Photo credit: Robin Hammond / Greenpeace via AsiaPacificReport.nz Excerpt from asiapacificreport.nz
Cook Islanders holding a banner reading “Don’t Mine the Moana” have confronted an exploration vessel as it returned to Rarotonga port today, protesting the emerging threat of seabed mining.
Four activists in kayaks paddled alongside the Nautilus, which has spent the last three weeks on a US-funded research expedition surveying mineral nodule fields around the Cook Islands in partnership with the Cook Islands government.
The Nautilus expedition comes just six months after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to expedite deep sea mining, tasking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to fast track the licensing process.