It's so hot, mate. That's crazy. Wow, guys. This is the most dangerous mining on earth. This is the most dangerous gold mining on earth. These guys are mining not just underground, but under the ocean floor. And they're doing it with DIY rigs. It's like a leaf, guys. A large chunk of steel. There's no oxygen tanks, no safety teams, just [music] a thin plastic hose pumping air from an unattended air compressor hundreds of meters away on a beach. No one else is down here, just me. Today, we're following the entire process from the underwater pits to the beach side processing to the final nuggets of gold. I've been doing a lot of these gold mining videos. That was a decent chunk of change right there. And by the end of this video, we're going to answer the only question that matters. Has he Does he ever seen or heard of somebody die? >> This one. >> After a full day risking their lives in the world's most dangerous gold mine, how many grams of gold did these [music] guys actually get? And how much money did they walk away with? >> [music] >> The day starts out on motorbikes. >> [music] >> Oh, that's a good view. Divers roll in from all over the village, and they head straight for the gear pile. There's no stuffing around. All right, good morning, people. Welcome to the mining camps of the Philippines. We're just firing up right now. We've got these guys gearing up. There's no pro setup here. There's no wet suits, no scuba tanks, no fancy dive computers. >> Believe the magic leaf is this water giving the goggles so they don't fog up. >> Just old clothes. >> Standard shirts, standard pants. There ain't no wet suits around here. We got these compressors just kicking off. And I'm dying of war of compressors. Cuz if those things go out, you go out. >> Next comes the weight belt. These aren't your normal dive weights. It's basically one giant lump of steel welded together and then tied up with old hosing. It has a fabric strap to clip around your back and the whole thing just hangs right off the front of your body. >> Can I see? >> 8 kilos at least. >> Next up are the strapped up coconut shells. >> The coconut scoops? >> scoops that they attach to their hands because apparently, if you're mining gold in the ocean, a shovel is not really the right tool for the job. These guys need to be able to dig through coral and rubble without completely destroying their hands. Then comes the air hose. They wrap these around their waists, tie them in odd loops, and eventually tuck it around their shoulder. This they're going to bite down on with their back teeth. There is no regulator here. No mouthpiece, no gauge. The compressor on the beach is just blasting air straight down that hose into your mouth and trust me, it kicks in with force. >> Guys, this Oh my gosh, it's got pressure. Bro, that is crazy. No no no regulator, nothing. Wow, that has got force. I was thinking I could give this a go, but that might be tough. >> So, the only thing regulating the air is your teeth. To breathe, you need to bite down on the exhale, but then loosen your jaw just enough on the inhale so that the air can blast in while somehow trying not to suck in copious amounts of seawater into your lungs. Way harder than it sounds, trust me. >> So hot, man. >> The final touch, some magic leaf. It's perfect go-to for anti-fog, apparently. No toothpaste around here. >> It's like a leaf, guys. >> They rub it inside and outside of the goggles to anti-fog, and that's it. >> And it works really well, huh? >> Old clothes, steel weights, coconut shell scoops, plastic clothes, and a leaf. That's the setup they're trusting their lives with. >> Guys, when I'm traveling on these shoots, I'm spending just a stupid amount of time just sitting around on boats, and planes, waiting at airports, you name it. And almost all of that time, I'm gaming on my phone. 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There's even a referral code within the app so that if somebody signs up through your link, you can get an extra reward, [music] too. Try out Freecash by clicking the link below or scanning the QR code on screen and get a $10 bonus on the first offer that you start. While the divers are getting ready, the crew on shore is setting up the sluices. They start assembling everything on the beach, hammering together small wooden A-frames, checking the boards. They carefully place this rubber-backed carpet matting into the ramp. This is key. We'll get to it. Ensuring that there's always an overlap. And the whole setup gets carried into the shallows. The high point leans out towards the ocean, and they let the slope lead down towards the beach. All right, guys. I'm not a like high-tech gold expert, but I've seen sort of local community gold mining home brew DIY stuff like this in a whole bunch of different areas around the world. And these guys are setting up what looks to me to be a really decent sluice box. This carpet matting is rubberized on the bottom. It's got a rubber layer, and they've been really careful to ensure that it is the perfect width, that the rubber matting overlaps, and that any gold particles are not going to sneak down the side or slip out the side of the the sluice box here. Wetting everything down. They've