The Deep Brief #28 | 7 February 2026

Your end of week ocean intelligence, built to inform, agitate, and equip you

The Washington Post laid off its climate reporting team this week. Fourteen journalists who tracked the connections between power, pollution, and public health. Gone.

This is why independent ocean journalism exists. Here is what they would be covering if they were still in the room.

The thread this week is sovereignty. Who gets to decide what happens to the ocean, and what happens when one country decides it does not need permission. The US launched a $12 billion critical mineral reserve with the ocean floor in its sights. New Zealand began the process of giving whales legal personhood. The Pacific’s main environmental body is coming to terms with losing America as a member.

These stories sound unrelated. They are not. They are the same argument, playing out across three oceans: who owns the future of the sea?

Three deep dives. Three quick hits. One hard truth from the sea.

Project Vault and the Ocean Floor

On 2 February, President Trump signed an executive order creating a $12 billion US Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve, branded ‘Project Vault.’ It combines a $10 billion loan from the US Export-Import Bank with roughly $2 billion in private capital from companies including General Motors, Boeing, GE Vernova, and Google. The stated purpose is to stockpile cobalt, gallium, rare earths, and other metals that the US currently imports from supply chains dominated by China. (Read the full White House signing transcript)

This matters for the ocean because of where those minerals might come from. Regular readers will remember the NOAA rule that took effect on 21 January, streamlining permits for US companies to explore and mine the deep seabed simultaneously. (New here? Last week’s edition explains the full background.) The Metals Company has already applied to work the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Project Vault now creates the demand for exactly the metals those nodules contain: cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper. The permit pathway exists. The buyer now exists too.

What is new this week is the timeline becoming visible. When the Trump administration signed its original deep-sea mining executive order in April 2025, ISA Secretary-General Leticia Reis de Carvalho issued a 15-paragraph statement calling the move ‘surprising’ and warning that it ‘sets a dangerous precedent that could destabilise the entire system of global ocean governance.’ (Read the ISA Secretary-General’s full statement) That was the signal. The NOAA rule was the mechanism. Project Vault is the money. Three moves in ten months, each building on the last, while the ISA’s mining code remains unfinished and negotiations continue at the 31st Session in Kingston from 9 to 20 March.

Project Vault creates the demand. The NOAA rule creates the permit pathway. The question now is whether anyone can stop the supply chain from running through the deep ocean.

Whales as Legal Persons

Two things happened this week in New Zealand that belong together.

On 5 February, Inside Climate News published the full text of He Whakaputanga Moana, the Declaration for the Ocean signed in March 2024 by Māori King Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII and Indigenous leaders from the Cook Islands, Tonga, Tahiti, Hawai’i, and Rapanui. The declaration’s broad contents were reported at the time of signing, but the full text had not previously been published. It recognises whales as legal persons with inherent rights: freedom of movement, a healthy environment, and the right to thrive alongside humanity. It is grounded entirely in tikanga Māori, the customary law and practices of the Māori people, not Crown statute. This means it draws its authority from Indigenous legal traditions, not from any government. Māori scientist Daniel Hikuroa told Inside Climate News: ‘They’re not seeking recognition from nation-states in the usual way.’ (Read the Inside Climate News piece and declaration text)

Then today, 7 February, New Zealand Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono lodged the Tohorā Oranga Bill. Tohorā is the Māori word for whale, and oranga means wellbeing. It is a Member’s Bill, a type of proposed law put forward by an individual member of parliament rather than by the government. The Bill would enshrine whale personhood in domestic legislation. It establishes five principles: freedom of movement and migration, protection of natural behaviours, protection of social and cultural structures, right to a healthy environment, and the right to restoration and regeneration of habitats and ecosystems. If passed, it would require decision-makers under New Zealand environmental law to recognise and provide for those rights. (Read more at Waatea News)

New Zealand has already granted legal personhood to a river (Te Awa Tupua, the Whanganui River), a forest (Te Urewera), and a mountain (Taranaki Maunga). Legal personhood means these natural features can hold rights and be represented in court by guardians, just as a company or a child can (I wrote about the broader legal personhood movement after its launch at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice last June). Extending the framework to a migratory species that crosses dozens of national jurisdictions would be new territory. The declaration provides the Indigenous legal foundation. The Bill provides the legislative mechanism. Together, they create a pathway that could give whales standing in court.

The Tohorā Oranga Bill must be drawn from a ballot before it can be debated in parliament. The current government has not signalled support. It may never become law. What it does is force the question into the political record: if a river can hold rights, why not a whale?

The US Leaves the Pacific’s Environmental Body

Readers who followed our breaking coverage in January know the US listed SPREP among 66 international bodies it plans to leave. On 4 February, SPREP Director General Sefanaia Nawadra responded publicly.

He was measured. He confirmed a formal withdrawal process would need to be followed and called the US ‘a valued member.’ The biggest loss, he said, would not be funding, though the US contributed roughly $190,000 in 2024, around 15 per cent of member state contributions. The greater impact would be on joint activities with US technical agencies. ‘We do a lot of joint activities with NOAA, with US EPA, US Department of Agriculture, Geological Service,’ Nawadra said. ‘Those are joint activities that benefit the US as much as it benefits the Pacific.’

The timing demands attention. The same administration pulling out of Pacific environmental cooperation is simultaneously streamlining permits for US companies to mine the Pacific seabed. SPREP member states sit on top of or adjacent to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Several host US military facilities. Unnamed Pacific government ministers told Reuters the withdrawal would negatively affect US influence in a region where China is actively expanding ties.

Nawadra also welcomed the High Seas Treaty entering into force on 17 January. The treaty gives Pacific nations new legal tools to extend stewardship beyond their exclusive economic zones. The US signed it in 2023. It has not ratified it.

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Quick Hits

CDP adds ocean questions for the first time. The CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) is a global system that asks nearly 25,000 companies to report their environmental impacts. For the first time in 2026, it is introducing ocean-related questions. High-impact sectors including fishing, shipping, and offshore energy are being encouraged to disclose how their operations depend on, and affect, the ocean. The content will not be scored this year, meaning companies will not yet be rated on their answers. Writing in Inter Press Service, CDP’s Head of Ocean Oliver Tanqueray linked the move directly to the High Seas Treaty, warning companies to ‘expect new jurisdictional regulations on ocean activities.’ For anyone tracking where corporate accountability meets ocean governance, this is the infrastructure being built.

788 species at a single mining site. A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution documented 788 species at one trial site in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, with mining trials found to have ‘sharply reduced’ seabed fauna and biodiversity. An estimated 92 per cent of species in the broader CCZ are thought to be new to science. As the ISA heads into its March session and NOAA reviews permit applications, this is the baseline data on what stands to be lost.

ISA previews March session; European Ocean Act consultation closes this weekend. The ISA held a briefing event on 4 February previewing its 31st Session next month. Meanwhile, the European Commission’s call for evidence on the European Ocean Act closes this weekend. The Act, planned for adoption by end of 2026, aims to create a single legislative framework for EU maritime governance. Whether it addresses deep-sea mining with any teeth remains to be seen.

Hard truth from the sea

Fourteen climate journalists lost their jobs this week at the Washington Post. They are my contemporaries. They covered the same systems I cover. The intersection of power, money, and environmental destruction. The world is poorer for their departure.

The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos. On Tuesday, I published an investigation into the arithmetic of Bezos’ $24.5 million ocean conservation grant against Amazon’s documented environmental trajectory. By Friday, fourteen of the journalists who might have scrutinised that arithmetic from inside the building were gone.

There are fewer people telling this story every month. The decisions about the ocean are not slowing down to wait for us.

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