In the future, we will go to the bottom of the sea to scratch ... diamonds

In the future, the best diamonds in the world will definitely come from the ocean, the Quartz article says in a recent remarkable article.

Swept away from the Cam River in southern Africa from the time of the dinosaurs walking on the ground, big diamonds had a journey to follow the water to the Atlantic Ocean.

Fragile diamonds will be crushed by the ocean and the hardest, most durable tablets will be polished and finished. They are the best diamonds in the world.

Abundant reserves

In recent centuries, geologists have deduced that since diamonds are found in Namibia's Cam River bottom, it is likely that it is also present at the bottom of the sea. And mining companies have found their new opportunities under the ocean.

Not only in quantity, the diamonds under the sea are also the most valuable stones in the world with much more transparency than on-land diamonds.

Process of diamond exploitation at the bottom of the sea.Source: De Beers Group - (Graphic: TAN DAT).

The water has drawn expensive stones to the seabed off Namibia - a country in southern Africa and created the world's largest undersea diamond mine . It is estimated that the territory of Namibia has reserves of 80 million carats of diamonds.

Currently in the world the supply of diamonds in the mainland is exhausted, no new mines bring significant economic benefits discovered in the past 20 years. Analysts predict mines in Canada and Australia will run out in the next five years.

And Botswana mines - a continent in southern Africa, where De Beers is headquartered - will run out of diamond reserves by 2030. Global diamond supplies will be down 2% per year by 2030. By 2050, the supply will be completely depleted.

The decrease in the supply of diamonds may have been higher, without the compensation from the supply of diamonds on the seabed.

Director of De Beers, Bruce Cleaver, said: "When terrestrial diamond mines (in Namibia) are running out, finding long-term diamond sources is important for us and for Namibia." .

Since 1991, De Beers - the world's largest diamond mining group - has quietly built an "army" to exploit diamonds offshore to salvage these gems. Debmarine, De Beers' subsidiary, reached an exclusive agreement with the Namibia Government in exploiting diamonds in the country on an area of ​​7,800 km ² .

Up to now, only 3% of the area has been exploited. In 2016, mining companies collected $ 600 million worth of gems off Namibia.

Debmarine representatives predicted that the amount of diamonds from the seabed would quickly increase to 94% of the total diamonds exploited in Namibia. Since undersea diamond mines were put into operation 14 years ago, 16 million carats have been mined from the ocean and 62 million carats have been mined in Namibia.

Environmental concerns

Each of Debmarine's diamond mining fleet is equipped with a drill or "plow" to scratch the seabed and suck sediment into the ship.

According to the Washington Post, it is possible to imagine diamond suction vessels like oil rigs. Each ship is about 92m long, with a helicopter parking yard.

When the machine is operating, sediment is scraped and sucked up by the pipe. Sediment mixture is run through the filter system and X-rays to separate diamonds. Each vacuum has 630 tons of material per hour and the company collects about 80 carats of diamonds - about a palm. The sediment no longer has diamonds returned to the sea.

Emily Jeffers, a lawyer working at the Center for Biodiversity, a US nonprofit organization, said: "My concern about this and all the deep-sea mining activities is whether we "There is a lot of knowledge about the deep sea. Maybe they will cause permanent damage to the environment and deep-sea creatures before we discover them."

De Beers said offshore operations did not cause significant ecological damage because the sediment was returned to the sea, eventually settling down and they also hired ecologists to monitor the marine environment where they were. exploit to ensure that the sea area is recovered after mining.
HONG VAN