Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Exploration and Mining Geology - Dr. Steph Mrozek

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Exploration and Mining Geology - Dr. Steph Mrozek · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it worked, and why it matters to you.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm recording.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So am I.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Gotta get my mic right up nice and tight to this beaver I have laying across my mouth.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very old beaver though.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's all gray.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like a normal beaver.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Chris has a mouth pelt.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is, yeah, that's that's it.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it is.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's so good.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, Jesse, like I said, Dia earlier, I have hair envy, and the only thing I can do, I really do want to do that.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want to braid it and put some beads in it.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Jenny.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: She thinks I look nice.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is Jenny on board with this?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, for sure.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: She got mad at me when I cut it off last time.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the here's the problem.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the let me let me tell you, Chris, what I think the problem is with the bullheis household is there's no there's nobody reining you two in.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: The both of you are just in like a competition to be more ridiculous with one another all the time.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nobody like being like, no, no, no, bullheis is there's like societal norms here that we have to like, you know, adhere to.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're both just nuts.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there are so many questions I have about this statement here.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, what else besides the fact that I want to grow so I am growing my goatee out and I want to braid it, and I'm gonna put beads in it, okay?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, what is it about that that is so out of the norm of reality?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, tell me about that a second.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Bulls.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Crisple Hust with a gray goatee beard with beads in it, is not this is not like the picture of you as a person I have in my head.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't know what you mean.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of picture do you have of me?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I look, I'm a I'm a big cuddly teddy bear.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am not a big cuddly teddy bear.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess I I can be.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can be that.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can be.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Jesse, you can't put me in a box.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't try.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Don't try.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, okay, fair enough.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Don't put me in a box.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I guess I'm not your normal teacher profile, am I?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you're not I have a sleeve of tattoos.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'll agree with you.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're not normal.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have a sleeve of tattoos.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I have a very long goatee.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm bald.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Big veins sticking out his forehead, forgets stuff all the time, falls asleep uh way too early in the night.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Just stunningly good looking.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, classic good look.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So what about now?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right, on to the next one.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: You never answered my question though.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: What was the question?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: What else is it about me that that is just so out of the norm here?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's so much you as your wife, actually.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, let's talk about switch gears and that what about Jenny needs to be reined in.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody says, like, hey bullheises, rein it in a little bit, you know?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody does.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody says that to you ever.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we're certainly not gonna say it to each other.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, exactly.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's no parents around, there's no sibling, nobody's telling, no bartenders telling you to rein it in.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, you just need somebody in your life.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, wrap it up a little bit, tighten it up, bullheises.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I could not disagree with you more.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think actually living in our household is actually frickin' a riot.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's it's a chaotic environment over there.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's good until about 7 30 p.m.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: What at what time Chris falls asleep?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's all good.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I do get tired.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, yeah, my nine-year-old self.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't wait to to be older so that I could go to bed whenever I wanted.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm older and I want to go to bed at nine o'clock.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's perfect.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's perfect.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, okay.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that was a big long ramble about the bullhouse household.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: That was funny.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Chris, I think we're in a good mood because we just had a fantastic interview with Dr.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Steph Borzak, who is a uh a PhD economic geologist, a SCARN expert, is now the senior project geologist at Donlin Gold, which is a gold deposit company up in Alaska.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And she has a gold mine, if you'll excuse the bun, of knowledge about economic geology.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: That was good, right?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Give me some creds for that one, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she's a very valuable resource.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Let's put it that way.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do you agree with that part?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent, yes.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, super interesting insights into like everything.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say that at the end of the interview was a question that we asked her that I think was a it's just an excellent answer.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it deals with being a geologist and the dirty business of mining and the potential conflict with that.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Her answer to that was refreshing and very insightful, I thought, as well.