Deep Rising

To power the green economy, a new frontier is found for extracting minerals: the deep sea. But mining the ocean floor may have enormous unforeseen consequences. And who really owns the deep sea anyway? With amazing, otherworldly images, and fantastically narrated by Jason Momoa (Aquaman, Game of Thrones). 

‘The future is metallic,’ Gerard Barron, CEO of Deep Green Resources, tells potential investors. His company is developing ways to extract metallic nodules from the ocean floor, which he claims will open the pathway to a sustainable planet. According to Barron, the world’s imminent electric car boom can be fully energized by these deep sea treasures.

Barron’s green pitch gathers much enthusiasm. However, experts like marine geologist Sandor Mulsow are fiercely against mining the ocean bottom. These minerals are crucial to sustaining the ocean biodiversity – which in turn is crucial to sustaining life on earth. Besides, the deep seas are determined by treaty to be ‘common heritage of humankind’ – in other words: owned by us all. But the organization that should defend this status, seems easily manipulated. And are the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea, whose livelihoods are threatened by the practice, listened to at all?