'Mega-sized Gold Deposit' Discovered Underwater in China

People’s Daily Online reported that a “mega-sized gold deposit” containing 470.4 tons of reserves has been found in China’s Shandong province. The news was reported Monday by the Shandong Provincial No. 3 Institute of Geological and Mineral Survey.
As quoted in the market news:

The gold deposit was 2000 meters under the north coastal water near Sanshan Island. It is the largest and ever first undersea gold mine found in China.
According to Ding Zhengjiang, the vice director of the said institute, the gold deposit is part of a crablike ore belt that lies deep at the sea bottom. Invested by Laizhou Ruihai Mining Ltd, the marine ground investigation took three years and involved over 120 kilometers of drilling, with 67 sea drilling platforms and nearly 1,000 geological workers at most.

Project Manager Zhang Junjin said:

… drilling holes into underground rocks that are more than 1000 meters deep is a big challenge. Normally in China, gold mine prospection is conducted within 800 meters underground. The discovery of a gold deposit lying 2000 meters undersea provides new drilling technology for future gold mining.

Click here to read the full People’s Daily Online report.