Alaska’s ‘Bering Sea Gold’ and ‘Gold Rush’

Chloe Larkin – 

The modern-day get rich quick possibility seen on the Discovery Channel’s Alaska shows like Gold Rush and Bering Sea Gold have sparked interest from people thinking about trying their hand at mining for the precious metal the way it’s done on TV.

While Alaska seems to offer plenty of this shiny metal for the harvesting, it’s much more entailed than just going to the state and mining than meets the eye, warns the state of Alaska officials.

In the early part of the 20th century, a gold rush took place as word spread of the gold just lying in the river basins and on the shores of the Bering Sea.

During this time Nome, Alaska’s population multiplied with prospective miners along with gambling joints, saloons and prostitutes, according to the Alaskan Dispatch.

The instant money coming out of the ground in the form of gold brought all kinds of criminal activity to the area as people put up a tent city to live in. This is not an occasion the state wants to duplicate with a modern-day gold rush.

The Alaskan Department of Natural Resources spells this out for the prospective modern-day gold miner who plans on making their way to the areas in the state, like the shores of the Bering Sea, where gold is found.

The homepage for this department has a disclaimer redirecting anyone with the thoughts of mining off the shores of Nome. It says that there are no leases for mining available in the area now with none expected to become available until the ones in place now expire in 2021.

Phone calls come in at the rate of a couple a dozen a day from TV viewers, who have seen one of the gold mining shows wanting some more information on opening their own claim.

They’re told the same thing, the last leases were given out in the fall of 2011 and probably won’t happen again until they expire in another 10 years.

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Ship breaking in Bangladesh – The graveyard of giants

gCaptain – 

hip breaking in Bangladesh started back in 1960 when the Bay of Bengal was struck by a cyclone, which left a giant cargo ship beached near the sea shore of Fauzdarhat near Chittagong.

The ship owners abandoned the wreck, and local metal workers slowly began to scrounge it for scrap metal and material.

In 1974, a salvaged Pakistani navy vessel, which was sunk during the Bangladeshi liberation war, was scrapped by Karnafully Metal Works.

These two incidences are considered to be the beginning of the ship breaking industry in Bangladesh. The ship breaking industry gradually grew since then, and by the mid 80s Bangladesh had become one of the major ship breaking nations in the world.

Some of the world’s largest decommissioned ships are today scraped at the shores north of Chittagong, which is the second largest city and major sea port in the country.

Environmental policies and laws were not enforced, labour salaries were among the lowest in the world and there were no standards for occupational health and labour safety.

Obviously there were plenty of opportunities to exploit people and the environment when moving forward with the ship breaking business.

Ship breaking on the beach, which already at that time was prohibited in most countries, could be done in Bangladesh without any concern.

Poverty and millions of people without education were looking for livelihood opportunities.

They provided cheap and exploitable human man power needed for the ship breaking industry. No major investments were required for engaging in ship breaking.

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