I am personally conflicted on this. Our current society needs resources that have to come from somewhere. There is a 'perfect world' where we recycle so perfectly that we don't need to mine more but the technology, and social will, to make that a practical reality just aren't here. So, do we mine on land or take from the sea? Both destroy ecosystems. Probably the best route is to start small and increase as we understand more. The reality of what will happen though is likely to be that we will start small and then massively increase capacity to the limit of regulation.