Our Heritage and Futures: Negotiating the Deep Ocean - Reflections from the ISA 30th Session, Kingston

As the International Seabed Authority (ISA) met for its 30th Session in Kingston, Jamaica, in July, global delegates gathered to debate how the deep ocean, humanity’s last great frontier, should be governed.

Supported by the SMMI and the University of Southampton, Dr Mekhala Dave , an Ocean Law & Policy Analyst based in Vienna, attended the meeting and co-hosted a cultural side event exploring how law, heritage and Indigenous knowledge intersect in shaping the future of the seabed.

In her reflections below, Dr Dave offers a first-hand view of the ongoing negotiations and the perspectives shaping them. Her account highlights the questions at the centre of the debate: how to balance technical and economic ambitions with cultural understanding, ecological care and a shared sense of responsibility for the ocean as the common heritage of humankind.

By Dr Mekhala Dave - Ocean Law & Policy Analyst

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) concluded its 30th Session Part II in Kingston, Jamaica (7–25 July 2025), where both the Council and the Assembly gathered to debate the future of deep-sea mining. Central to the discussions was the so-called “Mining Code”: the draft Rules, Procedures, and Regulations (RPRs) that would govern commercial exploitation of seabed minerals in the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean, an area of international waters lying more than 4,500 metres below the surface between Hawai‘i and Mexico. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), this deep seabed, referred to as the “Area,” and its resources are defined as the common heritage of (hu)mankind. ¹ At its 30th Session, under the leadership of newly elected Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho, the ISA continues to press forward on developing the Mining Code required to govern a potential deep-sea mining industry and its sponsorship by States. The dual mandate of the ISA is to commercially mine and to protect the deep-sea ecosystems. This urgency also stems from the requirement to begin industrial mining, with July 2025 marking the delayed roadmap deadline following the July 2021 two-year trigger.

From 2021, I have been working to contribute to interventions and policy-making, with a particular focus on Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) within ocean governance. Coming from a background in the law of the sea and ocean governance, I was particularly interested in whether law itself could be provoked, nudged, or even unsettled, through the edges of science, arts and culture. How can the merging of different fields of research and scholarship act as bridges, opening new ways of thinking about the ocean, or can they destabilise the status quo, questioning assumptions that have long gone unchallenged? I have long been interested in how knowledge about the deep-sea is produced and circulated, and how it feeds into global debates around the so-called green energy transition. I have also been supporting the global south’s proclamation of deep-sea protection, aligning with partners and coalitions from the Pacific and Caribbean. The EU and the UK have made strong commitments in this direction, yet the geopolitics are anchored elsewhere from colonial histories: the Caribbean, as home to the ISA, and the Pacific, which stands on the frontlines since the prospective mining sites are located in the Pacific Ocean, close to South Pacific Island states.

With the Republic of Nauru’s triggering of the so-called 2year rule in 2021, and the recent unilateral move by the The Metals Company to apply for mining permit in the U.S. legal system undermining the ISA, ² my curiosity has also centred on the capacity of States, their positions, their knowledge, and their preparedness to engage with something as remote and elusive as the deep-sea. And then there is the matter of how those most connected local communities and stakeholders are responding to the deep-sea. My work has been also dedicated to how coastal and island communities most directly connected to the deep sea—through livelihoods, cultural practices and their knowledge of ocean ecologies are articulating their responses. This involves not only the ways they sustain long-standing relations with the deep-sea as a site of meaning and survival, but also how they are engaging with, resisting, or reframing the emerging pressures of deep-sea mining.

