Diamond Mining

There is pipe mining, alluvial mining and coastal mining.

Alluvial diamonds are diamond extracted from deposits of sand, gravel, clay with water deposits.  Places would be riverbeds, ocean floors, beaches, shorelines and etc.  24% of total rough diamonds are from alluvial minings.  10% from industrial mining methods and 14% through small scale informal digging.

Alluvial deposits are in the African counties, Venezuela, Brazil and Liberia.

Even alluvial mines require high investments and government regulations. Alluvial mining requires a lot of soil and material to be removed, washed and screened for diamonds. The three most famous Alluvial mines are Namibia, Angola, and South Africa.

Marine and Coastal Mining
Diamonds are washed out to sea from rivers and then pushed back and along the coast by tidal and marine action.  The deposits get poorer further along the coast away from the mouth of the river.

Most diamonds take on a transparent green color coating over a very long period of time from the ground river due from radiation.  During the life span of a river with diamond deposits, rivers have high energy resulting from flash flooding that spread the alluvial deposits both laterally along the coast and great distance such as the Namibian coast which make up the world's richest diamond field.  The highest quality crystals have been concentrated by the rigors of transport, so 95% of Namibian coastal diamonds are of gem quality.