Deep-Sea Mining

The ocean generates more economic value annually than it extracts — but it earns its revenue in services that go unpriced while its losses are recorded in fish landings and mineral royalties. The Marine Extraction Ratio compares what we take from the ocean to what the ocean generates for us, and reveals why the accounting gap is the engine of overfishing, acidification, and the now-imminent expansion of deep-sea mining.

Examines deep-sea mining proposals against the Marine Extraction Ratio, documenting that the ISA has licensed exploratory access to seabed ecosystems whose service value dwarfs the mineral value being extracted — with no agreed authority to approve the transaction.

Quantifies the economic cost of ocean acidification by tracing a 30% acidity increase against the calcium carbonate-dependent ecosystem services it is progressively destroying — a cost that has never been formally entered into any national balance sheet.

Reconstructs the arithmetic of the 1992 Northwest Atlantic cod collapse — visible decades before the moratorium — and applies it to current fishery dynamics to assess where the Marine Extraction Ratio is approaching comparable thresholds.

Applies the Marine Extraction Ratio to Costanza's ocean ecosystem service valuation to establish the gap between what the ocean earns in unpriced services and what we extract from it annually.