Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency implemented regulations on suction dredging in order to preserve the seabed habitat. Norton Sound is a protected salmon fishery. Like any other form of mining, dredging is heavily regulated by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (“DNR”) and the U.S. Gold dredging in Alaska is also legally complicated. For unlucky dredgers, weeks of dredging might result in barely any gold at all. In the meantime, the waters of the Norton Sound are icy cold, and visibility underwater near the seabed is almost nil. Suction dredging often requires the work of a suited diver, who operates an airlift on the seabed, sucking sediment up to a boat and into a mechanical sluice. Some sediments are rich with “paydirt,” but it is difficult to map profitable areas, and tidal forces or other geological activity might alter a rich location. The placer gold does not appear in veins on the seabed, the way it does in rock formations on dry land. The show follows various groups of colorful characters dredging the waters near Nome. This relatively obscure method of mineral extraction was pushed into the spotlight in 2012, when the Discovery Channel began airing the reality TV show Bering Sea Gold. They dredge frantically during the four months of the year that low ice levels permit such work. For decades people have been dredging up sediment from the seabed, sluicing it, and collecting gold and other minerals. Several waterways drain into Norton Sound off the Seward Peninsula, depositing fine quantities of gold into the shallow waters near the coast. They have also been finding placer gold (i.e., unrefined gold) in the seabed of Norton Sound, an inlet of the Bering Sea.
Prospectors and miners have been finding gold deposits in the hills and creek beds around Nome for over a century. Nome has been the epicenter of gold mining in Alaska since the Alaska Gold Rush blasted off in 1898.
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