NOAA’s National Ocean Service announced today a new hydrographic survey project to map and characterize more than 30,000 square nautical miles of federal waters off American Samoa. This project is part of the Department of Commerce’s implementation of the U.S. Offshore Critical Minerals Mapping Plan as defined by President Trump’s Executive Order 14285: Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources.
Polymetallic nodules, such as those shown here, can occur on the ocean floor and are of interest for the critical minerals they contain. (Image credit: NOAA)
“NOAA is proud to play a leading role in the President’s plan unlocking access to critical minerals for domestic supply chains,” said Neil Jacobs, Ph.D., NOAA administrator. “This project highlights NOAA’s strong impact on economic resilience as we invest in research that supports sustainable deep sea mining practices and allows partners to better understand their marine environments.”
NOAA contractor NV5offsite link, a current hydrographic survey services vendor, will begin survey work in February 2026. NOAA will use approximately $20M of fiscal year 2025 funding to produce publicly accessible maps, images and samples of the marine environment off the coast of American Samoa. These products will serve to inform NOAA, other federal agencies and interested parties of the critical mineral deposits and relative prospectivity of the surveyed area. This effort will generate high-quality and transparent deep-ocean data that will help to increase the baseline understanding of the federal waters off American Samoa’s deep-ocean environment, and will stimulate further exploration, research and management projects, including activities related to deep sea minerals.
About deep seabed mineral development
Deep seabed mining is the extraction of nodules containing critical minerals from the ocean floor. Some regions of the deep seabed contain an abundance of valuable resources like manganese, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements. Critical minerals are used in everything from defense systems and batteries to smartphones and medical devices and are increasingly important components for American manufacturing. Access to these minerals is a key factor in the resilience of U.S. supply chains. Learn more by visiting NOAA’s National Ocean Service website.
