The article in Medium is a perfect argument for deep sea mining to get cobalt and rear earth metals from somewhere without child labour and environmental destruction.
But an important mineral that is needed to make batteries is; Lithium.
(No not to power VLCCs on batteries, but for smaller ships, ferries and offshore vessels etc.)
Today very little if any Lithium is recycled, but that is about to change:
By 2030 it should be possible to get a lot of the Lithium from recycling as the technology mature and the number of batteries being changed out increase.