An unprecedented era of undersea mining deep in the Pacific Ocean is poised to begin, University of Hawaii researchers say, and they aim to help protect the region’s biodiversity once that mining starts.

Companies and countries around the world have secured at least 12 mining exploration claims across a vast swath of ocean several hundred miles south of Hawaii called the Clarion Clipperton fracture zone, according to a UH news release. Eventually, they could scrape the sea floor in those areas for manganese, copper, cobalt, nickel and other resources.

Such materials are used to manufacture smartphones and other electronics that have taken off in recent years due to global consumer demand. But the mining would also destroy a variety of life on the ocean floor there, more than 16,000 feet below the surface, UH researchers say.

"Just like fishing is not good for the ocean, mining is not good for the ocean," UH oceanography professor Craig Smith said Friday. Mining has never occurred in international waters, he said.

"The fact is that society has a demand for … minerals, and that’s not going to go away. The lifestyles that we have on this planet need these kinds of resources."

Each contractor has the exclusive right to explore an initial area of up to 29,000 square miles.

Smith said he’s helped lead an effort in the past several years before the International Seabed Authority, a United Nations body that grants access to undersea mineral resources, to protect about 440,000 noncontiguous square miles in the zone from additional mining claims.

Smith said the protected areas would go a long way to help maintain the sea environment, but they are provisional and set to expire in another two years or so. He and a working group of scientists hope the authority will eventually make the protections of deep sea life in the zone permanent.

Scientists know that the zone is rich in biodiversity, but it’s also about the size of the continental United States and poorly sampled, the UH release said.

The scientific approach that Smith and his group used to determine which areas should be protected, despite the sampling challenges, was published last month in the science journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"There are thousands of species" there, Smith said Friday. "If you wipe out a lot of biodiversity, you’re changing the course of evolution on Earth."

Establishing protections is key before any heavy damage is done, he said.

"That’s the time when you should care, if you want to develop a defensible environmental management plan."