I'm Aisha Roscoe. This is the Sunday story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day

to bring you one big story. Today we're going really deep, and I mean really deep, basically

to the bottom of the ocean. There's been a lot of attention lately on a new mineral frontier in

the dark depths of the sea. More and more commercial

mining interests have their eyes on the seabed floor as an untapped source of minerals essential

to powering our green energy future. So far, very few companies have been granted rights to mine the

seafloor.

But recently, Villa Marx, a reporter in the UK, was invited to witness one of the mining operations in action.

Here he is describing a moment standing on the stern of a huge mining vessel as it brought up a massive chunk of ocean floor.

This huge grabbing device, like a giant metal claw, comes out of the water.

It's traveled a mile up from the seabed.

It's filled with tons of rock and silk, and yet you can see the jaws haven't really closed.

And I suddenly realize, as I see the water dripping out, there are little bits of rock falling

out as well, and it's been falling out all the way up on our journey.

Villam Marks joins me now. Welcome to the podcast.

Hey, Aisha.

So, Willam, given the sensitivities around sea mining, I have to wonder, like, how did you get this front row seat on an exploratory mining vessel?

Well, it's kind of a crazy story. It started out last year. I was

working on a piece about the Titan, that's the submersible, that kind of imploded close to the

Titanic wreck. And as my reporting continued, I went to this small island off the south coast of

the UK called Jersey. I met someone there who'd been involved through his company

and efforts to rescue that submersible.

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