Michael W. Lodge was the Secretary-General of the International Seabed Authority from 2017 - 2023. He has an LL.B. from the University of East Anglia and an MSc in marine policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a barrister of Gray’s Inn, London. Before he was elected Secretary-General, Mr. Lodge served as Deputy to the Secretary-General and Legal Counsel of the International Seabed Authority. Other professional experiences include serving as a Counselor to the Round Table on Sustainable Development at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and as Legal Counsel to the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency. He has also held appointments as a Visiting Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, London, and as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Oceans. Mr. Lodge has 30 years of experience as an international public lawyer with a strong background in law of the sea and ten years of judicial experience in the UK and the South Pacific. He spent many years living and working in the South Pacific and was one of the lead negotiators for the South Pacific Island States of the 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement. He has also worked as a consultant on fisheries, environmental and international law in Europe, Asia, Eastern Europe, the South Pacific and Africa. Mr. Lodge has published and lectured extensively on the international law of the sea. He has over 35 published books and articles on the law of the sea, ocean policy and related issues.

Dr. Ulrich Schwarz-Schampera is Programme Management Officer (Mining Geology) at the International Seabed Authority (ISA). He has 30 years of working experience in the field of marine geology, participating in and leading 25 resource-related scientific and exp loration cruises. Prior to ISA, he was leading the Ore Deposit Research Group at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover, Germany. Activities included research on ore deposits in South Africa, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Indonesia and Canada. Marine research in the Southwest and Central Pacific (sulphides, nodules, crusts) was followed in 2011 by prospecting and exploration in the Indian Ocean for polymetallic sulphides, within the context of the International Seabed Authority, until 2020, when he joined ISA.

Sir Michael Wood is a member of the UN International Law Commission, and a Senior Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge. He is a barrister at Twenty Essex Chambers, London, where he practises in the field of public international law, including before international courts and tribunals. He was Legal Adviser to the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office between 1999 and 2006, having joined as an Assistant Legal Adviser in 1970.

Miss Walker is the Deputy Solicitor General, International Affairs Division at the Attorney General’s Chambers in Jamaica where she is responsible for providing expert legal advice to Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies on a range of international law matters including law of the sea matters. She also represents the Government of Jamaica in the negotiation of international agreements. Before joining the Attorney General’s Chambers in 2020, Miss Walker was the Legal Adviser and Director of Legal Services at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade in Jamaica where she also represented the Government in multilateral and bilateral negotiations on a range of issues including maritime delimitation negotiations and provided advice to the Ministry on an array of international law matters which faced a small developing island state with major maritime concerns. Prior to joining the Ministry, she served as Senior Legal Officer in the CARICOM Secretariat, Guyana, from 1998 to 2001. There she worked on treaty issues related to the establishment of CARICOM Single Market and the creation of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Miss Walker began her legal career in the international law division of the Attorney General’s Chambers where she dealt with a variety of matters including maritime delimitation and international environmental law. Miss Walker is one of two Deputy Permanent Representatives of Jamaica to the ISA. She is a member of Legal and Technical Commission (LTC) of the International Seabed Authority. Miss Walker is a former Vice Chair (2017-18) and former Chair of the LTC (2018-2021).

Rüdiger Wolfrum was a professor at the Universities of Mainz, Kiel and Heidelberg, and a Director at the Max Planck Institute for national public and international law at Heidelberg. At the moment he is honorary director of the Max Planck Foundation for international Peace and the Rule of Law.He was a participant of UNCLOS III. In 1996 he was elected a judge to ITLOS and served as a Vice-President and as a President of that Court for 21 years; he also served as arbitrator in law of the sea as well as in investment cases and he was a member of the Conciliation Commission Timor-Leste/ Australia. He also serves as a judge ad hoc at the ICJ.

Mr. Eden Charles is the Interim Director- General for the Enterprise at the International Seabed Authority. A former Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and Deputy Permanent Representative of Trinidad and Tobago to the United Nations, New York, Mr. Charles has more than twenty years expertise and experience in bilateral and multilateral negotiations, public international law, the law of the sea, international criminal law and multilateral diplomacy. He was elected Chairman of the Sixth Committee (Legal Affairs) of the United Nations General Assembly for its 70th Session, and was appointed by the President of the United Nations General Assembly, as the first Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the conclusion of an international legally binding agreement under the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction. Mr. Charles, was the Coordinator of the annual UNGA resolution on Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea for 4 years, and is a former facilitator of the working groups of the Meeting of States Parties to UNCLOS on the allocation of seats to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. He has also been a delegate and advisor at numerous international conferences, seminars and workshops; and has published articles on different areas on international law.

