Explorer Chases a Sunken Gold Frontier Off Ghana's Coast

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1. Ownership and Share Structure Information

The information listed above was updated on the date this article was published and was compiled from information from the company and various other data providers.

Gold dredging is a form of "placer" mining — recovering loose gold that has weathered out of rock and collected in sediment, rather than blasting it out of hard rock. A dredge pulls up sand, gravel, and silt from a riverbed (or seabed) and runs it across a gravity-based recovery system like a sluice, trommel, or shaking table. Gold has a much higher density than most surrounding sediments, so these gravity-based systems can concentrate it as lighter material is removed.

The scale ranges enormously: a hobbyist "suction dredge" is basically a floating underwater vacuum run by one diver, while industrial bucket-line and cutter-suction dredges are barge-mounted operations moving thousands of tonnes a day.

"While many associate gold mining with the iconic gold rushes of the late 19th century, the truth is that the gold rush never truly ended," American dredging company U.S. Aqua Services noted on March 4. "Gold remains a valuable commodity, not only for jewelry and investment but also for use in electronics, aerospace, and medical technology. This makes its discovery just as appealing today as it was over a century ago." 

This is not deep-sea mining, where ships target seafloor massive sulfides (SMS), mineral deposits precipitated around hydrothermal vents at 1,500 to 4,100 meters depth. That process is a far more capital-intensive, technically unproven approach, according to a piece by Oliver Ashford, Jonathan Baines, Melissa Barbanell and Ke Wang for the World Resources Institute on July 23, 2025.

River/placer dredging targets free gold already concentrated by erosion in shallow water, using simple physical separation, without the environmental concerns or costs of crushing ore on the seabed and processing it topside.

Some advantages of dredging over deep-sea mining include its low capital cost, mobility, lack of need for chemical leaching if it is done responsibly (using gravity separation alone), and high efficiency at recovering coarse alluvial gold. It's also the dominant method for artisanal and small-scale miners because the barrier to entry is low, U.S. Aqua Services noted.

A Concentration in the Developing Tropics

Gold dredging is overwhelmingly concentrated in the developing tropics, because alluvial gold sits in loose near-surface sediment that can be worked with little more than a boat, a pump, and a sluice — a low barrier to entry that makes the activity widespread across sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America.

The Amazon basin remains one of the world's most active regions for alluvial gold mining, particularly among informal and illegal operators. Satellite observations by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) detected more than 37,000 hectares of new mining expansion across the Amazon in 2025, led by Brazil, Peru, and Guyana. Much of the riverside growth is dredge-driven — MAAP has documented 989 dredges in Peru's Loreto region since 2017, 841 of them on the Nanay River alone — and record gold prices are pushing operators into protected areas and Indigenous territories.

Enforcement is a running battle: authorities disabled 277 illegal dredges on Brazil's Madeira River in late 2025, only for operators to return within months.

The frontier is moving both geographically and technologically. The clearest geographic frontier is offshore, where submerged deposits are often the drowned extensions of onshore placers; the best-known active example is Nome, Alaska, where operators dredge gold from the shallow Bering Sea seafloor using sonar mapping and ROVs — a place with deep history, having once hosted the world's largest ocean-going bucket-ladder dredge, the Bima.

The Metals Co.

However, The Metals Co. (TMC:NASDAQ) focuses on deep-sea exploration. It is developing projects aimed at supplying critical minerals from polymetallic nodules found on the ocean floor for the energy, defense, manufacturing, and infrastructure industries. The company also said it is working to establish a circular supply chain by tracking, recovering, and recycling the metals it produces to support a long-term, sustainable resource model.

On July 20, TMC announced that it welcomed unanimous orders issued by the Seabed Disputes Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea prescribing provisional measures to safeguard the rights of the company's subsidiaries, Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI) and Tonga Offshore Mining Limited (TOML), in their legal proceedings against the International Seabed Authority.

According to the company, the chamber unanimously determined that NORI and TOML have plausible rights to due process and fair treatment, and that those rights face a real and imminent risk of irreparable harm before a final ruling is issued. The Chamber directed the ISA to comply with the applicable legal framework, including due process requirements, and to provide both contractors with sufficient information and procedural clarity regarding the non-compliance inquiries so they can respond meaningfully within a reasonable timeframe. It also ordered the ISA to follow the applicable legal framework when reviewing NORI's request to extend its exploration contract, while instructing all parties to cooperate and avoid actions that could intensify the disputes.

