Since gold was discovered in Nome in 1898, there has been a natural progression of mining technology. Early prospectors claimed much of the land. New miners that came up in the early years were sometimes relegated to beach mining if they could not get rights to mine a claim.

As a local Nome miner explained to me, mining technology evolves. The smaller operations get absorbed by more productive technology. This usually means larger operations with more operators. Over the years, these large bucket ladder dredges accounted for most of the mining volume conducted ‘on-shore’ around Nome, AK. They moved a lot of material and were very productive compared to the smaller operations. It is thought that around 90% of the gold taken out of the ground around nome over the last 100 years has been through these large bucket ladder dredges. This one stopped operating abut 20 years ago.

Now we can see a similar progression happening in ‘off-shore’ mining. Larger excavator bucket type dredges are successfully mining offshore. Technology marches on and we can see many opportunities to increase productivity with subsea vehicle technology in both shallow and deeper waters.