Do people in nz dredge the sea like bearing sea gold. I’m guessing there would be some gold on the coast and at the bottom of like the clutha etc.
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interesting question , there are some parts of nzs west coast i would imagine seabed mining may be viable , but it would never get consent , Fiordland certainly has a spot id love to fly my dredge , i was shown a nugget a few years back from a guy who hired a boat and prospected with dive gear , it was thumb nail size and quite chunky. overall i think most gold would be very fine and requires specialised tables, i often wondered why when they dredged the buller river mouth for the boats to come and go, why the material was never run over gold mats , . I worked at Ross a few years back and remember a petition to stop sea bed mining there , im guessing it was gold just cant remember
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Doc crawl all through that area, a 6inch got thrown in there from a fishing boat 8 or 9 years ago and just dust found and doc caught up after a few days and they got nasty threats so quickly departed the area.
would be cool tho, orepuki and west coast would be awsome but the weather and sea would likely only permit a few weeks per year to give it a crack would need to live nearby to be worth it.
yeah i remember trying to get a good day to go surf casting , can be a long wait , then you just gotta drop tools and go, When you look at Ross for example there must be some good bits get washed out or eroded out to sea , geographically its not far at all from some of the known reefs to the sea
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Between the ocean always being rough. Those people nobody likes. And that fine gold is hard to catch to start with. Then add salt water. Makes everything more buoyant. I think you would be hard pressed to make money. Those guys in Alaska mostly find small to large nuggets. So if you know where the sea is calm and the nuggets are big. Giver.
I am pretty sure all the West coast beach claims only get fine gold. And only when the tides and currents are right. They uncover and cover the pay streaks with sand. That is why you can find gold from the ocean to the fault. As the West coast lifted to form the Alps. All the gold that was washed down the rivers went from ocean to dry ground. There is very rich parts and very poor parts. Just depended on how long it took and how far up the earth quake lifted the land.
If DOC would let you drive a D10 from Hoki to the fault and clear the trees. You could see the terraced effect. Or just buy a topo map. Probably easier.
Shafts. That’s what you need to start digging on the west coast. Way safer then the ocean. Haha
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I knew a bloke who owned a fair dunkum scow and planned to build a long sluice box on the deck and a large underwater suction dredge all controlled by a Derrick attached to the mast.
He was going to operate it at Coal Island as nuggets had been found there on the beach in the past.
That was back about 1984. I had the opportunity to be part of it but it never went ahead. The old scow just sat where it was until about five years ago when it was put on Trademe for a $1 reserve l think.
The new owner got it for about $1700 l understand, an Auckkand fellow. Most expensive boat trip he ever had as it is still where he managed to sail it to…a point 400 yards from where he started.
The idea was there though.
A have known of quite nice nuggets being found at the mouth of the Clutha River and Shag River so you just dont know what might lie in the sea off the mouth of some of these rivers.
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From memory I think the miner had some system that was operated by the waves
Also around the same time a company pegged of a large section of the west coast off shore and had a big ship doing sampling , seemly they had some bucked system that dropped into the sea floor , it never went ahead so presuming either the gold wasn’t there or it was in the too hard basket .
A few old timers have told me theres plenty of small nuggets at the mouth of my claim.
Anybody with a detector in the greymouth area is welcome to help yourself.
Bastard of a place to get to & could be all bullshit. Theory behind it is when the creek is in flood, the gold meets the swell & settles in the rocks.
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De Beers. They came & did it but nothing came of it.
Prospector looks for a gold bonanza on seabed | Otago Daily Times Online News
JW 
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Yea that them , be interesting to find out what they found .