In the high-stakes global battle for critical minerals, few figures are as determined – or as polarising – as Gerard Barron.

The chief executive of The Metals Company, North America’s largest deep-sea mining outfit, has spent the past five years crisscrossing the globe, from Brisbane to Dubai to Washington’s corridors of power. He has been lobbying for what was, until recently, off limits – the commercial extraction of minerals from the Pacific Ocean floor.

Late last month, his efforts finally paid off. US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining, a move aimed at wresting control of critical minerals such as cobalt, nickel and manganese from China’s grip and placing them back in Western hands.

...

Regulatory certainty has now arrived, thanks in large part to Barron’s dogged campaign to reframe deep-sea mining – long seen as environmentally hazardous – as a necessary, and potentially lucrative, evil to fuel the clean energy transition and reduce the West’s dependence on China.

...

Barron first backed Brisbane-based underwater mining firm Nautilus Minerals in the early 2000s, providing seed capital and gaining a front-row seat to its ultimately doomed efforts to extract seafloor sulphides near Papua New Guinea.

...

In 2011, he co-founded DeepGreen, now The Metals Company. Though originally a financial backer, Barron assumed full control in 2017 after the company stagnated under a former Rio Tinto executive.

...

Yet for all his victories, Barron has become a lightning rod for criticism.

Environmental groups such as Greenpeace have waged relentless campaigns against TMC, disrupting at-sea operations and filing lawsuits in European courts.

...

Critics remain unconvinced. The deep-sea ecosystem, they argue, is too fragile and poorly understood for industrial activity. Governments such as Australia and the UK have backed moratoriums, and scientists warn of irreversible damage to marine biodiversity.

...