Marine mining involves extracting diamonds from the seabed, hundreds of meters under water. The earliest form of marine mining entailed shore diving, where a swimmer would collect diamond bearing gravel from the shallow seabed. Today technology has evolved to specialised ships that mine for diamonds deep out at sea. These specialised ships use a powerful crawler that sucks gravel on the seabed up through flexible hoses/pipes. Alternatively, they use a large scale drill mounted to the ship to excavate diamonds.
The coast of Namibia is the richest known source of marine diamond deposits which account for approximately 64% of Namibia’s total diamond production.