In recent years, civil society, States, financial institutions, and the media have begun to confront the question of deep-sea exploitation. To date, more than 35 States, most recently Croatia, have expressed support for a moratorium, precautionary pause, or outright ban. ³ While these terms differ in scope, each signals growing recognition of the urgent need to halt seabed mining until its legal and ethical implications are better understood. There is a danger that the deep seabed could soon become a frontier for the mining of critical minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel, far from humanity’s touch more than 4,500 metres below the surface. These earthy, palm-sized nodules lie in pressurised darkness, with sea creatures moving around them on their own timescales. Scientists have made clear that extracting these nodules, sucking them from the seabed with surface vessels and machines, would devastate the ocean, creating sediment plumes that travel for miles, generating noise pollution, and leaving permanent scars with no recovery possible within human timescales. ⁴

From my observations, negotiations at the ISA are unpredictable and politically charged. It is an exercise and effort of what becomes of our future from the series of predictions we make today as a collective body. Yet what struck me most was the absence of cultures of ocean relations. Despite mounting evidence from environmental humanities, Indigenous knowledges, multispecies research and community perspectives that culture and nature are inseparable, this perspective remains largely excluded from the ISA’s deliberations. Indeed, during the Council meetings, some delegations went so far as to dismiss cultural rights as irrelevant. UNCLOSabsents culture, structuring the ocean primarily through zones and resources, determined by sovereign rights. Within the ISA, this translates into negotiations that are almost exclusively technical and economic, leaving little space for indigenous peoples and their relations to the ocean.

Currently, the ISA’s agenda is dominated by technical discussions spanning lack of environmental baselines, financial models, enforcement and compliance, liability concerns, and many more outstanding issues. ⁵ While these are critical, they leave little procedural room for integrating concepts of heritage. What is it, and whose heritage are we talking about? However, a limited space for such discussions lies in intersessional working groups, particularly that on UCH, co-facilitated by Micronesia, Brazil and Greece, and within side events organised by Indigenous peoples, industries, NGOs and States, taking place around the official sessions.

There is a need to push the boundaries of UNCLOS and to think about it in more evolving ways. UCH offers a unique challenge in this regard; It carries an element of culture that is universal, our collective and relationships to the ocean through ancestral and lived experience, which the law must find ways to guarantee and protect. Within the ISA, however, this remains a difficult task. States are constrained in their capacity to define UCH, let alone uneasy to enforce such protections during the mining phase, and the current regulations leave significant gaps in the diverse cultures of the deep-sea. Culture is assumed to be, as if it were, universal, something everyone can claim in the same way. But this can easily slip back into modern or even colonial ways of thinking. Indigenous knowledge shows us something different: they are diverse, place-based, built through lived experience, and carried through relationships with the ocean.

Despite obligations under UNCLOS (Articles 149 and 303) to preserve archaeological and historical objects “for the benefit of humankind,” UCH remains weakly protected in ISA regulations. ⁶ Further, States were apprehensive about aligning UNESCO and UNCLOS, even though the harmony between these legal regimes is, in fact, arguably clear. The UNESCO 2001 Convention sets clear standards, such as in situ preservation and a ban on commercial exploitation, but its limited ratification undermines its global reach. ⁷ Yet despite this compatibility, ISA regulations have so far avoided integrating UNESCO principles into binding Mining Code provisions, leaving cultural protections fragmented and weak. Integrating these principles into the Mining Code would require binding measures: mandatory UCH impact assessments, contractor reporting requirements, no-disturbance zones, and effective sanctions.

Yet such proposals have faced resistance from several states, particularly regarding the definition of intangible heritage and the creation of an independent expert body to oversee UCH. Uncle Solomon Kaho‘ohalahala, through the Maui Nui Makai Network, regularly intervenes in discussions on UCH, one of the few advocates, raising concerns about the deep sea as an ancestral home within Hawaiian culture ⁸ . Yet, with Hawai‘i under the jurisdiction of the United States and lacking an independent seat at the ISA, its perspectives remain filtered through U.S. representation. This situation highlights a structural gap in international ocean governance, where Indigenous relationships to the ocean are acknowledged in discourse but remain without direct procedural recognition at the ISA.

