De Beers launched its first diamond mining vessel off the Namaqualand coast in South Africa on Friday April 20. The operation is expected to produce up to 240,000 carats a year.
The ship, named Peace in Africa, costs an estimated $142 million and has an on-board diamond processing facility. The vessel also comes equipped with an undersea remote-controlled mining tool called a crawler that is capable of scouring the ocean floor for diamond-rich gravel.
De Beers is using the same crawler technology that it has already deployed off the Namibian coast.