Marie Bourrel-McKinnon joined the International Seabed Authority in 2017 as the Senior Policy Officer and Special Assistant to the Secretary-General. She became Chief of Staff and Head of the Strategic Planning Unit in 2022. She holds two Master of Laws degrees in Law of the Sea and Shipping and International Law and Economics from the Universities of Nantes and Toulouse and a PhD in international law from the University of Nantes, France. She has published more than thirty articles on the international law of the sea, international and environmental law, oceans policy and related issues. Before joining the Authority, Ms. Bourrel-McKinnon worked for the Pacific Community as a Legal Adviser for the maritime transport programme and the Pacific Community-EU Deep Sea Minerals project. She also worked for governments, non-governmental organizations and the private sector in shipping, the law of the sea, ocean management and marine policy in the South Pacific, Africa and Europe.

Dr. Tara Davenport holds a Bachelor of Laws from the London School of Economics, a Masters of Law (Maritime Law) from the National University of Singapore (NUS), a Masters of Law and Doctor of Juridical Science from Yale Law School. She is a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship as well as an NUS Overseas Graduate Scholarship. She is currently an Assistant Professor at NUS where she teaches Principles of Property Law, Law of the Sea and International Regulation of Shipping. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law (CIL) at NUS, Deputy Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law (APCEL), member of the Executive Council of the Asian Society of International Law, member of the Editorial Board of the Asian Journal of International Law and Ocean Development and International Law Journal. She is co-rapporteur for the International Law Association’s Committee on Submarine Cables and Pipelines and was a member of the Legal Working Group on Deep Seabed Mining Liability. Her research interests are in public international law, law of the sea, marine environmental law and international dispute settlement.

Aldo Chircop, JSD, is Professor of Law and Canada Research Chair in Maritime Law and Policy (Tier I). Based at the Marine and Environmental Law Institute, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, his fields of research and teaching are Canadian maritime law, international maritime law and the law of the sea. He has advised several governments, international organizations, law firms, non-governmental organizations and community organizations. Professor Chircop has published extensively as well as co-editing the Ocean Yearbook (Brill). Professor Chircop is a member of the Nova Scotia Barristers Society.

Serving for 13 years at the Secretariat General of the sea, in charge of continental shelf, MSR, the Area (2005-2018). Head of the French Team to the CLCS-UN). Member of the Legal and Technical Commission of the International Seabed Authority (2012/2022). Member of the Scientific Council on Law of the Sea Institute (Monaco) (INDEMER). Chair of the Advisory Body of Experts on the Law of the sea, IOC/UNESCO (2001/2009); Publications on different issues: The French Practice of the LOS, MSR regime, the CLCS, the Area and the CHM, the functioning of ISA, the EU competences and the Law of the sea.

Mariana Durney is the Director of the Office of Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel at the International Seabed Authority. She joined the Organization in 2022. She holds a Master’s in International Law, LL.M. (int) from the Heidelberg University in Germany, a Master’s in International Law, Trade, Investment and Arbitration from the University of Chile and a Magíster Universitario of European Union Law from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain. She has been part of the board of the Chilean Society of International Law since 2020. Ms. Durney has more than 23 years’ experience in international affairs and as an expert and advisor in public international law and law of the sea. She served as the Legal Counsel to Chile’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She held high-level positions representing her country in various bilateral and multilateral international forums, including cases before the International Court of Justice. Ms. Durney’s extensive practical experience includes treaty law and interpretation, privileges and immunities regimes, international cooperation, investment and dispute settlement, as well as specialized expertise in the law of the sea matters, such as maritime delimitation, extended continental shelf, cartographic processes, high seas regime, navigation issues, protected areas, negotiations related to biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction and the legal regime of the international seabed area.

Warwick Gullett, PhD is Professor of Law and former Dean of Law at the University of Wollongong and a member of the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS). He is the author of Fisheries Law in Australia (LexisNexis 2008) and co-editor of Marine Pollution Contingency Planning: State Practice in Asia-Pacific States (Brill 2016) and Asia-Pacific and the Implementation of the Law of the Sea: Regional Legislative and Policy Approaches to the Law of the Sea Convention (Brill 2016), and is Current Legal Developments editor for the Asia-Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy. Professor Gullett has written extensively on legal protection of the marine environment and the international law of the sea. His work has been cited by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the NSW Land and Environment Court. He has supervised 13 PhD students to completion.

Dale Squires is an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the University of California San Diego. He has decades of experience in marine and natural resource economics across the globe. He has worked with the ISA and the deep-seabed industry and environmental stakeholders on the payment regime, incentive-based approaches to environmental regulation, and the fair and equitable allocation of deep-seabed mining royalties. He is the co-author of eleven books and 150 peer-reviewed scholarly papers. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in applied economics from the University of California Berkeley and a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

James Harrison is Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include international environmental law and the international law of the sea. He has published widely on these themes, including two monographs: Making the Law of the Sea (Cambridge University Press 2011) and Saving the Oceans through Law (Oxford University Press 2017). Prof Harrison also regularly advises intergovernmental institutions, governments and non-governmental organisations on legal issues relating to the protection of the environment. Most recently he has contributed to a study by the International Seabed Authority on ‘A review of the contribution of the International Seabed Authority to the objectives of the 2023 Agreement under UNCLOS on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction’, published in July 2024.