"The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road" — thousands of visitors to Maya Bay saw the beach closed for more than three years

It is highly debatable whether deep-sea minerals are needed to enable the renewable-energy transition and decarbonise the global economy. Instead of rushing to mine them, the world must first protect the biodiversity of the high seas and show that seabed mining can yield long-term net benefits for sustainable development