As a rising coalition on culture at the ISA, within this fragile balance, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Foundation (TBA21), with the Deep Currents Collective, an international network of artists, lawyers, activists and academics, made a joint written submission to the ISA Assembly, through TBA21’s observer seat, pushing for cultural recognition. ⁹ Our statement urged caution against rushing to adopt regulations that may entrench extractive models, emphasised the lack of transparency regarding UCH, and warned against dismissing Indigenous and intangible heritage. It further highlighted the risk of creating irreversible “lost zones” through mining and questioned whether environmental management plans could meaningfully address such impacts.

Alongside these interventions within the Assembly, the Deep Currents Collective, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Jamaica and TBA21, organised a side event and an exhibition titled Our Collective Seabed on 22 July 2025. Supported and funded by the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI) and the University of Southampton, the event brought together Caribbean scholars, artists, activists, scientists and ISA delegates to explore the many angles of cultures with the pull of Caribbean localities that underpin the deep sea but are often absent in Kingston’s official ISA Council and Assembly sessions.

Speakers included Alex Moore-Minott, who opened with a blessing contextualising Jamaica’s extractive history and the Maroon community’s spiritual and communal responses ¹⁰ ; marine biologist Robyn Young, who reflected on Jamaica’s dependence on and vulnerability to the ocean; Prof Elizabeth DeLoughrey, who reframed the deep sea through Caribbean and Pacific transoceanic imaginaries; and Dr Jonathan Galka, who traced the connections between Jamaica’s bauxite industry and the establishment of the ISA in Kingston in 1994.

Dr Susan Reid warned of the irreversible damage as “lost zones” mining may cause, while Alejandro Limpo González and the museum head Nadine Goodman and curator Monique Barnett-Davidson spoke about the importance of reclaiming cultural heritage through expanded meanings and how museums meet with the local community to deliberate the future deep-sea. The event was co-moderated by me and Dr Giulia Champion, having supported the organisation of the exhibition together with the Chief Curator O’Neil Lawrence and Senior Curator Monique Barnett, and their team at the National Gallery.

The event drew over seventy participants, including ISA delegates, ambassadors, artists, NGOs, and members of the Jamaican public, creating for the first time a one-of-a-kind, important forum for dialogue within the Jamaican community. The accompanying exhibition, featuring Caribbean artists from the National Museum collection and contributions of international artists curated by the Deep Currents Collective, ran until 22 August 2025. Our Collective Seabed featured a curated selection of artists from the National Gallery of Jamaica’s collection Nadia Huggins (Trinidad and Tobago), Colin Garland, Albert Huie, Archie Lindo and Barrington Watson (Jamaica), presented alongside international artists including Emma Critchley (UK) , Hefrani Barnes (Fiji) , Patty Chang and David Kelley (USA) , Enar de Dios Rodríguez (Spain) , Orchestras from Awe/dacity (seven ocean citizens) , and Jonathan Galka’s Insurgent Seabed Archive .

Taken together, these engagements highlight both the urgency and the difficulty of integrating modes of questions and perspectives from the field of social sciences, humanities, the arts and cultures into the ISA’s plans, and question place within the UNCLOS. As the ISA edges closer to finalising the Mining Code, the question remains: will the governance of the deep sea be defined by extraction, or by stewardship of our collective seabed? Although the ISA space is closed off only to delegates, it cannot be understated that the relations we build here last. This is humanity coming together in a slim space, with the fate of the ocean in our hands. And it is this kind of culture, of dialogue, negotiation, co-learning and encounters that also meets with Indigenous ways of knowing, together with the deep sea, reminding us that governance is not only technical, but truly cultural.

The Deep Currents Collective are a group of researchers and seabed protectors including Khadija Stewart (Rise Up), Professor Elizabeth DeLoughrey (University of California, Los Angeles), Dr Susan Reid (University of British Columbia), Dr Mekhala Dave (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Dr Jonathan Galka (National University of Singapore) and Dr Giulia Champion and Alejandro Limpo González (University of Southampton).

