Policy

What the October 2026 NOAA deep-sea mining memo does to abyssal protec

Updated 22 October 2026

A policy memo dated 14 October 2026 and signed by NOAA Fisheries Assistant Secretary Carrie Selberg, and circulated to the eight regional fishery management councils, instructs council staff to incorporate projected deep-sea mining discharge into the Essential Fish Habitat reviews required under section 305(b) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, 91 FR 71602, a procedural change that, although it stops short of authorising any extraction, will shape how councils treat abyssal species that have no existing domestic mining permit but already appear on IUCN Red List assessments. The memo, titled 'Consideration of Seabed Mineral Activity in EFH and Habitat Area of Particular Concern Designations,' runs to nine pages and is the first NOAA Fisheries instruction to treat the discharge plume from a hypothetical Pacific nodule collector as a routine input to habitat review.

Why a memo, and why now

The trigger is a procedural gap that has widened across 2026. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued its final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for commercial-scale seabed mineral extraction in the Pacific Clarion-Clipperton Zone in March 2026, and although BOEM concluded that mining could proceed subject to mitigation, NOAA Fisheries holds the relevant habitat authority under the Magnuson-Stevens Act for waters beyond state jurisdiction, an authority that has, until this month, treated deep-sea mining as an external variable rather than a domestic planning input.

The Selberg memo, reference NOAA NMFS HCD 2026-014, asks each council to add a 'mineral extraction overlay' to its next EFH review cycle. That overlay does not authorise mining. It does require council staff to model two discharge scenarios for any Habitat Area of Particular Concern nomination that intersects the abyssal zone, defined in the memo as depths greater than 4,000 metres, and to record the modelled effect on benthic species composition before forwarding the nomination to the Secretary of Commerce. The Pacific Fishery Management Council and the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council are the two councils whose jurisdiction overlaps the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, but the memo applies to all eight councils because polymetallic sulphide fields in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and cobalt-rich crusts on the Emperor Seamounts fall within the North Pacific and Western Pacific footprints, and because the South Atlantic and Caribbean councils are told to prepare for future nominations.

Selberg signed the memo under delegated authority from the NOAA Administrator. It is not a rule, it is not subject to notice and comment, and it does not change the text of any fishery management plan. It is, however, the first time NOAA Fisheries has given councils a written template for treating seabed mineral activity as a foreseeable rather than speculative pressure on habitat, and the procedural language of section 305(b)(2) of the MSA, 16 U.S.C. 1855(b)(2), is what makes the instruction binding on staff even though the memo itself is informal.

Which abyssal species the memo reaches

The memo names three taxonomic groupings in its attachment. The first is the glass sponge assemblage of the North Pacific abyssal plains, including the genus Hexactinella and the family Rossellidae, which is already the subject of a 2024 USFWS finding on Hexactinella meadow critical habitat, 89 FR 47821, and which appears on the IUCN Red List under the assemblage assessment for North Pacific abyssal sponges published in the March 2025 update. The second is the cold-water coral family Primnoidae, with explicit reference to Paragorgia arborea in the Gulf of Alaska and to Primnoa pacifica on the Emperor Seamount chain. The third is the xenophyophore assemblage of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, single-celled organisms that can reach twenty centimetres in diameter and that the IUCN Species Survival Commission Abyssal Biodiversity Specialist Group assessed as a single assemblage for the 2024 Red List update under criterion A2c.

None of these species is currently subject to a domestic extraction permit. The Pacific nodule collector that BOEM's March 2026 final PEIS contemplates would operate under a future license, and the International Seabed Authority has not yet issued a rule for exploitation contracts. What the Selberg memo does is require councils to assume that the discharge plume, a sediment-laden layer that the March PEIS estimates could travel up to 150 kilometres from a single collector, will eventually reach EFH review, and to ask, on the record, whether the existing HAPC designations in the relevant depth bands adequately capture the modelled exposure.

For the Western Pacific Council, which meets next in Honolulu on 12 November 2026, this means the existing Precious Corals EFH designation at the Emperor Seamounts, last revised in 2020, will be opened for an overlay review. For the Pacific Council, the review will fold into the ongoing Coastal Pelagic Species FMP amendment cycle, which already runs to a 2027 deadline. For the North Pacific Council, the overlay will run in parallel with the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands Habitat Conservation review, which is open through 30 January 2027.

