The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is considering holding a mineral lease sale in swaths of Alaska waters, including the Chukchi Sea, Aleutian Islands and the Gulf of Alaska. According to BOEM’s website, the sale could happen as soon as next year.
Ocean policy consultants said that if BOEM goes ahead with leasing, it could have serious consequences for Alaska fisheries, including Kodiak. According to the map BOEM published, some of the proposed sites are less than 100 nautical miles from the Kodiak archipelago.
The Bureau marked different parts of Alaska’s ocean for different types of mining. In Goodnews Bay and Norton Sound, it would be sand mining, which is similar to dredging, in shallow bays. In the Gulf of Alaska, the underwater mining would be going after seamounts. These massive underwater mountains are formed from old volcanoes, and contain lots of valuable minerals like manganese, cobalt, and nickel. But they are also critical habitat, especially for fish nurseries.
According to a March information session, a lot of the area BOEM proposed overlaps with places that are closed off to commercial fishing because they are important fish habitat.
Bobbi-Jo Dobush, an ocean governance consultant with her San Diego-based firm Salt Horizon LLC, said that the process of mining seamounts can seriously damage these nurseries.
"It would require coming in with something that looks like a giant drill, like you would drill a hole in the side of a mountain with, and crushing up the sea mount or crushing up a hydrothermal vent," she said. "There's no way to characterize this as a minimally invasive process.”
Some Alaskan legislators have expressed concerns about BOEM’s announcement. Kodiak’s representative in the Alaska House, Louise Stutes, signed onto a letter with four other state legislators on March 18. They wrote to the Bureau’s acting director citing the damage seafloor mining could have on Alaska’s marine species like halibut and crab. The legislators’ letter said that Alaska “cannot afford to further imperil our vital marine ecosystems and seafood industries.”
BOEM’s public comment period ends on April 1. But Dobush said she expects the Bureau will still accept comments beyond that date.
“Folks shouldn't wait to be invited to give their opinion," she said. "Instead, they should seek out opportunities to do so and to make themselves heard, if they want their voices to be taken into account as the agency makes these decisions.”
Public comments can be submitted online until 11:59 p.m. EDT on Wednesday by going to www.regulations.gov and searching for BOEM-2025-0318.
