The United States has opened public comment on an application to mine the deep seabed in international waters, and the window closes on 19 October

Two dates, one docket, and a seabed a long way down.

NOAA published a notice on 19 August saying it has received a consolidated application from The Metals Company USA LLC for a licence to explore, and a permit to commercially recover, polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. The agency has determined that the application is fully compliant with the information requirements of the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act. Written comments must be received by 19 October. One virtual hearing is scheduled for 13 October, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern.

The application arrived on 19 March. It replaced an earlier filing that sought an exploration licence only, which NOAA noticed in December 2025 and called Application A, and it seeks the same area in the zone as that earlier one. A separate application, Application B, is unaffected.

The statutory hook is 30 U.S.C. 1426(a)(1), which requires NOAA to publish notice of every application and to let interested persons examine the materials and comment. Neil A. Jacobs, the NOAA administrator, signed the notice.

What the notice does not contain

Any number at all. There is no area, no tonnage, no grade and no timetable to a decision anywhere in the two pages, and the notice adds a caution of its own on the point: the statements made in the application do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or of the United States government.

The figures come from the company. In a Form 8-K filed the same afternoon, TMC said the consolidated application increases the proposed commercial recovery area from about 25,000 to about 65,000 square kilometres, with an estimated resource of 619 million tonnes of wet nodules and potential exploration upside of a further 200 million tonnes. It said NOAA determined full compliance on 28 April. It described a second area, USA-B, as about 122,000 square kilometres holding an estimated 1.02 billion tonnes.

Gerard Barron, the company's chairman and chief executive, said publication starts the clock on the public comment period that NOAA views as a prerequisite to certification.

The part outside the docket

This seabed sits beyond any national jurisdiction. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone lies in the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico, and the body most of the world treats as the licensing authority for that seabed is the International Seabed Authority, created under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The United States is not a party to that convention. It licenses under its own 1980 statute instead, through NOAA, which issued exploration regulations in 1981 and commercial recovery regulations in 1989.

None of that appears in the notice. It is the reason a comment docket at an American agency is being read from a long way outside the country.