Here is what I think about sea-mining in Nome.
We know there is only a 90-day window to get the gold each year, the short summer. Fortunately the sun shines 24 hrs/day then. The dredge and excavator rigs shown on the show are not sea-worthy, they must return to shore when a slight swell begins. So they work a lot less than 90 days per year. They dredge in 5 to 15 feet of water, for the most part.
The old books say, that gold is found along the shore for about 20 miles on either side of Nome.
So, what is really needed is a rig that stands on the bottom, with the operator cab above water, and above the 2-foot swell. A brief search yields the Hitachi Starfish. It can stand in 5 meters (16 ft) of water, and is designed to dig trenches for laying pipe under the sea floor.
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The excavator weighs 87 tons and has a 4 cubic meter bucket. They are made to order by a Hitachi dealer in Belgium. Of course ours would need a big sluice box to riffle out the gold, but that's just an engineering detail to be addressed when the RealCent team orders our new toy.
Our operating team would ideally be four guys, in two teams, working 12-hour shifts. The teams would switch out via a skiff that carries enough fuel to top off the digger every 12 hours.
So, if an excavator can make $100,000 per day (as the show said), and we work ours around the clock, we might get $200k/day. Our operation would work the entire 90-day window, only coming ashore once per week for maintenance, like greasing all the zerks. In fact, we might be able to extend the window for a week or so.
90 days times $200k is $18,000,000, in gold. Not bad for 3-months work.
I like the name "Goldfinger" for our new toy.