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Just the you know, the statement that I don't struggle with that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we need this stuff out of the ground, we need to do it well, we can do it well.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just a beautiful answer.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Really, really well-spoken, top flight geologist, and I mean has worked on some very cool rocks as well.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was loving her descriptions of the Skarn deposits she's worked on over her career.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just totally, totally cool stuff.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and I thought uh from the, you know, you and I, Chris, interact with students all the time.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought some of her advice was really valuable for both active students and people considering going back and getting degrees.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I thought that was a very refreshing take.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I learned a lot um from this conversation with Steph and I'm look forward to talking to her more.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Agree 100%.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, with that, Steph Mrozak coming your way.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Dr.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Steph Mrozek, welcome to Planet Geo, and thanks for joining us.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're uh excited to have you here and talk about oh, economic geology.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is very exciting.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure to be invited.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is great.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I I'm excited to talk.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have a little bit of a research collaboration going on, uh, which is exciting.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we've talked recently in the last couple weeks.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: We'll actually probably talk tomorrow, it seems like two.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but this is Planet Geo.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So uh yeah, let's let's do it.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute, Chris.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: When what's this research collaboration thing?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about that or not?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's an undergrad who's working in in our lab here.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: That Steph is is that's working on samples Steph has sent, and we're collaborating on you know some technique development on the the gold mine.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Donlin gold.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's Steph's um working on at the moment.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are you dating something then, Jesse?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're trying to date the well, we're trying to date mineralization.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, Steph, jump in here.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know the deposit better than I do, but I know the deposit, but you guys know what you're doing with the data.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're we're I just provided the samples.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Technique development, let's put it that way.
• 6:52
  unknown: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we're trying something new.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And see, okay.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, new for Donlin and new for uh, well, it's not really new for you guys, is it?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: You guys have been working on this technique for a little while, but we're testing it out on some the technique is uh we've been working on it for a little while, but an application to economic geology is very new and exciting.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's exciting to to be working on economic geology problems, yeah, for sure.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like we're being pretty cryptic, but we could we could probably talk more about it.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe maybe we'll we'll drag this out later on, maybe, right?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sound good?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then with that stuff, let's go ahead and jump into our traditional first question.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: We always start off by asking Jesse and I each have stories about how and why we got into geoscience.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's your story?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what happened?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: What led you in this direction?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think I could blame my parents because we traveled a fair bit when I was growing up.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll just say I grew up this story is a little bit about geography and it's and it eventually ends with geology.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um geography, family, and geology.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, so I grew up in Toronto, Canada.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: And uh my dad is from western Pennsylvania.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: My mom is from about four or five hours north of Toronto on what we call the Canadian Shield.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that's Jesse's Jesse's wheelhouse there.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: So growing up in Toronto, we were kind of in the middle of these two places, and we would always go visit family in these two places.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, on the farm in Pennsylvania, one of my earliest memories of walking through the fields is that there are these big rocks that are just sitting in the field.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: It turns out that those are glacial erratics.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: And those rocks have a really different composition from the local rocks, which are like sedimentary, there's coal beds there.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so these were very different looking rocks.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's one thing I knew when I was young.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then going up to where my mom is from, the Canadian Shield, you could see that those rocks looked quite similar to the ones that we saw down in Pennsylvania.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: And my young mind was just putting these pieces of this puzzle together.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I also did spend, I'll add one more place here, because we would go to Cape Cod every summer for vacation.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: And when you're young, you're you're a lot closer to the ground.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I spent a lot of time uh looking at sand grains on the beach.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, I love it.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: And wondering sand, sand is the best, right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: It is so awesome, yeah.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I know I heard your guys' uh your episode on the sand lab, and I was like, that's me.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's this is I I have sand from everywhere I go because it tells such a great story.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like as a kid, you're looking at the sand and figuring out where all these minerals came from.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it turns out these erratics on the farm in Pennsylvania and the sand that I was looking at on Cape Cod, all of this stuff kind of ties back to pretty much where my mom is from.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: All of this material has been moved down from that part of the continent.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like, it's such a fascinating way to put this little puzzle of the earth together in this part of the world.