got a really nice like large gravel filter at the top. There is I mean, there must be 100 people just on this section of beach right now, and this continues all the way up. The scale here is kind of mind-blowing. All of it set against some of the prettiest country you'll ever see. Palm tree jungle, blue water, perfect tropical beaches. And stretching through all of it are these massive, sprawling, highly illegal, improvised gold mines. All right, guys. We're not going to go deep. These guys are already heading in. They wasted absolutely no time. This is insanely dangerous. They're heading 40 ft deep once they're in the sinkhole, about 15-20 ft deep when they're doing like the processing down in this kind of underground mining camp that they have. But, uh, I ain't doing any of that noise. My first time in Huacaya. So, we're going to try to check it out from the surface level, see what footage we can get. Wow. >> The divers begin the walk out to the main mine site. It's almost like a kind of space walk, half hopping, half walking across the bottom of the ocean. And then you see it. This giant black sinkhole dropping into just nothingness. There's ladders mounted down the side. Before the descent into the hole, they manage the lines, tuck loose hose under rocks, lay massive loops of line, and try and get everything as close to organized and tangle-free as possible. Then they sink into the pits. And it kind of hits you how serious this operation is. It's not a few guys scraping sand in the shallows. It's an underwater open pit mine. The first job is excavation. Before they can start sacking the stuff that they're actually after, the pit has to be made workable. That means digging deeper and clearing out rocks and coral and heavy rubble. To do that, we have one of the strangest pieces of gear I've ever seen. It's this hot-air balloon-looking underwater lifting device. This massive rubber drum half suspended and carrying a large rubber basket. The divers drag it into position and then just start loading it by hand. Big rocks, broken coral, heavy chunks from the bottom of the pit, anything that's not the fine dusty sand that we're after. They load it until it's basically overflowing, just 4 or 500 kilos of stone. And then they take the same air hoses they're breathing out of and inflate the drum. >> [music] >> As it fills with air, it becomes buoyant enough to move. >> [music] >> They get underneath it, haul it on out of the hole, mount it across their shoulders, and then just spacewalk that beast of a rock load out of the sinkhole. [music] >> [music] >> They haul it across the ocean floor and dump it far enough away that it's not going to mess anything up. And that's just one load. An entire day is actually spent clearing rocks just like this. With the big rocks cleared, it's time to start stacking the good stuff. What these guys are really after is that fine sediment that lines the side of this pit and sits at the bottom of it. That is where the gold flakes are holding. And this is where the coconut scoops come in. The divers start by scraping and kind of wafting away at the fine sand that lines the pit. The entire thing fills with sediment and you can barely see anything. But once it settles, what's at the bottom of the pit is the good stuff. And we start collecting it into these large white sacks. Scooping up all the fine sand, dirt, and small amounts of rubble that have made it in there with large aluminum scoops. Each bag is packed, tied off tight, and then carried up the ladder and out of the sinkhole. You've got one or two guys filling up sacks non-stop, with the other guys doing the heavy lifting. Just shouldering bag after bag and climbing up the ladder. Everything is kept organized. The stacks are neatly loaded into a waiting point. And here is where it gets just stupid cool. They must be just collecting an immense amount of sediment. I have no idea how they get it from the depths up here. I imagine they have some kind of flotation that they can feel to help haul all that rubble because I was under the impression or just the idea that they would just ferry it in and out, but I guess it's just they load up one huge load, process it in one go. That's my best guess anyway. Forget the underwater air balloon. What's waiting for these guys is this kind of ridiculous suspended underwater wheelbarrow cross blimp thing. >> [music] >> I love it. >> [music] >> It's this wooden cart frame with two or three giant air barrels strapped to the top. And they just pack this thing with sack after sack until it's carrying hundreds, maybe thousands of kilos of sediment. Then they tie it tight, fill those barrels with more air, and suddenly that whole load becomes this weird underwater half-suspended wheelbarrow thing. And just one guy is able to move a ridiculous amount of sacks. They haul it off slowly, step by step. The size and scale of some of these underwater carts is kind of crazy. From the drone, I spotted setups [music] with eight to 10 suspension barrels and five or six divers having to move it at once. What makes this job so dangerous isn't a single thing. It's the stack. Every part of this system has a failure point that can kill you. First, there's the tunnel itself. These