How a US mining firm sued Mexico for billions - for trying to protect its own seabed

[Judi Lynn]

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Local fishers helped halt underwater mining off Baja California’s coast in 2018. But then an obscure international legal process was put into motion

by Laura Paddison in San Juanico
Wed 31 Jan 2024 06.00 EST

The ship

When it first appeared, it looked like a floating city. For months in the summer of 2012, the ship just sat there – a hulking, confusing presence off the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur.

Florencio Aguilar- clickwas worried. A stranger in the waves was a threat. Like many others in the tiny fishing towns of San Juanico, Las Barrancas and others in north-west Mexico, Aguilar relies for his livelihood on the lobsters, octopus and abalone that thrive here. The pristine waters are also home to endangered sea turtles, a breeding ground for giant grey whales and a magnet for surfers, who flock here to ride one of the world’s longest waves.

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Aguilar ticked off the possibilities: the enormous ship wasn’t one of the research vessels that edged along the Baja coast to survey the rich marine life, and it didn’t look like one of the big fishing ships that sometimes came to scoop up shrimp.
The news eventually filtered down to him from some fellow fishers. The ship belonged to the Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration, which had obtained a concession across a huge area of Mexican seabed to mine phosphate, a key ingredient in commercial fertilisers.

The Odyssey Explorer

‘A hulking, confusing presence’: the Odyssey Explorer, owned by US-based Odyssey Marine Exploration. Photograph: AP Photo/Odyssey Marine

Aguilar was horrified. The project, which could see dredging happen for 50 years, overlapped directly with the fishing concession belonging to the Puerto Chale cooperative, an alliance he leads of more than 120 fishers whose families have lived off these waters for generations. “Constant dredging would finish marine life and all life in our fishing sector,” Aguilar says.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/31/how-a-us-mining-firm-sued-mexico-for-billions-for-trying-to-protect-its-own-seabed

[2naSalit]

1. That's how they do it.