What changes for the Red List species themselves

The Selberg memo is procedural and does not change any listing status. It does, however, create a documented record that councils have considered a new pressure on listed and assemblage-assessed species, a record that the IUCN Red List Unit and the USFWS Office of Conservation Science can both cite when reassessing criteria. Under the 2024 IUCN guidelines for criterion A, the documented consideration of a modelled pressure at a domestic regulatory level is one of the inputs that the Red List Unit uses when deciding whether to upgrade a species from Near Threatened to Vulnerable, and the USFWS has historically used parallel domestic reviews as supporting material in its 12-month and 90-day findings under section 4(b)(3) of the ESA, 16 U.S.C. 1533(b)(3).

For the glass sponges of the North Pacific, the practical effect is that any HAPC nomination that incorporates a 4,000 metre-plus assemblage will now have to record the modelled exposure of the named sponge genera, even where the nomination is led by a council that does not have seabed mining in its current FMP. For the primnoid corals, the overlay will record the modelled exposure of the named species and will feed into the next 5-year EFH review. For the xenophyophore assemblage, the overlay will document the modelled exposure at a coarse assemblage level, and the IUCN Abyssal Biodiversity Specialist Group is expected to treat the overlay as a domestic review input when it next revises the assemblage assessment, which under the 2024 IUCN timetable falls in 2027.

None of this alters the legal status of the species today. The memo does not designate new HAPCs, does not impose any new bycatch limits, and does not open or close any fishery. What it does is convert a domestic regulatory silence on abyssal mining into a documented, dated, signatory-attributable procedural step, and that conversion is what the IUCN and USFWS reviews are designed to recognise.

Where the document sits in the 2026 stack

The Selberg memo is the third NOAA Fisheries habitat instruction of 2026, after the October Section 7 conference change, which the Council on Environmental Quality published at 91 FR 68212, and the corals of commerce rule, which took effect on 6 October 2026 at 91 FR 71508. The three documents share a drafting style, a reference to delegated authority from the NOAA Administrator, and a procedural rather than substantive character, and they read as a coherent attempt by NOAA Fisheries to use the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the ESA, and the high seas governance review that the State Department opened in August 2026 to backfill a domestic regulatory gap on activities that the BOEM March 2026 final PEIS made foreseeable.

For practitioners, the practical checklist is short. Council staff who hold an open EFH review in any region that includes abyssal depth bands should expect a request from NOAA Fisheries Habitat Conservation Division to add the mineral extraction overlay by 31 January 2027, which is the closing date named in attachment 2 of the memo. Counsel who represent conservation plaintiffs should expect the overlay review to surface in any forthcoming HAPC nomination, and should treat the absence of an overlay as a procedural defect that the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U.S.C. 1855(b)(2), is likely to require the council to cure on remand. For researchers, the overlay creates a new, dated domestic record of consideration that can be cited in IUCN reassessments and in ESA petitions without the petitioner having to wait for a separate finding.

What is still uncertain

Three open questions follow from the memo. First, the Western Pacific Council has not yet said whether it will treat the November meeting as the venue for an initial overlay discussion or will defer to a 2027 cycle, and the council chair's office did not respond to a request for comment before publication. Second, the State Department's high seas governance review, opened at 91 FR 61204 in August 2026, has not yet indicated whether the overlay methodology will be referenced in any US submission to the International Seabed Authority, and the ISA Council's next session opens in Kingston on 4 November 2026. Third, the USFWS has not yet indicated whether the overlay review will be treated as a supporting document in the pending 90-day finding on the Emperor Seamount primnoid coral, petition number 2024-014, which is currently within the statutory window and which the Service is expected to respond to by 18 December 2026.

Readers who track abyssal species should treat the memo as the beginning of a procedural sequence rather than a destination. The next dated event in the sequence is the Western Pacific Council's 12 November meeting in Honolulu, and the next milestone is the 31 January 2027 overlay deadline. The 2026 IUCN Red List update, which the IUCN published on 9 October 2026, is already a closed input to this sequence rather than an open one.