guys aren't just swimming around the seafloor, they're digging under it, which means those walls can cave in or rocks can fall down and just knock you clean out. >> Has he Does he ever seen or heard of somebody die? >> Not on the beginning of the bottom. The line in the middle of the line of the bottom. He got dizzy because of the line. His dad >> Wow. >> His dad died from here, from diving. Got drenched by a big rock. >> Wow. In the hole? >> Oh, in the hole. >> Down here, something goes wrong, there's no quick escape. It's not like there's supports or braces on the tunnel walls, it's just a hole. Then there's the air. Every diver is breathing through a hose that runs hundreds and hundreds of meters back to some homemade compressor on the beach. There's nobody out there watching it. It's just us. The belt snaps, the motor dies, or if someone just trips on that line. Guys, you got to be pretty careful on this beach. Not to step on someone's air hose. You know what I mean? The diver has maybe 30, 40 seconds to ditch the giant steel weight around his waist and get to the surface. There's no backup tanks, no bailout bottle, no safety diver, nothing. Let's hope he didn't just exhale. Even when the air is flowing, it can kill you. Some of these setups have badly constructed intakes and exhaust systems. The hose can start feeding small amounts of those fumes back [music] into the clean air. If carbon dioxide mixes with your intake, it doesn't give you much warning. You get dizzy, get weak, and underwater, that's enough for a blackout. Man, these guys have been under there for a minute. Like, it's got to be an hour since they went down. Then, there's the decompression sickness. I'm not an expert on my dive tables, but what I do know that these guys are spending 4 to 5 hours 40 to 50 ft deep. And then they walk straight back out for lunch before going back in for the evening shift. That ain't exactly by the book. Come up too fast and that compressed gas is turning into bubbles inside your blood tissue. Sometimes, it's dramatic. It blocks blood flow to your brain, lungs, or heart, and you collapse right there. Other times, it stacks up more slowly. Dive after dive, shift after shift, little hits to the brain, little hits to the lungs, damage that's building before anyone even notices. And once the dive's over, then you have to process the gold. And this is where the really insidious stuff comes in. These miners use mercury to bind the tiny flakes of gold together and they sit in these mercury-laden pits to pan the gold with water. They swirl large amounts of mercury around in these little plastic containers >> [music] >> and then tip that same water into the same pit they're all sitting in. >> You can see with all the other risks that these guys take out back, it could easily be overlooked. But, when you see kids just playing around in the mercury pools all day, um you'd think like it probably ain't great for your health, not great for your future. >> Mercury is not normal. It's one of the most toxic heavy metals on Earth. It attacks the brain, the nervous system, the kidneys, and it builds up in your body quickly over time. This is not an easy way to make a living. Once the cutter is grounded, it's processing time. >> [music] >> It's time for the shore crew to do their job. >> The first loads. >> It's time to find that gold. And this process is genius. >> All right, guys. So, that sort of fine sediment is going to get washed through, as you can see. And because the gold particles are heavy, essentially the gold is going to get stuck in the matting, whereas the thicker, heavier rocks or the bigger rocks that we're not interested in, that just gets thrown to the side here. And at the end of the day, all these mats are going to be carefully panned in a bucket like that. So, right now we're just putting through hundreds and hundreds of kilos of just rubble and sand across this sluice box. And what's left in these mats is gold, literally gold. Guys, there's real technique to what these guys are doing. Like, if you're watching then they're constantly monitoring to make sure that they're getting just the right amount of water flow. If it's too fast, the gold particles are just going to be washed away with everything else and then back up in this ocean. But, with just enough current, the gold particles are heavy enough to settle into this this carpet, this [music] floor matting that they have on the bottom of these sluice machines, and then they will get trapped within the [music] fibers. Again, they're constantly just watching, making sure they're getting just enough of that bouncing across of the pebbles, but slow enough that the gold will settle into the carpet. It's a good amount of technique. These guys are decent at it. Very good at it, I should say. I have no idea what I'm doing. By the end of a full day sluicing and underwater mining, we've moved thousands [music] and thousands of kilos of ocean floor and reduced it down to just one bucket of the heaviest sediment. Maybe 40 kilos of the densest stuff pulled out of that giant sinkhole, but we're not done. We're not close to done to reducing [music] this down. All right, guys. These are the mats straight off the sluices, and