The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that investors are cautious on Nautilus Minerals because it wants to be the first at mining minerals off the ocean floor. The Post's Peter Koven writes that chief executive officer Mike Johnston hopes to put that skepticism to bed soon. Nautilus settled a key dispute with Papua New Guinea (PNG) last year, and since then, progress has moved quickly on the Solwara 1 project. Nautilus expects to have all its undersea mining tools ready to go by the middle of 2016. It has also entered a charter agreement for a massive mining vessel, which it expects to receive in late 2017. After that, Nautilus expects to start digging up copper and precious metals almost right away. Mr. Johnston says: "As soon as we're happy everything has been incorporated onto the vessel and it's working as it should, we'll bring it straight down to PNG. The government's very eager to get the vessel as early as we can and get the mine in production." Capital is one big barrier that remains. Nautilus has spent about $180-million (U.S.) to date, but will need significantly more money -- potentially about $200-million (U.S.). That is almost as much as the company's current market capitalization.