How to mine 1,600 meters underwater
Nautilus Minerals (TSE:NUS), a Toronto-based miner seeking to extract minerals from the ocean floor, uploaded some multimedia showing how it will mine the sea floor.
The company is exploring for copper, gold, silver and zinc in seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits, equivalent to land-based volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits such as Kidd Creek in Canada.
The company's main focus is Solwara 1 Project, located off Papua New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean. The mineralised zone is about 1.3 km long and up to 200 m wide. It has been drilled up to depths of 19 m below the seafloor. Water depth is approximately 1600m.