Peace in Africa

[mickeyd]

We get a channel on cable here called HD Theater. I think that it is produced by the same company that does the Discovery Channel. A was really amazed by a recent show that they had regarding diamond mining in the ocean off of Africa.

DeBeers seems to be in charge of the operation (who else?) which must be quite a massive financial venture. The basic effort is that they plop a 3 story "crawler" on the ocean floor what scoops up rocks and stones 24/7 pass that mess off to a huge ship and the ship (Peace in Africa) sorts and grinds up the aggregate and at the end they end up with a bunch of diamonds. Pretty amazing effort.

If you ever have a chance to catch that show, don't miss it.

Four anchors maintain the ship’s stability, on average 400 tons of gravels and 10 000 cubic meters of water are processed per hour to produce an average of 57 carats of diamonds. No chemicals are involved, everything except the precious gems is spitted back to the ocean, and the AUV monitors the ocean floor after the operation to analyze the impact on the environment. According to the crew, fishes are rarely caught in the machinery because they are afraid of the noise. The ship name is Peace in Africa, 65 people stay on board simultaneously, and each crew member works for 28 days and takes a 28 days break afterwards.

Diamond Mining Ship aka Peace in Africa

The guys that engineered/built this beauty should be working on a craft that will drop down in the Gulf of Mexico and kill that gusher that BP has long-ago lost control of. (I refuse to refer to it as the gulf oil leak.)

 

[dex]

What do the environmentalist say about it?

 

[kumquat]

You too can prosper from technology like this. Try investing in this outfit, but I wouldn't bet the farm.

 

[mickeyd]

What do the environmentalist say about it?

They need diamods too. Looks like the entire opetration consisits of scooping up rocks, taking out a few diamonds, and depositing the stuff back where it came from. Now who could find fault with that?