在南非西部海岸的惊涛骇浪里,出没着几条奇怪的打渔船,它们的外形和普通的拖网渔轮完全一样。它们来回航行在海岸边,却从未撒网,只见从它们的尾部拖出一根长长的管子,一直通到海底。这些渔船在这儿捞取的不是美味的鱼虾,而是世界上最稀少的珍宝—金刚石。早在六十年代,就曾有人对这里的金刚石砂矿产生过兴趣。他们不惜耗资上千万英镑,在海边围海筑堤,并建造了巨大的挖掘船。经过十年的努力,不得不在损失几百万英镑的情况下,宣布这种开采方式是失败的,因为在海滨潮汐带的砂砾中所含的金刚石太少了,每立方米砂砾中仅含0.3克拉,所获产值根本不足以抵偿巨大的开支。时间过去了七年,正当人们认为在滨海砂矿中开采金刚石是一项得不偿失的事业时,一个名叫威廉· In the steep waves on the west coast of South Africa, a few weird fishing boats appear, exactly like ordinary trawlers. Sailing back and forth on the coast, they never cast their nets, and they dragged a long tube from their tail to the sea floor. The fishing boats here are not fishing for delicious fish and shrimp, but the world’s rarest jewel - diamonds. As early as the 1960s, there was once an interest in the diamond placer here. At a cost of tens of millions of pounds, they built embankments by the sea and built huge digging boats. After a decade of hard work, it has failed to declare the method of mining millions of pounds lost because the gravel in the seaside tidal zone contains too little diamond, with only 0.3 per cubic meter of gravel Carat, the output value received simply not enough to cover the huge expenses. Seven years after it was time to go by, just as it was thought that diamond mining in the coastal placer was a worthwhile undertaking, a man named William