Greenpeace says a second application for a prospecting permit to mine off the coast of Taranaki highlights the dangers of the Fast Track Approvals Bill and threatens to turn the seas around Aotearoa into an open-cast mine.

Ngarara Exploration Limited (NEL) is following Australian seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources as it eyes up nearly 500 square kilometres in the South Taranaki Bight south of surf town Ōpunake. NEL’s sole director, Andrew Stewart, is also the former chief financial officer of TTR.

Deep Sea Mining campaigner Juressa Lee says: "It’s clear wannabe seabed miners are queuing up to plunder and destroy precious marine life as a result of the Luxon government’s Fast Track Wrecking Bill, and the low bar it has now set.

"Seabed miners like TTR have faced more than 10 years of sustained opposition from mana whenua, environment groups, the fishing industry and a wide range of Taranaki locals. They’ve never been able to show that mining can be done without causing lasting environmental damage in the South Taranaki Bight. Now, under the secretive Fast Track process, they don’t have to."

Lee says seabed mining is another example of the dominant culture that "sees the oceans and lands as something to own, exploit and extract from."

"It adds insult to injury having mining industry CEOs like NEL’s Andrew Stewart appropriate Māori company names to greenwash their pollution and destruction by mystifying their intentions with Indigenous names and the values and worldviews they imply."

Alongside allies and iwi, Greenpeace has long-opposed TTR’s attempts to mine 50 million tonnes of seabed in a 66 square kilometre area in the South Taranaki Bight every year for 35 years to access five million tonnes of iron ore and dump the rest back into the ocean.

If allowed to go ahead, seabed mining would have catastrophic consequences for precious marine life in the South Taranaki Bight, such as the pygmy blue whale and the critically endangered Māui dolphin.

Almost 60,000 people have now signed the Greenpeace petition calling for a ban on seabed mining in New Zealand waters.

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