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The 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) concluded with widespread support for a resolution and decision on prioritizing the protection of seamount ecosystems. Parties also reaffirmed the need for precaution with regards to deep-sea mining and for the industry not to proceed as long as scientific gaps remain.

The High Seas Treaty (BBNJ Agreement) introduces new tools to safeguard the deep ocean’s extraordinary life and the critical services it provides. Learn more about the High Seas Treaty, what it means for the deep sea, challenges to overcome and opportunities for the future of ocean conservation. 

Two weeks of International Seabed Authority (ISA) Council negotiations have concluded with no mining approved and no Mining Code adopted. Unresolved issues ranged from environmental safeguards and liability to inspection, compliance, and benefit-sharing. Governments, including France, Costa Rica, South Africa on behalf of the Africa Group, Mexico, Germany, Palau, and Brazil, among others, raised major scientific, environmental, and governance gaps. Several States stressed that these issues must be fully resolved before any mining is considered.

This March, governments gathering at the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) will consider an important new resolution and decision on conserving seamount ecosystems - an opportunity to strengthen protections for migratory species from surface waters to the deep sea.

As governments meet from 9–20 March in Kingston, Jamaica for the International Seabed Authority’s (ISA) Council session, they confront a defining question for global ocean governance: will the ISA uphold its mandate to protect the common heritage of humankind or rush to open the deep ocean to an irreversibly damaging industry?

As the European Commission shapes its new Ocean Act, we have an opportunity to turn commitments into real action to defend the deep. With biodiversity loss accelerating, the climate crisis intensifying and industrial pressure on the deep sea growing, from bottom trawling to deep-sea mining and geoengineering, the Act must go beyond words and deliver in practice. The DSCC has submitted recommendations urging that precaution, coherence, and implementation sit at the heart of the 2026 Act, a key deliverable of the European Ocean Pact launched at the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice.

In 2026, the DSCC will host a media and policy webinar series designed to equip journalists, governments, civil society and decision-makers with the facts, evidence, and context needed to navigate the deep-sea mining debate, and to cut through industry hype and misinformation. Across five concise, expert-led briefings, the series will examine why deep-sea mining is environmentally destructive, constrained by major scientific gaps, economically unsound, legally risky, fundamentally unnecessary, and why a moratorium remains the most responsible and evidence-based pathway forward.

New Zealand - the only country still bottom trawling on seamounts of the South Pacific high seas - has submitted a proposal which would significantly increase the amount of coral and other deep-sea species that can be destroyed as bycatch without consequence. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition’s members have written to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon demanding the immediate withdrawal of the proposal.

The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) strongly condemns The Metals Company’s (TMC) attempt to fast-track deep-sea mining through a unilateral U.S. permitting process in international waters, attempting to undermine the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and bypass ongoing multilateral negotiations at the International Seabed Authority (ISA). 

On Saturday 17 January 2026, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement - or High Seas Treaty - will enter into force, marking a major milestone in international ocean governance and introducing new tools to safeguard the deep ocean’s extraordinary life and the critical services it provides.