Victor Vescovo

It's just not a lot.

The terrestrial mining

Industry is enormous.

So there's a question of relevance.

You don't need the copper from the sea floor.

It's less than 0.3% of what they would bring up.

Manganese, that is primarily produced by South Africa and Gabon.

Last I heard, they were reasonable allies of the United States.

It's not dominated by China and it doesn't come from rainforests.

The real metals that matter for deep sea mining are cobalt and nickel.

And the reason they got so much traction in the early 2020s was because electrical vehicles burst onto the stage.

And most electric vehicle batteries at that time used nickel and cobalt.

Cobalt went up to $70,000 a ton at one point.

Nickel went up to $60,000 a ton at one point.

$30,000, excuse me.

However, capitalism does what capitalism does.

Those metals are expensive.

And now there's been significant technological change in the chemistry of the batteries.

Most batteries for electric vehicles now produced in the world use no nickel and no cobalt.

That was not the case five years ago.