This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: During Oct. 2026, the research vessel SONNE set sail from San Diego into the Pacific Ocean for expedition SO322. Its destination: the Clarion-Clipperton Zone north of the equator—the area that harbors the largest known deposits of polymetallic nodules on the seafloor.
Germany, among others, holds an exploration license in this region. Under the guidance of Dr. Matthias Haeckel from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel, a multidisciplinary team will investigate sites where nodule mining was tested five and a half years ago.
The goal of the expedition is to assess the impacts on habitats in the water and on the seafloor. The results will directly feed into fact-based recommendations for international regulations of deep-sea mining. Polymetallic nodules form at a snail's pace.
They grow about one to two millimeters (0.04 to 0.08 inches) over the course of a million years. If buried by sediment, they dissolve again. In their undisturbed state, they provide a habitat on the abyssal seafloor for animals that depend on a hard surface—which otherwise cannot be found there.
"Typically, we find two to three small organisms on each nodule," says Matthias Haeckel. He is a biogeochemist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel and chief scientist of the SO322 expedition. Sea anemones, soft corals or giant stalked sponges—which in turn provide a habitat for other organisms—are absent where the nodules have been removed.
And because everything proceeds extremely slowly in the deep sea, Haeckel is certain: "Likely, we will not see any recovery." In spring 2021, the Belgian company Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR) tested a remotely controlled pre-prototype of a nodule collector system for 74 hours on the seafloor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) at a depth of more than 4,000 meters (13,100 feet). During this time, the vehicle drove a distance of about 32 kilometers (20 miles) and harvested polymetallic nodules in an area of 54,000 square meters (581,000 square feet)—an area roughly equivalent to seven soccer fields. The current expedition with RV SONNE will investigate effects on the seafloor five and a half years after this mining test.
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