I would like to thank the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI) and the University of Southampton for their generous support of this important participation, as well as for their continued commitment over recent years.

The attendance was made possible through the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Foundation’s observer seat and funded by the SMMI HEI Funding.

Author

Dr Mekhala Dave is a lawyer and art academic based in Vienna. She is an Ocean Law and Policy Analyst/Researcher, formerly with the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Foundation (TBA21). She earned a doctoral degree in contemporary art history and curatorial practice from the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In her past and current legal practice, as well as through her doctoral research, she advocates for a social turn in artistic practices and explores encounters located across knowledge spheres and communities in the Global South at the intersection of activism and newly shaping ocean policy.

From her lived experiences across borders, she draws inspiration and spiritual guidance from water to the questions of historicity and the search for emerging “new” relations of identity and belonging. She has been mapping deep-sea mining developments from a nuanced and transdisciplinary research at the intersection of art, law, and science, alongside participating in UN platforms like UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) and International Seabed Authority (ISA). She is a member of the international group Deep Currents Collective that envisions the deep seabed as an intrinsically relational world on which humans and nonhumans alike depend for their ecological and cultural wellbeing.

Footnotes

¹ The principle of the common heritage of (hu)mankind was first introduced by Maltese diplomat Arvid Pardo in his 1967 speech to the United Nations, calling for the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction to be preserved for peaceful purposes and managed for the benefit of all humanity. It was later codified in Article 136 of the Part XI of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

² Singh, Pradeep A. 2021. “The Two-Year Deadline to Complete the International Seabed Authority’s Mining Code: Key Outstanding Matters That Still Need to Be Resolved.” Marine Policy 134: 104804. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104804 . Also refer to The Metals Company. 2025. “The Metals Company to Apply for Permits under Existing U.S. Mining Code for Deep-Sea Minerals in the High Seas in Second Quarter of 2025.” Press release, March 27, 2025.

³ Seas At Risk, “Global Deep-Sea Mining Talks Yield Mixed Verdict: No Mining for Now but No Reform Either,” July 24, 2025, https://seas-at-risk.org/general-news/global-deep-sea-mining-talks-yield-mixed-verdict-no-mining-for-now-but-no-reform-either/ .

⁴ Amon, Diva J., et al. 2022. “Assessment of scientific gaps related to the effective environmental management of deep-seabed mining.” Marine Policy 140: 105027. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X22000537 . Also refer, Amon, Diva J., Lisa A. Levin, Anna Metaxas, Gavin Mudd, and Craig R. Smith. 2022. “Do we need deep-seabed mining?” One Earth 5, no. 3: 370-377. https://library.sprep.org/sites/default/files/2023-05/heading-deep-seaed-mining.pdf.

⁵ Singh, P., Jaeckel, A., & Ardron, J. A. (2025). A Pause or Moratorium for Deep Seabed Mining in the Area? The Legal Basis, Potential Pathways, and Possible Policy Implications. Ocean development and international law, 56(1), 18-44. doi:10.1080/00908320.2024.2439877.

⁶ United Nations. 1982. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Articles 149 and 303.

⁷ United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 2001. Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. Adopted November 2, 2001. https://www.unesco.org/en/underwater-heritage/2001-convention .

⁸ Maui Nui Makai Network. Accessed October 2, 2025. https://www.mauinui.net .

⁹ Deep Currents Collective. 2025. “Voices from the Deep.” Accessed October 2, 2025. https://www.deepcurrentscollective.org/voices-from-the-deep . Also refer to TBA21 (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary). 2025. Accessed October 2, 2025. https://www.tba21.org .

¹⁰ Alex Moore-Minott on Maroon Legacy, Ancestral Voices. “Maroon Legacy.” Accessed October 2, 2025. https://ancestralvoices.co.uk/maroon-legacy/ .