The international agency charged with regulating seabed mining worldwide voted on Friday to replace its top executive, after accusations that the British lawyer running the agency was too closely aligned with the mining industry.
Leticia Carvalho, an oceanographer from Brazil and a United Nations environmental regulator, was elected by a 79-to-34 vote by the nations that run the International Seabed Authority to replace Michael Lodge, a lawyer who has overseen the agency for nearly eight years.
“I can’t wait to start to work with state parties and stakeholders at this honorable organization,” Ms. Carvalho said after the vote, which was done by secret ballot.
Mr. Lodge has been a polarizing figure at the seabed authority, which has jurisdiction over any future mining in international waters. Environmentalists have argued that he worked behind the scenes with private contractors to try to accelerate the start of mining.
Mr. Lodge has vehemently rejected those claims, arguing that he has tried to impartially lead the agency as it works toward opening up small pieces of the ocean floor to mining.
More than 30 countries have called for a delay or moratorium on the start of seabed mining.
Ms. Carvalho has said she does not support a moratorium on seabed mining or a formal pause in the start of the effort. But in an interview, she said that she did not believe industrial-scale mining could start until environmental regulations are finalized and that it could take several years to do so.
The seabed authority, a once-obscure agency overseen by 168 member nations, has become an international focus of attention as the push to phase out gasoline-powered cars has generated a sharp increase in demand for metals like cobalt and nickel, used in electric vehicle batteries. Both are found in high concentrations in certain rocks sitting at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, more than 2.5 miles down, among other locations.
The seabed authority is governed by the 42-year-old United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, declaring that any ocean-floor metals in international waters are “the common heritage of mankind.”
Mr. Lodge has been pushing the agency over the past several years to finish its work on environmental regulations that will govern seabed mining. His efforts to speed the process have come amid pressure from the Metals Company, a Canadian business that has told investors it intends to start Pacific Ocean mining by early 2026.
Mr. Lodge has spent most of his career at the agency, starting as a lawyer in 1996 before he became the legal counsel and secretary general, overseeing the agency staff and its headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica. He was seeking a third term as secretary general, an appointment that lasts four years.
The New York Times reported in 2022 that top officials at the agency had provided what certain employees said was confidential data detailing the locations in the Pacific Ocean with some of the highest concentrations of these metal-loaded rocks to executives associated with Metals Company, an allegation that the agency’s lawyers disputed.
After Mr. Lodge last year challenged some diplomats who were trying to slow down the finalization of the environmental rules, he was admonished by officials from Germany and Costa Rica.
Gina Guillen-Grillo, Costa Rica’s lead representative to the Seabed Authority and a longtime critic of Mr. Lodge, said she welcomed Ms. Carvalho’s election.
“A new era is coming to the authority,” she said on Friday, adding that the agency needs a leader who “does not use his post to favor anyone — someone who is not afraid of transparency, and who gives room to accountability.”
Mr. Lodge did not respond on Friday to a request for comment.
The seabed authority has approved more than 30 exploration contracts authorizing mapping and other preparatory work in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Now the agency is preparing to consider applications for industrial-scale mining, conducted by bulldozer-like machines dropped to the ocean floor. The first application will almost certainly come from Metals Company, which has said it intends to submit one this year.
Gerard Barron, the Metals Company chief executive, said he remained confident that the company schedule to start mining by 2026 was still possible. The company had supported Mr. Lodge’s effort to secure a third term.
Kiribati, one of the island nations sponsoring Metals Company’s seabed contract efforts, tried this summer to persuade Ms. Carvalho to drop out of the race in return for an offer to perhaps serve as a deputy to Mr. Lodge, a proposal she rejected.
Mr. Barron, who said he was not involved in this effort, welcomed the results.
“I think she can bring harmony to the I.S.A. at a time when it could really do with some,” he said on Friday. “Leticia has clearly stated she does not believe in moratoriums but instead wants strong, sensible regulations that can protect the marine environment. Which is 100 percent my own position.”
Environmental groups fighting to slow or stop seabed mining celebrated the ousting of Mr. Lodge. They had accused him of using agency resources to help with his re-election campaign, an assertion he has disputed.
“The new secretary general must put the health of the oceans at the heart” of the agency, said Louisa Casson, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace International.
Greenpeace has helped organize the effort to block the start of seabed mining. Ms. Casson said the seabed agency had been “driven by the narrow corporate interests of the deep sea mining industry for far too long.”