The scene around the flooded Whitehill Yeo pit in Devon, UK, resembles a lunar landscape. Until it was abandoned just a few years ago, an endless stream of diesel trucks carried china clay out of the mine seven days a week.

But don’t be fooled by the silence: this is very much an active site. It’s just that all the excavation is happening deep beneath the placid waters. This is a test bed, the first, for a new type of mining by underwater robots.

They are part of a European Union-funded project called ¡VAMOS! for Viable Alternative Mine Operating System. The goal is to extract mineral resources from abandoned, flooded mine sites previously considered too dangerous or costly to access. If the demonstration here at Whitehill Yeo works, these robots will go global, producing raw materials without digging new mines, and minus the environmental or noise problems that plague traditional mining.

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