Public Comment: BOEM RFI on Prospecting for Deep Sea Mining Offshore American Samoa

BOEM-2025-0035-8135
Report Prepared: 13 August 2025

Signatories (in alphabetical order): The signatories are faculty and senior staff at major American research universities and institutes, and the views expressed are their own.

Diva Amon, Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, UC Santa Barbara
Steven Auscavitch, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Katy Croff Bell, Ocean Discovery League
Amy Baco-Taylor, Florida State University
Erik E. Cordes, Temple University
Jeffrey C. Drazen, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Valerie Finlayson, University of Maryland
Christopher R German, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Annette Govindarajan, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Santiago Herrera, Lehigh University
Julie A Huber, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Brian RC Kennedy, Ocean Discovery League
Lisa A. Levin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Beth Orcutt, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
Randi D. Rotjan, Boston University & Tufts University
S. Adam Soule, University of Rhode Island – Graduate School of Oceanography
Jason B Sylvan, Texas A&M University

Among thousands of comments, a group of US-based Subject Matter Experts on deep-sea scientific exploration and research, including COBRA members and partners, responded to the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management request for information in reviewing leasing requests for prospecting for “deep-sea mining” in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone / Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of American Samoa. This letter provides a reference of publicly available information to inform the work, particularly biological and environmental information, as well information on OCS minerals of interest, and environmental sensitivity. Although there has been a strong push in past decades to explore and characterize deep-sea ecosystems, including in American Samoa, we reviewed existing publicly-available information and found that there are almost no environmental baseline data from the specific region being considered for OCS mineral leasing, including bathymetric mapping data, physico-chemical data, biological and ecological data, and mineralogical data.