Scientists are expressing concern that even before the ocean deep has been properly studied it will already have been exploited by commercial deep-sea mining looking for rare metal and minerals on the ocean floor, leaving its unique ecosystems badly damaged.

Less than 0.05 percent of the ocean floor has been mapped at a level of detail where objects a few metres in size can be discerned. Marine biologists estimate that there are around 750,000 marines species yet to be identified, many of them likely to be found in the deep sea.

The mining industry has been developing technologies to extract metals and minerals more than 500 metres down on the seabed – it is expected that commercial mining will start for the first time in 2018 around Papua New Guinea.

 The European MIDAS project, which is made up of scientists, industry figures, NGOs and legal experts from 32 organisations across Europe, hopes to gather enough data to gain a good picture of what damage might be done by mining and inform regulators of what needs to be put in place to protect the deep sea environment.

MIDAS fears that mining will greatly damage fragile seabed habitats, although it is hard to be certain since deep sea ecosystems remain so poorly studied.

Currently the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea governs activity on the seabed and since around 70 percent of the world’s surface is covered by ocean – and more than half of that is designated as international waters – the area potentially under threat is enormous.

The Jamaica- based International Seabed Authority, the body responsible for administering it, is currently in the process of drawing up a mining code to govern deep-sea mining before 2018.