Nautilus Minerals has obtained the world’s first lease for deep-sea mining, it announced this week.

The 20-year lease from Papua New Guinea will allow the Toronto-based company to push on with its plans to start actually mining a 59-square-kilometre area north of Rabaul for copper and gold some time in 2013.

The company’s CEO Stephen Rogers said on Monday, “This historic decision to grant a lease over a deep- sea deposit is a major step forward for this new frontier, and it reflects the fact that the Solwara 1 project is being recognised as an exciting, commercially valuable undertaking.”

Deep-sea mining is controversial and untested. Environmentalists and some local people have already raised concerns about the potential damage that might result from Nautilus’s plans to pull some 1.3 million tonnes of ore a year from 1,600 metres under the surface of the ocean. Over at Deep-Sea News they greeted the announcement thus: “Well this can’t be good.”