The Secretariat of the Pacific Community says Pacific Island nations and territories need to prepare for potential growth in the deep sea minerals industry.
The SPC's Applied Geoscience and Technology Division, or SOPAC, is this week hosting the first of three workshops to inform Pacific Island stakeholders on how to understand and address the risks of deep sea mining in the region.
The Director of SOPAC, Russell Howorth says there is substantial economic potential in seabed mining and the Pacific needs to be ready when the industry expands.
"Countries need to be understanding, need to be gathering data so that their knowledge base does increase and national capacity builds to enable them to have nationally owned and nationally implemented regulatory arrangements ready for the day when someone actually does want to engage with them in extraction of minerals from the seabed."
Russell Howorth from SOPAC.
