The US plans to auction off sections of water around American Samoa i…

The US government is auctioning deep-sea mining rights in waters around American Samoa, marking a regulatory shift towards commercial extraction of seafloor minerals. This move opens a new resource frontier whilst raising environmental and geopolitical questions about ocean governance. If you're building the subsea hardware, processing tech, or environmental monitoring for deep-sea mining, the US just created a buyer: bidders now need operational capability to work in contested US waters inside eighteen months. The auction timeline and lease terms will set what vendors need to build.