"Contractors like NORI and TOML, who have together spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the promise of a fair regulatory framework, should be informed of the factual and legal basis of any non-compliance inquiries, understand the procedure being applied, and receive a meaningful opportunity to respond," said Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Gerard Barron. "The chamber has now unanimously confirmed that those protections are not merely aspirational principles but legal rights deserving of protection."

TMC said the rulings are the first contentious decisions issued by the Seabed Disputes Chamber under Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and represent an important milestone in the development of the international legal framework governing seabed mineral resources.

On May 28, the Vancouver-based company announced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had formally certified its USA B exploration license application. According to TMC, the license area spans roughly 122,000 square kilometers of seabed and is estimated to contain approximately 1.02 billion tonnes of polymetallic nodules, based on the company's August 2025 Technical Report Summary. TMC also said it continues advancing a combined application covering both an exploration license and a commercial recovery permit for its USA A project area.

Following the NOAA certification, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Matthew O'Keefe described the development as "positive" in a May 28 research note. O'Keefe said, "Both applications by TMC have now been certified compliant and are firmly in the new permitting process that is showing steady progress," while maintaining a Speculative Buy rating and a 12-month price target of US$9 per share.

Alliance Global Partners analyst Jake Sekelsky reiterated a Buy rating on May 15 with a US$12.25 price target. Sekelsky wrote, "We believe over a decade of data collection, environmental studies, and permitting efforts are beginning to reach the finish line and expect a re-rating in shares as final hurdles are cleared on the road to production over the next 18 months." He said TMC's first-quarter 2026 results highlighted continued progress on permitting and commercialization, with the company targeting initial seabed nodule production by the end of 2027.

Sekelsky also noted that TMC is evaluating Brownsville, Texas, as the site of a potential nodule processing facility that could integrate both production and processing in the U.S. He added, "A Pre-Feasibility (Study) is currently underway for a 12 Mtpa (million tonnes per annum) facility and is contingent upon government funding becoming available, which we view as highly likely." Sekelsky continued, "Given that evaluation of this processing option is in the early stages of planning, we continue to assume TMC employs the toll milling strategy for modeling purposes and view the potential development of in-house processing as upside to our base case scenario."

Further analyst opinion on the company has been mixed over the past year, but skews bullish among the covering brokerages, according to MarketBeat. The most recent action came from Weiss Ratings on July 17, 2026, which reiterated a Sell (D-). Before that, the tone was largely positive: Maxim Group Analyst Tate Sullivan initiated coverage with a Buy and a US$10 target on June 4, 2026, implying a 63.4% upside; HC Wainwright Analyst Heiko Ihle reiterated a Buy with a US$11.75 target on June 2, 2026, implying an 81.7% upside; and Wedbush Analyst Sam Brandeis raised the firm's Outperform target from US$8 to US$10 on May 4, 2026, implying an 85.2% upside.

¹Company insiders and management own about 14% of The Metals Company, strategic corporate investors hold approximately 33%, and institutional investors account for another 14%, with the remainder owned by retail shareholders. The company has a market capitalization of about US$1.59 billion, approximately 433.22 million shares outstanding, and its shares have traded between US$3.40 and US$11.35 over the past 52 weeks.

DEME Group NV

Belgian marine engineering and contracting company DEME Group NV (DEME:BR) specializes in complex offshore and waterborne infrastructure. Building on roughly 150 years of history, the company dredges harbors and shipping channels, reclaims land from the sea, builds ports and coastal defenses, and installs the foundations, turbines, cables, and substations behind offshore wind farms, while its environmental arm remediates polluted soils, sediments, and water. Its offshore energy business handles the full lifecycle of offshore wind — engineering, procurement, construction, and installation, plus operations, maintenance, repair, and decommissioning — and it is also positioning in newer frontiers such as green hydrogen and deep-sea mineral harvesting through its concessions unit.

Geographically, DEME works across six continents, with recent project execution spanning the US, Taiwan, and Europe, and its environmental projects concentrated mainly in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Instead of the glitter of gold and other important minerals, it is focused on the global build-out of offshore wind energy and the ongoing worldwide demand for dredging, land reclamation, and coastal protection as ports expand and shorelines are defended against erosion and rising seas. Those drivers underpinned a record 2025, with turnover of about €4.2 billion and EBITDA above €930 million (a 22.4% margin), according to a report by Dredgewire, marking the company's 150th anniversary.

On July 20, DEME announced that it had secured a substantial contract to transport and install foundations for the first phase of the Zeevonk offshore wind project in the Netherlands. The approximately 1-gigawatt project is jointly owned by Vattenfall and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners through its Energy Investment Fund I and is planned for the Dutch North Sea, about 63 to 84 kilometers offshore from Bergen aan Zee. The project remains subject to a final investment decision, with offshore construction expected to begin in 2028.

Under the agreement, DEME will provide intermediate transport of monopiles, marshaling services for primary and secondary steel, transport and installation of 69 monopile foundations, and installation of a filter layer for scour protection. The company said it will deploy several vessels from its fleet, including the floating installation vessel Orion for monopile installation, along with a jack-up installation vessel for secondary steel work and a fallpipe vessel for scour protection.

Felix Würtenberger, CEO of Zeevonk, said, "Developing a project of this scale requires strong partnerships and deep offshore expertise. DEME has a proven track record in offshore wind, and we are pleased to welcome them to Zeevonk."

The company said the award further strengthens its position as a leading offshore wind contractor and supports the continued expansion of renewable energy infrastructure in Europe. DEME added that it has built an extensive global track record in offshore wind foundation and infrastructure installation since 2000, contributing to the development of large-scale renewable energy projects worldwide.

According to MarketScreener, analyst sentiment toward DEME Group is broadly bullish, carrying a consensus Buy rating with roughly five Buys and two Holds among seven covering analysts. The average 12-month price target is near €217, ranging from a low of €182.25 to a high of €240. Among the most recent actions, Kepler Cheuvreux rated the stock Buy with a €240.00 price target on July 2, 2026; KBC Securities rated it Buy with a €240.00 target on May 29, 2026; ING rated it Hold with a €182.25 target on April 10, 2026; and Berenberg rated it Buy with a €235.00 target on March 5, 2026.

¹The company's market cap is €4.19 billion with 25.23 million shares outstanding. It trades in a 52-week range of €121.20 and €206.25.

About 74% of the company is held by strategic corporate entities, and about 6% is held by institutions. The rest is retail.

GoldCoast Resource Corp.: Opening a New Phase in Gold Dredging

But only one company, GoldCoast Resource Corp. (GCR:CSE), is opening a new phase in gold exploration by using dredging to develop one of the last unexplored gold frontiers in the world through its 100%-owned reconnaissance license covering roughly 10,000 square kilometers along about 300 kilometers of Ghana's shallow continental shelf. According to a July 30 report by Ocean Mining News, that's about 53% of the country's offshore coastline and "no other company holds ground like it."

The company's chairman and largest shareholder is Sir Samuel Esson Jonah, who is widely recognized for transforming Ashanti Goldfields, which later became a part of global producer AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (AU:NYSE; ANG:JSE; AGG:ASX; AGD:LSE). According to the company, Jonah owns 17,743,012 shares of GoldCoast, representing 25.6% of the 69,300,403 shares outstanding, while directors and officers collectively control 56.17% of the company's outstanding shares, Ocean Mining News said. He joined Ashanti Goldfields in 1979 before being appointed chief executive in 1986. During his tenure, the company's annual gold production increased from roughly 240,000 ounces to more than 1.6 million ounces, as the business expanded from a single mining operation into a multinational producer.

GoldCoast said growing demand for critical minerals has increased interest in seabed resources, although deep-sea mining remains controversial, and no country has yet established a fully operational commercial deep-sea mining industry.

"It's a very unique story," GoldCoast Chief Executive Officer Michael Nikiforuk said of his company. "That's one of the other reasons I believe we will float to the top, no pun intended … we are a true unicorn. If I look at the thousands of companies out there, I do not know of another company that's coming to market with a project or story like ours."

The company has closed a definitive amalgamation agreement with a Canadian Securities Exchange-listed shell vehicle (PSYG:CSE) and expects to begin trading on the CSE under the ticker GCR soon.

According to GoldCoast, its placer deposits consist of naturally liberated "free gold," allowing the company to use conventional suction dredges instead of hard-rock mining methods.

Nikiforuk said, "We are not inventing a wheel here. We're utilizing off-the-shelf technology proven over decades and decades and decades as this industry has evolved." He added, "We are not drilling through hundreds and hundreds of meters of depth into this competent or hard host rock to determine the dimensions of our ore body. We do not have to pour concrete and put up steel and drive our resources through a definitive feasibility study . . . We're going to rent an existing dredge. That's how we initiate production."

Nikiforuk also highlighted Ghana's geology, stating, "Ghana is the only place on planet Earth where you have three major gold belts sitting right on the coastline, cut, drained, and banded by three major river systems and their tributaries."

He added, "It's such a unique setting, with the gold belts sitting right on the coastline, cut and drained by these forces as we move from a glacial maximum into a warming period that elevated ocean levels a hundred meters. All the paleo river channels that used to be above water are now underwater, and Ghana's present-day coastline was 30- 50 kms further out to sea."

The company said Ghana's status as Africa's largest gold producer, its extensive mineral endowment, political stability, and established mining regulations make it an attractive jurisdiction for resource development. It cited historical and recent sampling results that exceeded its projected economic cutoff grade and said its leadership team also includes former Ashanti Goldfields chief executive Sir Sam Jonah and veteran geologist Dr. R. J. Griffis.

GoldCoast has budgeted US$8.65 million for its 2026-2027 work program, allocating funding to airborne surveys, marine equipment and mapping, sampling, laboratory work, and corporate expenses.

The company said exploration is progressing through a four-phase program. The first phase consisted of airborne surveying using high-sensitivity magnetometers to identify magnetic heavy minerals that serve as indicators for nearby gold accumulations. The second phase will employ multibeam sonar, marine magnetometers, and seismic profiling capable of imaging up to 150 meters below the seafloor to build a three-dimensional geological model. The third phase will involve vibro-core drilling and clam-shell grab sampling to confirm mineralization at targets identified during the earlier stages.

GoldCoast also cited historical and recent sampling results supporting the project's potential. According to GoldCoast, a 2010 program conducted by Marine Mining Corp. near the Ankobra River returned 30 samples averaging 0.44 grams of gold per cubic meter, substantially exceeding the company's projected cutoff grade of 0.08 grams per cubic meter based on a US$3,000-per-ounce gold price. Beach sand samples averaged 0.535 grams per cubic meter, while samples from the Ankobra River and continental shelf averaged 0.492 grams per cubic meter. GoldCoast added that a separate 2026 preliminary sampling program near the Ezile River, about 35 kilometers east of the Ankobra River, recovered as many as 13 visible gold grains from individual five-liter beach sand samples and identified multiple gold-bearing sites spanning roughly 50 kilometers of coastline.

Near-term priorities include completing airborne coverage of the project area, advancing offshore mapping, and identifying priority sampling targets. The company plans to conduct pilot testing during 2027 before beginning nearshore contract dredging in 2028, a development schedule it said is substantially shorter than the typical 10- to 15-year timeline required to bring a conventional greenfield gold project into production.

GoldCoast describes the project as the only place on Earth where three major rivers — carrying gold-rich bedload eroded from the world-class Ashanti, Sefwi-Bibiani, and Asankrangwa gold belts over successive interglacial periods — converge on a shallow continental shelf, according to its investor presentation. Over the past 2.5 million years, a span that includes 17 interglacial cycles, roughly 400 to 600 vertical meters of oxidized gold-bearing bedrock in southwest Ghana has been eroded and deposited onto that shelf, the company said.

Griffis, GoldCoast's founder and senior vice president of exploration and author of "Gold Deposits of Ghana," estimates that the scale of that erosion points to an enormous offshore inventory. "The amount of gold that has been weathered away from the (SW) Ghana gold districts & carried to the Ocean by major rivers would suggest eroded inventory is likely in the order of ~200 million oz," he said.