Dr. Rahul Sharma is a freelance consultant in deep-sea mining and former Chief Scientist of National Institute of Oceanography, Goa (India) with an experience of more than 40 years in the field of exploration and exploitation of seabed minerals. He has been a Consultant to International Seabed Authority as well as contributed a chapter on 'Environmental consequences of deep-sea mining in the Oxford Encyclopaedia. His assignments include Visiting Scientist to Japan, Visiting Professor to Saudi Arabia, and Member of the UNIDO mission 'to assess the status of Deep-sea mining technologies' in Europe, USA and Japan. He has published 3 books on Deep-sea Mining and edited 3 special issues of international journals, besides writing more than 65 papers and articles in international scientific journals and books as well as presenting papers at about 60 conferences around the world.