Hello Michael
Thank you for your message and all of us here at Dive The World appreciate your concerns. Yes, the mine has been given permission to extract and will have a lifespan of about 8 years. However, the effects of the mine should not be felt by the marine environment, the coastal and fishing communities or the diving and tourism industry. Orignally the mine planned to dump the waste in the sea by ‘submarine tailing’. After a monumental campaign by North Sulawesi Watersports Association together with two local community NGO’s the mine was pressurised into changing to be a land-based tailing, in other words the waste will be disposed of in a landfill. This is a fantastic result for the protection of the marine environment and means that it is ‘business as usual’ for diving in North Sulawesi!