Marine mining extracts diamonds from the seabed.
Methods vary from shore-diving to specialised ships, each of which is, in effect, a mine.
Two mining methods are used:
- horizontal system: a seabed crawler brings diamond-bearing gravels to the vessel through flexible slurry hoses.
- vertical system: a large-diameter drilling device mounted on a compensated steel pipe drill string, recovers diamond-bearing gravels from the seabed following a systematic pattern over the mining block.
Namibia has the richest known marine diamond deposits in the world, estimated at over 80 million carats - all of these deposits originally coming from kimberlites in South Africa.
They were washed down the Orange River and deposited at the river mouth as well as along the coastlines of Namibia and South Africa.
At present, marine diamonds represent approximately 64% of Namdeb's total diamond production, and 90% of Namdeb's diamond resouces.
The De Beers Marine fleet consists of six mining vessels and one evaluation sampling and mining vessel.
Five of the mining vessels are owned by De Beers Marine Namibia, and one is owned by De Beers Consolidated Mines (South Africa). The evaluation vessel is owned by De Beers Marine.
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