470 tons or more of gold were discovered beneath the seabed of the East China Sea.
The largest deposit with an estimated reserves of at least 1,500 tons of gold, buried 2 km below sea level, was discovered in Laizhou city, which incidentally holds the largest gold reserves in China. In fact, more than 2,000 tons of gold has been found there recently.
“It’s very difficult to locate and set up the drilling platforms at sea,” said Ding Zhengjiang, the deputy director of the Shandong Provincial No. 3 Institute.
Currently China gold mine prospecting is normally conducted within 800 meters underground. At 2 km below sea level, the mining will require a whole new level of drilling technology.
The marine prospecting took three years, involved over 120 km of drilling, with 67 sea drilling platforms and about 1,000 drillers and geologists.