SECRETARY general of the International Seabed Authority Nii Odunton has expressed disappointment with the profile of the organisation charged with governing the international seafloor.

“People don’t know who we are or what we do. I don’t think that people outside of here even have a remote idea of what seabed mining is,” he complained at Wednesday’s sitting of the Assembly at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston.

The ISA was established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) and, among other things, determines the legal, financial and environmental frameworks for exploiting the seabed for minerals. It has 135 members, including the European Union, and hosts general sessions once a year in Kingston where its secretariat is located. It has made progress, having issued 14 exploration contracts since 2001 — some of which are to progress to exploitation as early as 2016 — and it is still working on developing financial regimes to guide how much those who exploit for minerals are to pay member countries, as well as environmental baselines to ensure the protection of the marine environment.

But it’s not common knowledge, which has resulted in little or no interest over the years from the wider society, including the media. Even among members States, attendance at meetings is poor.

Wednesday, Odunton told the Jamaica Observer that he was less than pleased with the state of affairs and suggested that as a means of changing the tide, the secretariat established an ocean-mining museum on the ground floor of the headquarters building.

“I am disappointed. That’s part of the reason I’m requesting to build a museum so that students at all levels of education can come… Even to make it part of the tourist attraction for Kingston,” he said.

The museum, he reasoned, would add a visual dimension to the science.

“I think visual makes it much easier to digest things. We’re talking about resources and where they are, but there are no pictures. It’s not very impressive,” he said, adding that the move would energise students with the vast possibilities of the seabed.

Addressing the Assembly earlier, he said contractors have indicated a willingness to finance the establishment of the museum.

Ambassador Odunton, a mining engineer from Ghana who is serving his second term at the helm of the Authority, listed other approaches that have potential to raise the public’s awareness of the seabed organisation. Among them were sensitisation programmes.

“A couple of years ago we had a programme of sensitisation seminars. We held one here but we did not get the support; the turnout was quite low,” he said. “We would have to do something like that again.”

Also, he said universities and other institutions of advanced learning need to introduce programmes related to the ocean such as designing, building or maintaining ships and other equipment; working with law enforcement, national security, or defence; transportation of cargo or passengers; and energy or mineral research, exploration and extraction.

“I want to see a lot more of the developing country sites, particularly in places like Jamaica, get into subject matters related to the sea.

“If you take a look at your exclusive economic zone, it’s several times the size of this island. All of the natural resources in your exclusive economic zone belong to you, [but] we have a number of issues; we haven’t counted what we actually have there; we don’t know what we have there [in order] to get to a point where we can actually exploit it for the benefit of Jamaica.”

The size of Jamaica’s exclusive economic waters, said Odunton, is at least 22 times the size of the island.

“If you begin to find out, even if it takes some time, what is actually in there and how we can begin to pull it out… In terms of the expertise required for counting, for developing, for production and all of that in the ocean, it’s a huge set of opportunities that should be investigated,” he told the Observer.

Odunton added: “We also have to keep pushing a lot to ensure that Jamaicans are nominated to be part of our training programmes.”

The ISA recently selected a Jamaican as an alternate for a contractor training programme in Germany. The secretary general said he was pleased with the development — even though the candidate will only participate if others drop out of the programme for any reason — because Jamaica doesn’t usually apply.

He was quick to add, however, that Jamaica is not alone in overlooking the opportunities presented by the ISA.

“I don’t want to give the impression that everything here is bad, but we have specific issues.

“There’s a need, not only of the Seabed Authority but also the society, to promote a little bit, the riches that come from the sea and it’s all around us. It’s a little bit sad when you think of it,” the diplomat said ruefully.