It was suggested that coordinating taxonomists would need financial resources to conduct this task.

The ISA was requested to select coordinating taxonomists and to identify the required resources.

A lack of trained taxonomists is currently a major barrier to overcoming the lack of understanding of the biology of the high seas.6

A recognized taxonomic expert should be appointed as reference taxonomist for each taxonomic group to facilitate taxonomic standardization within that group.

A lack of trained taxonomists is also currently a major barrier to overcoming the lack of understanding of the biology of marine organisms (see A/60/63/Add.1, para.

This will involve such actions as offering advice, checking identifications, preparing and controlling voucher collections for quality, and contributing to the training of taxonomists from the contractors as required.

Further capacity-building and institutional strengthening is required in training marine taxonomists and strengthening the Marine Biodiversity Centre at the University of the South Pacific, to enable documenting of the biodiversity of coral reefs in all countries.

As marine scientists and taxonomists continue to work to expand our knowledge, bioprospectors can have direct access to information on species names, distribution, and abundance and perhaps even phylogenetic frameworks on which to build hypotheses of occurrence of particular classes of compounds.

Taxonomic standardisation of species identification in samples collected during the environmental monitoring of mineral exploration and exploitation areas should be coordinated through a single location so that contractors have a central facility, and a reference taxonomist, to assist them in finding the taxonomic advice and expertise that they might require.