Nautilus Minerals, a Toronto-based seabed excavation company, is launching the Solwara 1 Project in 2018 in Papua New Guinea.
The purpose is to excavate $2 billion dollars worth of high-grade gold and copper ore from sulfide deposits in the Bismarck Sea, some 19-miles off the coast of Namatanai, Papua New Guinea.
This event is significant for two reasons: Nautilius is the first company in the world to commercially mine the seafloor for copper, gold, zinc and silver. And at 3,400-feet underwater, this is an extremely deep extraction.
Nautilus will mine deep-sea hydrothermal vents and even they have admitted that they don’t know what’s going to happen. No one has mined this deep in the ocean anywhere, ever.
To mine these extremely deep seafloor mineral deposits, Nautilus will use a variety of ROV’s (remotely operated underwater vehicles) such as the Auxiliary Cutter and Bulk Cutter which will penetrate the seafloor, then the Collecting Machine to harvest the minerals.
What will happen? Nobody knows. Stayed tuned for 2018 developments!
