Nautilus Minerals Inc. was an underwater mineral exploration company headquartered in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

, Canada. It was the first company to commercially explore

deep sea mining Deep sea mining is a growing subfield of experimental seabed mining that involves the retrieval of minerals and deposits from the ocean floor found at depths of or greater. As of 2021, the majority of marine mining efforts are limited to shal ...

of the seafloor for massive sulfide systems, a potential source of high grade copper, gold, zinc and silver. As of November 2019, the company filed for bankruptcy.

History

, Nautilus planned to commence production utilizing a newly constructed mining ship in the

territorial waters The term territorial waters is sometimes used informally to refer to any area of water over which a sovereign state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, and potent ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

.Terrestrial Telerobotic Mining Technology: An Enabler for Extraterrestrial Habitation, Mining and Construction
recorded on 31 October 2010, 52.25, Prof. Greg Baiden, Laurentian University, Talk given at the ''Space Manufacturing 14'' conference, 29–31 October 2010,

Space Studies Institute Space Studies Institute is a not-for-profit organization that was founded in 1977 by Princeton University Professor Gerard K. O'Neill. In 2009 SSI moved its operations from its long-term base in Princeton, New Jersey, to Mojave, Californi ...

The world's first deep-sea mining robots, built for Nautilus by Soil Machine Dynamics, were ready to go since 2012. In 2015, the company claimed to fall victim to a cyber scam where a payment of $10 million was made to the wrong account.Nautilus Minerals falls victim to cyber scam, prepays $10m into wrong account
miningweekly.com, 2 February 2015 No investigation report was ever made public to shareholders and the company stated it could not give any assurances that internal fraud was prevented.NAUTILUS MINERALS ANNUAL REPORT 2015
/ref> PWC did not record this fraudulent cyber scam in their annual 2015 audit. The CFO at the time, now works for Lepidico Ltd. As of 2016, a mining ship was being built and scheduled to depart for Papua New Guinea in 2018. The company had planned to grow its tenement holdings in the exclusive economic zones and territorial waters of Papua New Guinea, Fiji,

Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...

, the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

as well as other areas outside the Western Pacific. The company collapsed in 2019 due to a lack of liquidity, poor management and ability to secure funding. The company's board had secured loans through Deep Sea Mining Finance Ltd, a finance company setup by Mawarid Mining LLC a major shareholder of Nautilus Minerals. Deep Sea Mining Finance Ltd received Nautilus's assets after the company's bankruptcy. Notice of Application re Leave to Appeal
recorded on 03-10-2019

Solwara 1 Resource

Nautilus's first mining site, Solwara 1, is 30 kilometers off the shore of Papua New Guinea's

New Ireland Province New Ireland Province, formerly New Mecklenburg (german: Neu-Mecklenburg), and Nova Hibernia, is the northeasternmost province of Papua New Guinea. Physical geography The largest island of the province is New Ireland. Also part of the province a ...

. Peter Fairley. "Robot Miners of the Briny Deep: Nautilus Minerals will test machines that will dig for gold in deep-sea vents". IEEE Spectrum. 2016-Jan. The company's Solwara 1 Project is located at 1600 metres water depth in the

Bismarck Sea The Bismarck Sea (, ) lies in the southwestern Pacific Ocean within the nation of Papua New Guinea. It is located northeast of the island of New Guinea and south of the Bismarck Archipelago. It has coastlines in districts of the Islands Regi ...

. It will be the world's first deep-sea mining project. The deposit is a high grade

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

seafloor massive sulphide Seafloor massive sulfide deposits or SMS deposits, are modern equivalents of ancient volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposits or VMS deposits. The term has been coined by mineral explorers to differentiate the modern deposit from the ancient. SM ...

(SMS) resource. In 2007 the exploration team drilled a 43-101 resource on the Solwara 1 Project using newly developed remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) drills. The resulting high grade copper-gold resource was the world's first Seafloor Massive Sulphide ("SMS") resource statement. In 2010/11 further drilling was conducted at Solwara 1 resulting in an increase in the resource base. Results of the updated resource were as follows (November 25, 2011): Indicated Mineral Resource: 1,030kt @ 7.2% Cu, 5.0 g/t Au, 23 g/t Ag, 0.4% Zn Inferred Mineral Resource: 1,540kt @ 8.1% Cu, 6.4 g/t Au, 34 g/t Ag, 0.9% Zn The 2011 Golders Resource update also saw the companies second resource declared for the Solwara 12 project (230K t), some 25 km NE of Solwara 1, in the zone of Exploration License (EL) 1324. Deep Sea Mining Finance, a privately owned company in which the Sultanate of Oman has an interest, took over all of what was formerly Nautilus's undersea mining venture including equipment and underwater robots, and intends to exploit the Papua New Guinea Solwara 1 mining licenses.

References

External links

* http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/deep-sea-mining-five-facts/ * http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/21/deep-sea-mining-an-invisible-land-grab/
Official company website
Companies formerly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange Mining companies of Canada Underwater mining {{Canada-company-stub