Deep-sea mining is often termed a trade-off between resource security and marine ecosystem preservation. Discuss with reference to India's Deep Ocean Mission.

Approved by the Cabinet in 2021 as a Central Sector Scheme of the Ministry of Earth Sciences at Rs 4,077 crore over five years, the Deep Ocean Mission (DOM) seeks to harvest polymetallic nodules from the seabed [1]. It thus sits squarely on the tension between securing critical minerals and safeguarding a barely-understood deep-ocean ecosystem.

The resource-security case

• Critical mineral autonomy: nodules in India's ISA-allotted 75,000 sq. km block in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) are estimated at 366 million tonnes, averaging 1.14% nickel, 1.09% copper, 0.14% cobalt and 25.2% manganese — inputs for batteries and EVs currently import-dependent [2].
• Strategic hedge: an indigenous seabed supply reduces exposure to concentrated global processing chains for rare and critical minerals.
• Technological capability: NIOT has designed a mining system for depths up to 5,500 m, with mobility and power trials completed at 5,270 m in the CIOB — the first tethered seabed machine to operate at that depth [2]. Matsya 6000 under Samudrayaan extends this to manned deep submergence.

The ecological cost

• Habitat loss: nodules themselves are the hard substrate for slow-growing benthic life; their removal is effectively irreversible on human timescales.
• Sediment plumes from crawler movement and nodule crushing can smother filter-feeders far beyond the mined track.
• Knowledge deficit: deep-sea biodiversity remains poorly mapped, so baselines for impact assessment are weak.
• Regulatory gap: the ISA has issued only exploration contracts; its Exploitation Regulations under the Mining Code remain under negotiation, so commercial mining lacks a settled environmental rulebook [3].

The trade-off is real but not irreconcilable. India's advantage is that it is still at the technology-demonstration stage, allowing environmental safeguards to be designed into the system rather than retrofitted — DOM itself pairs mining technology with deep-sea biodiversity conservation and ocean-survey components [1]. Sequencing exploitation behind robust ISA regulations and independent impact baselines would let India convert seabed wealth into genuine resource security while honouring the constitutional duty under Article 48A to protect the natural environment.