The Metals Company

A peer-reviewed reminder that claims of seafloor sediment plumes travelling "thousands of kilometers" was never grounded in scientific data. A new study published in based upon in-field data gathered using innovative thorium-tracing techniques shows the plume stays low, settles fast, with concentrations returning to background levels akin to a single grain of sand in a liter of water within just 1-2km.

Read the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65625-y

Smarter Separation At The Source - The hopper inside our Allseas-designed collector acts as an environmental safeguard. Whereas legacy collectors lifted nodules and large volumes of sediment to the surface, our system uses gravity-based separation and countercurrent washing to return 95–98% of entrained sediment to the seafloor, minimizing what travels up the riser.

The science is in on benthic plumes. Extensive seafloor monitoring during test mining showed the plume stayed low and settled fast. One year later, post-disturbance monitoring found that nodules covered by the sediment plume were uncovered again and available as habitat.

The bright yellow buoyancy modules on our collector vehicle aren't just eye-catching—they’re core to lower-impact design.

By significantly reducing its effective weight underwater, the vehicle glides lightly across the seafloor, leaving faint ripples rather than deep furrows and minimizing disturbance to sediment-dwelling microbial life.