By Gregorie Michael Towai (Eipéráng)
The United States is no longer merely studying whether deep sea mining might someday occur in the Pacific. It is building the machinery necessary to make it happen.
On July 16, 2026, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced a proposed mineral lease sale covering more than 31 million acres of ocean surrounding American Samoa. The auction is tentatively scheduled for November 19. If it proceeds, it would represent the first federal offshore mineral lease sale of its kind in more than three decades and could become the opening move in an entirely new extractive industry.
Federal officials emphasize that issuing a lease would not immediately authorize commercial mining. That distinction is legally important, but it should not be used to minimize what is happening. Once corporations acquire long term interests in millions of acres of seabed, they gain an economic and political stake in moving the process from exploration to extraction. A lease creates momentum, expectations, investment, and pressure for future permits. It moves the conversation from whether mining should occur to how quickly it can begin.
American Samoa is therefore more than one isolated proposal. It is a test case for how Washington intends to treat the ocean surrounding the Pacific territories.
The implications for Guam and the CNMI are unmistakable. BOEM has already identified approximately 69 million acres east of the CNMI for possible critical mineral leasing. That area lies beside the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument and within an ocean system that does not recognize federal boundaries drawn on a government map. Sediment plumes, heavy metals, underwater noise, artificial light, vessel traffic, and disruptions to migratory species will not stop at the edge of a lease block or monument boundary.
If the American Samoa sale proceeds, the federal government will have established a working model that can be carried into the Marianas: identify a vast area, conduct a limited environmental review at the leasing stage, auction long term corporate rights, and defer the most difficult questions until companies have already invested money and acquired legal interests.
This is especially alarming because the administration is simultaneously weakening other Pacific ocean protections. On June 11, President Trump removed the monument based prohibition on commercial fishing in the Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument. The administration argues that existing fisheries laws are sufficient to protect the monument while allowing United States flagged commercial vessels to operate there.
That creates a profound contradiction. Washington says it is reopening these waters to strengthen American commercial fishing while advancing a seabed mining industry that could disturb marine food webs, affect tuna migration, contaminate seafood, and damage the ecosystems that both commercial and subsistence fisheries depend upon.
The federal government cannot credibly claim to be supporting Pacific fisheries while exposing the ecological foundation of those fisheries to an industry whose impacts remain largely unknown and potentially irreversible.
Neither Guam nor the CNMI should assume that the monument alone will protect the Marianas. The current proposed mining area is adjacent to the monument rather than inside it, but ecosystems are interconnected. The trench, surrounding seamounts, migratory corridors, reefs, currents, and pelagic waters function as one living system. Industrial activity immediately outside a protected boundary can still damage what lies within it.
This is not only an environmental issue. It is a question of political status, Indigenous rights, economic justice, and who ultimately benefits from resources surrounding the islands.
Under the present federal structure, rents, bonus bids, and royalties from seabed leases could flow primarily to the United States Treasury. There is no automatic guarantee that the CNMI or Guam would receive a meaningful share of that revenue. There is no guarantee of substantial local employment, investment in island infrastructure, compensation for damaged fisheries, or resources for long term environmental monitoring.
The islands could therefore carry the environmental and cultural risks while corporations and the federal government capture most of the financial benefits.
For the CNMI, this also raises serious Covenant concerns. The Covenant was not intended to reduce the Commonwealth to a distant resource zone whose waters could be leased from Washington without meaningful local participation. A federal comment period is not the same as consent. Consultation after the basic policy has already been decided is not shared governance.
The ocean surrounding the Marianas is not empty federal space. It is connected to Chamorro and Refaluwasch identity, subsistence, traditional fishing, navigation, food security, history, and relationships extending across generations and islands. Traditional routes and ocean knowledge cannot simply be moved when an industrial lease is drawn across the seafloor.
The likely confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general does not itself authorize commercial fishing or deep sea mining. The Justice Department does not issue BOEM leases. But the attorney general supervises the lawyers who will defend these policies when they are challenged. A Justice Department aligned with the administration’s agenda could aggressively defend the fishing proclamation, BOEM’s leasing authority, shortened environmental reviews, and federal consultation practices.
That makes the courts increasingly important, but litigation should not be the only opportunity Pacific communities receive to defend their waters. Guam, the CNMI, and American Samoa should coordinate now rather than respond separately as each new proposal appears.
Our territorial governments and legislatures should demand a regional environmental impact statement, independent baseline research, enforceable protections for subsistence fisheries and cultural resources, transparent disclosure of applicants and investors, meaningful Indigenous consultation, and binding guarantees concerning liability, restoration, monitoring, and revenue sharing. They should also insist that no lease sale proceed until the scientific uncertainties and potential cross boundary impacts are fully evaluated.
Most importantly, American Samoa must not be treated as an experiment whose consequences will later be exported to the Marianas.
What happens there will tell Guam and the CNMI whether federal promises of consultation have real meaning, whether territorial opposition carries weight, and whether the Pacific territories are considered partners in decisions about their future or merely convenient locations for the next American resource rush.
The question is not whether critical minerals are economically valuable. The question is whether the United States has the right to gamble with Pacific ecosystems and Indigenous futures before it can honestly explain the consequences, the safeguards, the liabilities, and the benefits.
If Washington proceeds in American Samoa despite local opposition and major scientific uncertainty, Guam and the CNMI should understand the message clearly: the precedent is being built, the process is moving, and the Marianas may be next.
Gregorie Michael Towai (Eipéráng)
Gregorie Michael Towai (Eipéráng) is a native Refaluwasch son of the CNMI, an independent researcher, published author and founder of the RJKC. He lives in Oregon and writes on governance, culture, economic sustainability and the future of the Marianas. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of NMI News Service.
