Diamonds From The Sea Floor

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30442, 16 May 1964, Page 5

Diamonds From The Sea Floor

(By

JACK PERCIVAL

in th* "Sydney Morning Herald ”

Reprinted by arrangement]

NEW “swimming saucer” has been designed to scoop diamonds from the sea-floor, recover cargo from sunken ships and repair submarine cables. It is called “The Turtle,” and it is shaped like flounders, sole and other fish which live at the bottom of the ocean.

“The Turtle" is the brain child of a Lockheed scientist. Dr. Fiedler, who played an important part in the development and proving of the United States Navy’s sub-marine-launched Polaris missile.

“Exploration of the ocean's bottom for scientific, economic and military purposes has been limited up until now,” Fiedler said, “largely because of the lack of a versatile underwater vehicle."

A big advantage of “The Turtle’s” shape is that it generates a minimum of noise during the search and listening. The Lockheed company’s interest in missiles is being put to good use in investigating many aspects of oceanology—which, incidentally, is the latest and a more precise term for what has been known heretofore as oceanography. Apart from the fact that the sea provides a missile launching platform reaching to the very doorsteps of most nations, the non-military and commercial applications also are important.

Undersea Towns

“Settlements beneath the sea are not Improbable," Fiedler said, “but before any such steps can be taken, we must investigate the potentialities and map the unexplored submarine.” Exploration is one of the many tasks which could be carried out by “The Turtle,” Fiedler believes.

It further offers possibilities in housing machinery for undersea mining undersea prospecting hardly has begun. Some areas of the sea, inaccessible from surface ships, almost certainly contain deposits of valuable elements. Nodules, or mounds of various minerals have been found and phosphorous has been mined in shallow depths by scooping up deposits. Already, diamonds are being mined off the coast of South Africa.

The diamonds are being won at the estuaries of rivers. Over the ages they have been washed down-stream and out to sea. They are being recovered from barges using giant vac-

uum cleaners which workmen move over the surface of the submarine mud. The hauls have been so rich that they have attracted international fossickers and caused the African authorities to consider reviewing the extent of their territorial waters control.

Among the visiting marine fossickers have been Soviet ships. Competition has been so keen that a minor shooting war has been feared. Some of the barges have been equipped with automatic weapons. But it won’t be long before the close inshore diamond deposits are worked out Then, deep-sea apparatus such as “Turtle” will be necessary. Rescue of crews from sunken submarines is another possibility of “The Turtle.” Certain areas of the ocean’s floor are littered with sunken vessels whose cargoes now cannot be recovered.

Giving details of “The Turtle's” design, Fiedler said that in the event that sediment obscures a particular object it can use hydrojet scouring. Crab-like arms can be manipulated to recover smaller objects and deposit them on lifting caissons. Should the search area be at great distance, smaller “Turtles" could be transported to the site to operate from a surface mother ship. Another use of “The Turtle,” Fiedler thinks, is as an undersea cargo carrier or as a towing container of bulk cargo. The wild and turbulent surface of the sea extends only a few hundred feet below the surface.

A further application for “Turtle” is the burial in the bottom of the ocean of nuclear waste, which otherwise would be carried by currents. The unique “Turtle" design could, according to Lockheed studies, use either battery power in the smaller types or nuclear power in the larger models. It will be considerably less expensive to build than conventional submarines.