locations globally, with different regulatory frameworks depending on whether they’re in exclusive economic zones (within 200 nautical miles of a coast) or international waters.
The United States has its own regulatory framework separate from the UN’s International Seabed Authority, which 170 countries have joined but the U.S. has not. Deep sea mining initiatives are currently being proposed in American Samoa, the Caribbean, Japan, Cook Islands, and India, among other locations.
BOEM is currently collecting public comments through the RFI process. The CNMI government plans to host a town hall meetings next Tuesday, December 23, to share an 11-minute informational video about the process and gather community input.
Gunasekara indicated that Impossible Metals would be open to virtual participation in community discussions but noted the long timeline means intensive community engagement would likely begin closer to any potential lease award.
