After China, the United States covets the Cook Islands' underwater mineral treasures

The rivalry between the world's two leading powers is also playing out in the turquoise waters of the South Pacific. The United States and the Cook Islands announced the signing of an agreement on Wednesday . This partnership allows the Americans to explore the seabed of the archipelago in the Polynesian Triangle with a view to exploiting strategic metals that lie on its ocean floor.

Authorities in Avarua—the island nation's capital—have long understood that the global rush for strategic minerals for ecological and digital transitions could diversify the local economy, which is more than 50% dependent on tourism. The abyssal plains of its territorial waters conceal a real treasure: one of the world's largest deposits of polymetallic nodules . These pebbles, as big as a fist, are loaded with manganese, cobalt, copper, and nickel—metals essential for the production of electric cars and industry.