Peggy Oki — a renowned Carpinteria artist, surfer, skateboarder, and environmental activist — led a protest on Sunday at Rincon Beach to raise awareness about the consequences of deep-sea mining. The event, organized by environmental group Defend the Deep , took place in 25 cities around the globe in an effort to stop deep-sea mining, said Oki. Her group formed the words DEFEND THE DEEP with their bodies, boards, and driftwood.
This urgent activism grew out of increasing concerns about the extraction of manganese nodules from very deep waters. These potato-sized seabed rock formations, which take millions of years to develop, are concentrated with valuable metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements that are crucial for modern technologies such as electric car batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. The activists believe that not only are deep-sea animals put at risk by the mining, but more crucial is the remarkable oxygen production and sequestration at these depths, newly discovered by scientists.
In 2013, Dr. Andrew Sweetman, a professor at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, had noticed increased oxygen levels in the darkest depths of the ocean. It wasn’t until 2024, through extensive testing, that scientists discovered this “ Dark Oxygen ” was coming from the polymetallic nodules scattered across the seafloor. In the ocean’s sunless depths, these nodules produce oxygen by electrohydrolysis, splitting seawater into hydrogen and oxygen molecules.