look at all that thick, fine sediment. I mean, that stuff >> [music] >> is going to be filled with gold. And when you see the way these guys collect it under the ocean, essentially what they're doing is like trying to waft this sort of light, airy sand, these tiny flakes of gold into those bags. So, they're all filled with that really, really prime sediment. Because inside that one bucket are tiny, tiny flakes of gold. And we still have to make sure how much these guys are going to make from this day of risking their lives on the ocean floor. All right, guys. So, this guy's just testing the samples of the loads that they're pulling in. He's kind of panning it out in this shovel, in the shovel head. And I I looks to me that's a decent amount of gold just sitting there. This is where mercury comes in. Everything is going to happen inside these shallow concrete pits that the various mining teams have built next to the dive house. The water here is filled with dirty mercury-laced water. Crazy. All right, guys. It is that time again, panning time. We got the kids. We got some of the divers taking a break. We got to sieve through this massive amount of already sluiced sediment that we've been bringing out from the ocean there. It's round and round and round until we're left with just the heaviest particles, and then those heaviest particles are going to be heading into this Tupperware container just absolutely loaded with mercury, the good stuff. Great for your health. Give it a bit of a twirl, and that gold will bind right to it. And the idea is pretty simple. If anything spills, it doesn't disappear into the sand and the rocks. It's going to stay inside this tank. Kind of a good idea in principle, but I can't imagine it's the best for your health. Kids are playing in this stuff all [music] day long. But, here's how the process goes down. This panning technique is like nothing I've ever seen. Usually, everywhere else I've seen it in the world, they use the same sort of wooden pan I've seen elsewhere. But, instead of a kind of rocking motion, they're sort of spinning it around and using that centrifugal force to kind of float the lighter dusty particles off the end and hopefully be left with just the heavier gold particles and none of the the sand. Super interesting technique. And yeah, pretty good idea to have this kind of float box here to make it work. And they do this endlessly, just spinning and spinning. And then finally, they'll dump what's left into a small plastic Tupperware container. Inside that container is copious amounts of mercury, this thick liquidy substance. So, when they mix it in, there's mercury in here already. >> Oh. Oh, yeah. And they have everything inside. >> Yeah. And they'll spin the entire thing hard, tumbling it over and over so that the mercury rolls through every bit of that sediment. And it grabs onto the tiny gold flakes and pulls them together into this heavy silver slob. Finally, out comes a cloth, basically this bandana. The mercury holding the gold flakes goes in and they twist it tighter and tighter. Liquid [music] mercury squeezes out through the fabric, but the gold is bound inside. It stays trapped. And they keep twisting [music] until what's left is this tiny little silver nugget of mercury holding gold. This is what they've risked their lives for. I don't know if you guys just saw that, but those guys were hauling off what looked to me to be pretty decent chunk of gold and our mercury. I mean, it was close to a centimeter across. I'm sure some of that will burn away, but trust me, I've been doing a lot of these gold mining videos. That was a decent chunk of change right there. There's a lot of gold in these waters. It is pretty. There's just something crazy about this setup, like this constant hum of the compressors off this mountainside, these hose lines just snaking their way down this entire beach side, and then all of that coming out of this Filipino jungle, this beautiful jungle. And I mean, this place is gorgeous. You shove your head in this ocean just anywhere along this beach and it's like putting it into an aquarium. It is beautiful. All that being said, I don't really feel like these guys are doing too much environmental damage. They really are on this one stretch of beach that has gold in it, and they're not really disturbing anything else. It's maybe maximum a 1 km strip and these small independent miners, you know, it's not like some giant mega evil corp came in here and destroyed some marine park. So, before you guys get all up in arms, these guys are just trying to make a living, all right? And I really don't feel like they're hurting too much stuff. Philippines has a lot of coastline. >> At today's price, that one consolidated nugget in his hand is worth more than a thousand dollars. >> That is a good chunk of change. Yeah. Well done, sir. >> Sure. These guys might be risking their lives every single day, but what they built is this genius system that allows them to process [music] staggering amounts of sediment every single day. And at this point, they're basically printing money in paradise. >> You got You got gold? How much gold you got? >> No gold. >> No? >> Nothing. Zero. [laughter] Zero gold. >> Oh, no.