792 
Mr. Petty. You indicated as I walked in, in one of your comments: 
that we couldn’t hope to recover gold in paying quantities. Does that 
apply to any particular area or in general ? 
Mr. Furse. In general, I think that is a correct statement and this, 
of course, is not gold from the sea floor but rather gold from the 
surficial deposits, the manganese nodules, because the gold appears to 
be in there at very low levels in any of the some 30,000 specimens that 
we have examined. 
Mr. Peniy. Of course, there are areas where there is considerable 
gold. I am thinking particularly of Gold Beach, Oreg., where during 
periods of the depression in the nineties I understand that they were 
able to pan that beach sand and make about a dollar a day which was 
rather satisfactory for those days considering the value of the dollar 
and the shortage of money. 
Mr. Fiirsn. Yes, sir. 
I was trying to distinguish this type of deposit from the modules. 
Those are the placer deposits and they are being explored. There 1s: 
considerable interest in the placer deposits but they should be distin- 
euished from these deep ocean floor surficial deposits to which we are 
addressing our current effort. . 
Mr. Penuy. I think the placer deposits offer real possibilities. I 
talked to a man once who had gone out in the early days looking for 
gold and had encountered a certain storm situation which apparently 
took the sand away and left a beach that looked like sheer gold. 
T thought it was probably fool’s gold or something because he didn’t 
believe that it could be that way and then after the change of tide and 
the change in the storm conditions it disappeared. 
There is an awful lot of gold there if you have the right kind of 
dredge to get it, 1am sure. 
Mr. Fuirsr. This effort is under way by other companies and 
whether it will be economically feasible is yet to be seen. 
Mr. Petry. I imagine off Nome the conditions are that way, too, 
and there will be possibilities of getting gold where originally they 
had, of course, the tremendous gold discoveries and recoveries. I guess 
that is where the ton of gold first came from in Alaska that caused 
such a gold rush and really developed the entire Northwest. 
Mr. Furesr. That is the area where they are concentrating, sir. 
Mr. Petry. Thank you very much, 
Again, I want to say I am sorry that I didn’t get here in time to 
hear you and I will look forward to your prepared statement at a 
later date. 
Mr. Lennon. Fhank you, sir. 
Mr. Downtna. May Task a question? 
Mr. Lennon. Mr. Downing. 
Mr. Downtne. Mr. Flipse, do you have any idea of what the extent 
of the mineral deposit is on Blake Plateau? 
Mr. Fripsr. We have an idea which is probably somewhat inac- 
curate. We have looked at a small area and studied it in depth where 
there is aproximately 600,000 tons of this material readily available, 
in an excellent topographic area, in depths of just under 3,000 feet, 
and this is the area where we expect to conduct our prototype test. 
If you include the pavements and so on there are probably in. the 
