Outside of stores, diamonds aren’t very accessible. Due to their value, any real diamond sources have been swallowed up. However, many people wonder: if you really wanted to, could you go out and search for your own diamonds?
The answer is, well, probably not. But there’s a “probably” in there. The way diamonds are formed, as we previously discussed involves immense amounts of heat and pressure. However, diamonds can rise to the sea floor at certain depths.
Of course, mining operations have figured this out and are scraping the Atlantic Ocean, as well as other bodies of water, to pull out stray diamonds. This is because diamonds seem to continuously appear at the ocean floor in certain areas. And yes, I know what you’re thinking:
Is it time to get a scuba suit and go diamond hunting?
Not quite. There’s a very large amount of danger associated with this for a few reasons. To start, I should mention that most of the seafloor diamonds seem to be off the coast of Namibia in the Atlantic Ocean. The mining operations there use two-man submarines to scout out the areas and then they mine them with underwater drones. So unless you have access to that technology, it’s going to be difficult. You would also need transportation and a license to mine as well as a ton of free time and good connections with the local embassy in South Africa.
What if I DO have that technology?
Then you might be Tony Stark. Also, it likely wouldn’t matter as there are six very large ships constantly vacuuming the ocean floor around namibia to pull up any stray diamonds. Unlike land mining, where miners have to crush a rock called ‘kimberlite’ that surrounds the diamond, seafloor diamonds are naturally pushed out of the kimberlite. That means that you can actually just vacuum them up and they’re ready to go.
Is there any positive news?
While it may be next to impossible to hunt for your own diamonds, the good news is that the seafloor diamonds are incredibly high quality and they’re also finding rare, blue diamonds. So we have that to look forward to at least!
And there are likely diamonds at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but you’ll have to get past these:
