[MUSIC PLAYING]
The third and last mining area we went to
was the famous area of Elahera, where many
large famous sapphires have come out of.
We saw both traditional pit mining and mechanized mining
in Elahera.
We are near Elahera, Sri Lanka.
And we are at a small mechanized mining operation for sapphires.
And what's happening here at the moment
is there is a natural water supply, a stream,
that basically they tap into.
And they put the water in these reservoirs.
And then they use the water to run
their sluice and their trommel, separating the sapphire
from the various other rocks and from the soil.
Now at the moment, the water level has run down a bit far.
And they're getting primarily mud mixed with water.
And that is not that beneficial for using in the sluice
to separate the sapphires from the gravel and the soil.
So what he's trying to do at the moment
is use this backhoe to remove a lot of the mud,
and be left with more water that they
can run through the sluice.
So while they were removing the mud from the water
and trying to get the water supply in a state
where they could use it for washing,
the operation with the sluice at this mine was at a standstill.
They weren't able to do any processing of their gravels
at this point.
What they were doing was loading up
some of this material that was kind
of in a semi-mud, semi-water state for removal,
and also for some of the material
to be removed by truck to other areas for washing
and processing.
Other sluices in the area that were
able to have a sufficient water supply to wash the gravels.
One of these areas was right by an extremely lush rice paddy.
Just a beautiful intense green color.
The water supply was in a state that they
could utilize it to wash the gemstones with.
In this area, what was interesting
was that clouds were coming in.
And it looked like rain was going to come again.
In the meantime, they were using water cannons to wash the mud,
wash the gravel through the grating.
This is a standard starting procedure for the sluice.
You can see some of the larger rocks
are trapped by the grating.
And then the gravel is washed through.
The material, once it was dumped,
was being loaded up into the trucks
so that it could be moved directly to the sluice
by a backhoe.
Most of the prior load had been washed.
You see some of the mud and gravel remaining.
But the water cannons are doing a pretty good job
of blasting that material through.
And of course they had some rain to help them also,
but not so heavy that they had to stop the operation.
Now at this point, the backhoe has just about
loaded up the truck with as much of the gravel and mud
that it needs for a load, to dump into the sluice.
And it's backed up to the sluice,
and then dumped into the area where the grating is,
and the water cannon.
So now the process starts again.
The water cannons are blasting the material,
pushing much of it down through the grating.
And then the larger rocks with this load
are being loaded into a basket by hand,
and removed out of the sluice.
So it does not block the grating and allows a better flow
of the gravel through the grating.
With this particular sluice, a lot of it
was covered as the material was washed through.
And you can see the dumping stage.
And then they're hoping that in the rifling of the sluice,
they will find the sapphires trapped.
So they're removing the top, seeing the material that's
being washed over-- the rate and the speed of the water flow.
And you can see the water moving across these rifled areas.
This gentleman is digging into the rifled area
and bringing up some of the gravel.
At the end of the day, once the water
is finished washing over the sluice,
they will stop the operation.
And then they will remove all of the gravels trapped
in the rifling-- a couple times a day
or more, if there is a lot of material being washed.
And we can see the constant movement
of the water over the rifling, or the grooves,
with the excess mud and lighter material being dumped out.