The prospect of a deep sea "gold rush" opening a controversial new frontier for mining on the ocean floor has moved a step closer.
The United Nations has published its first plan for managing the extraction of so-called "nodules" - small mineral-rich rocks - from the seabed.
A technical study was carried out by the UN's International Seabed Authority - the body overseeing deep sea mining.
It says companies could apply for licences from as soon as 2016.
The idea of exploiting the gold, copper, manganese, cobalt and other metals of the ocean floor has been considered for decades but only recently became feasible with high commodity prices and new technology.
Conservation experts have long warned that mining the seabed will be highly destructive and could have disastrous long-term consequences for marine life.
The ISA study itself recognizes that mining will cause "inevitable environmental damage".
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the ISA was set up to encourage and manage seabed mining for the wider benefit of humanity - with a share of any profits going to developing countries.
The ISA's legal counsel, Michael Lodge, told the BBC: "We are at the threshold of a new era of deep seabed mining".
The lure is obvious: an assessment of the eastern Pacific - a 5 million sq km area known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone - concluded that more than 27 billion tonnes of nodules could be lying on the sand.
Those rocks would contain a staggering 7 billion tonnes of manganese, 340 million tonnes of nickel, 290 million tonnes of copper and 78 million tonnes of cobalt - although it's not known how much of this is accessible.
The expedition's chief scientist, Dr Jon Copley, a biologist from the University of Southampton, urged caution:
"I don't think we own the deep ocean in the sense that we can do what we like with it," he said. "Instead we share responsibility for its stewardship.
"We don't have a good track record of achieving balance anywhere else - think of the buffalo and the rainforest - so the question is, can we get it right?"
And Professor Paul Tyler, also a biologist, of the National Oceanography Centre, warned that unique species would be at risk.
"If you wipe out that area by mining, those animals have to do one of two things: they disperse and colonise another hydrothermal vent somewhere or they die.
"And what happens when they die is that the vent will become biologically extinct."
"Everything we are surrounded by, the way we live, relies on mineral resources and we don't often ask where they come from.
"We need to ask whether there is sustainable mining on land and whether there is sustainable mining in the seas.
"I actually think it is the same moral questions we ask whether it's from the Andes or down in the Bismarck Sea."
This debate is set to intensify as the reality of the first mining operations comes closer.
The chimneys of hydrothermal vents contain many metals in high abundance
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