Seabed mining sounds like science fiction, but the basic idea has been understood for decades. Across vast stretches of the ocean floor sit fields of potato-sized rocks called polymetallic nodules, which are rich in nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese. Those metals happen to be the same ones the modern economy needs for batteries and electronics, and the effort to harvest them has quietly become one of the more closely watched resource stories of the decade.

That story shows up inside Jim Rickards’s “$150 Trillion Birthright” presentation, also called American Birthright Phase II. Rickards, a former general counsel at Long-Term Capital Management, best-selling author, and editor of model Press’s Strategic Intelligence letter, folds seabed mining into a broader pitch about mineral discovery. The connection is real but looser than the presentation lets on, and it is worth understanding how the pieces actually fit.

What Seabed Mining Actually Is

The most advanced target is the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a stretch of the Pacific roughly the size of the United States that holds some of the densest nodule fields on Earth. Collectors would scoop or vacuum nodules off the seafloor and pipe them to a surface vessel for transport. The appeal is clear: the metals sit on the surface of the seabed, so there is no rock to blast or tunnels to dig, and the ore grades for some metals are higher than on land.

The obstacles are equally clear. The International Seabed Authority governs the area beyond national borders, and its rules for commercial extraction are still being written. Environmental questions, about sediment plumes and seafloor ecosystems, remain unsettled. Our deep-sea mining explainer covers the timeline and the leading companies in more detail.

How It Fits the Birthright Pitch

The Birthright pitch is primarily about land. It claims President Trump “opened 650 million acres of federal land containing an estimated $150 trillion in buried minerals” and that mining companies will be “legally required to find the exact location of these mineral deposits BEFORE they can dig a single hole.” The pitch then names three “MDP” companies that could dominate the discovery work.

One of those companies, “The Wildcat,” carries the deep-sea thread. It is TGS ASA, the Norwegian energy-data firm formed from the 2023 merger of TGS and PGS, which licenses offshore seismic data and runs a side project it calls the “Deep Sea Minerals Pathfinder.” The idea is that the same acoustic techniques used to map oil and gas below the seafloor can locate and map nodule fields. That is a genuine overlap, and it is the most direct seabed-mining link in the whole presentation.

The Other Two Picks

“The Pioneer” is Geospace Technologies, a Houston-area maker of land and marine seismic equipment with about $116 million in trailing revenue. “The Innovator” is MIND Technology, which builds offshore seismic hardware under the Seamap brand, including the SeaLink streamer. Both are energy businesses first, and our teardown of the presentation found that their revenue tracks oil and gas exploration budgets far more than it tracks mining or seabed work.

The scoreboard since the tease tells the story. The pitch promised “4,800% gain potential” for Geospace Technologies, “1,520% gain potential” for TGS ASA, and “4,340% gain potential” for MIND Technology. Since the June 24, 2025 catalyst came and went, Geospace Technologies is down 73.8% and MIND Technology down 56.8%, while TGS ASA is up 8.9%.

The Honest Read

Seabed mining is a real policy effort and a real long-term theme, and the nodule harvest is not a fabrication. What the presentation gets looser is the timing and the company selection. The survey picks are oil and gas seismic firms whose seabed-mining exposure is small today. For the critical minerals backdrop, our critical minerals strategy explainer separates the genuine policy push from the promotional framing.

The offer behind the pitch is the Situation Report at $1,995 per year with no refunds. The mechanism is sound, the companies are legitimate, and the deep-sea story deserves patient attention rather than a promotional deadline.

The timeline matters more than the map. The International Seabed Authority has issued exploration contracts but has not yet finalized the rules that would allow commercial collection at scale, and the environmental questions about sediment plumes and seafloor life remain open. That means the nodule harvest is a years-long story, not a twelve-month event. The companies positioned for it, including the survey firms that would map the seafloor first, could benefit if the rules land, but the payoff depends on a regulatory process that has been slow and contested. Patience, not a deadline, is the right frame for this part of the pitch.

None of this means the seafloor should be ignored. The nodule fields are real, the metal grades are genuinely attractive in places, and the survey technology needed to map them is the same gear the energy industry already uses. The honest position is to treat seabed mining as a long-term option, one that rewards early mapping work but does not produce twelve-month windfalls on a promotional schedule.

Ready to see the research? Click here to view the American Birthright presentation.

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