Taking gold off the seafloor.
Placer gold is gold that has already been freed from its parent rock and carried by water until it settled. Off Nome, it settled on the bottom of the Bering Sea. Recovering it is less like hard-rock mining than like careful, permitted dredging.
Position and hold
The vessel moors over surveyed ground and holds station. In Norton Sound the water is shallow but the weather is not forgiving, and staying put is half the job.
Excavate
A deck-mounted excavator works the seafloor beneath the vessel, lifting gravel and sand from the pay layer up onto the deck.
Recover
Material runs through the onboard plant. Gold is far denser than everything around it, so moving water and gravity do most of the separation.
Return the tailings
Processed material goes back to the seabed under the terms of the DEC discharge authorization, with monitoring recorded through the season.
Norton Sound, western Alaska.
The beach was worked out a century ago.
The deposit kept going
The 1898 strike was found in beach sand. The same depositional system continues offshore, and the submerged ground was beyond the reach of anyone working with a pan, a rocker, or a shore-based sluice.
Entry is genuinely hard
Offshore recovery needs a documented vessel, marine insurance, a crew that can work Arctic water, and a discharge authorization. That combination is the moat — it is why the ground is still there.
May – October, and not a week longer.
Fit-out and the run north
Winter maintenance closes out and the vessels are provisioned. Gear is loaded, the recovery plant is set on deck, and the fleet stages for the transit to Nome as the ice retreats out of Norton Sound.
On station
The Nikola takes up position over the lease ground. The excavator and crane are commissioned on deck, moorings are set, and the first recovery runs establish grade against the survey.
Peak production
The longest days of the year and the calmest water of the season. This is the stretch the whole year is built around — continuous operation, crew rotating through, the plant running as close to around the clock as weather allows.
Sustained operation
Production continues while the weather holds. Maintenance is done in place, between runs, because coming off station costs days that cannot be bought back later in the year.
Weather closes in
Bering Sea autumn arrives early and hard. Operating windows shorten between blows, and the decision to keep working or to start demobilising gets made on the forecast, not the calendar.
Demobilise and lay up
Equipment comes off, the vessels transit south, and the season closes out. Survey and repair work is scoped over the winter so the fleet is ready to sail again in May.