June 24th, 2008 
News this morning is that Nautilus Mining has signed a 25 million dollar contract with Norway’s North Sea Shipping to provide a specialist mining support vessel for the Solwara-1 project in PNG. Evidence that Nautilus sees mining hydrothermal vents as profitable (and feasible) and movement ahead to commercial mining operations imminent.
Broadcast Spawn!
I was really drawn into this issue when I tracked back to your previous background post. Thanks for covering it so thoroughly!