A handful of postage-stamp nations in the South Pacific have launched an uphill battle against the deep-sea mining of unattached, fist-sized rocks rich in rare earth metals.
The stakes are potentially enormous.
Companies keen to scrape the ocean floor 5,000 to 6,000 metres below sea level stand to earn billions harvesting manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel currently used to build batteries for electric vehicles.
But the extraction process would disfigure what may be the most pristine ecosystem on the planet and could take millennia, if not longer, for nature to repair.
The deep-sea jewels in question, called polymetallic nodules, grow with the help of microbes over millions of years around a kernel of organic matter, such as a shark's tooth or the ear-bone of a whale.