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, I always was fascinated with these things, but it probably wasn't until like high school when I was looking through some textbooks.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: My dad is a doctor, and I was looking through his old textbooks.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: He had a geology textbook.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: It was on the bottom shelf.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I pulled that thing out and I was like, this is a lot of interesting stuff.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I asked him about it, and he said that he took a geology class in college.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: And that was a moment when I when it clicked, I just was like, I didn't know you could take a geology class in college.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: So you mean I could become a geologist?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: You mean I could study this?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: And it turns out you can.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I knew at that moment that I was gonna do this.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: I guess I didn't know specifically what I would end up doing, but I I went to my guidance counselors and they didn't know what it was.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we were not we were not taught geology in high school.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: The closest thing was a physical geography class, which only touched upon some of the concepts very briefly.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so I don't think they knew what to do with a kid who was so convinced about what they wanted to do and study a subject that they'd never heard of.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's really surprising in Canada.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, it makes sense in parts of the US where it's just such Canada is such a resource-driven economy, and there's so many geologists.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I my experience when I moved to Alberta, which is obviously a very geology-centric environment, but was that you just say, Oh, I'm a geologist, and people were just like, Oh, okay, cool, and then next subject.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like it wasn't even a it wasn't weird.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas, you know, most of the time growing up in Michigan, as Chris likes to say, they look at you like you got horns growing out of your head when you say you look at rocks, and um Yeah, that's absolutely so Steph.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have a a few comments and maybe some questions about what you said.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I am amazed that you recognized rocks in western Pennsylvania as a young kid, that they came from the Canadian Shield.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love my kids that I have.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I I do love them, but they would not recognize that.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way in hell they would recognize that.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's really impressive, first of all.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, Jesse, like you said too, we've had this talk a lot, Jesse, where you went to Canada and you felt for the first time that you were kind of home, you know, like people knew what a geologist does.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of surprising that that wasn't your expression.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I do love Canadians as well, but it was the yeah, home was the geology aspect to it.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's interesting stuff.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: So did you know then you did you start university or college knowing you wanted to go into geology, or were you still kind of like just dipping your toes in the water, or were you kind of like full bore, I'm getting a geology degree as an undergrad then?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: I entered uh with my major declared.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, cool.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's rare.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I did too, but it it's a rare phenomenon to have people.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: And also the people um at the administrative offices were were like, Are you sure?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I know exactly.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: I've already been through this.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody knows what I'm talking about.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm pretty sure this is what I want to do.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: That is so well-practiced argument there.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jesse, we just had parent-teacher conferences, and I have some students that are in, you know, juniors and seniors that want to go into geology, and their parents sat across from me and they were concerned.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what are you what are you doing?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to explain to them no, this is this is okay.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually this is a good thing that your your kid wants to go in this direction, you know.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: So uh maybe I could touch on that then uh then uh Steph, because you graduated with a a degree, and then like what did you do?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know from looking at your resume, your CV and LinkedIn, that you kind of went back for a PhD.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't just go straight into the PhD.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I'm curious your take on that.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what was that path for you?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: What was your decision process?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because we have a lot of people who are who listen to this who struggle with that decision.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do I go back for another degree?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do I go back to pursue something I wanted to or not?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what was that decision process?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: What led you to our now, I guess?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: When I started off knowing that I wanted to become a geologist and and declaring my major, uh my for my bachelor's, I didn't know then that I wanted to go on for a PhD.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't convinced that that was the right thing for me.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: It just it seems like you know, four years of a bachelor's degree already sounds like a lot of work.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: So we'll just see how we feel after that, right?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, right.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I got through the bachelor's and I worked for a while.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: As a as a geologist?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, okay, yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I I finished my bachelor's and then I worked for about three years in economic geology.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: I worked in metallurgy uh at a gold mine, and then I ended up working as a mine geologist at that same gold mine.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so I sort of split those three years in those two fields at the same location.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that's when I think that really shaped what I wanted to do with my career.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: I should just say that when I graduated with my bachelor's, I wanted to go into volcanology.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I did dabble in volcanology.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it's a fascinating field of geology.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: I did a few field courses.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was still hooked, I still am.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but one of the things that started to become clear to me was that the only way I was going to be able to have a career in volcanology was if I went on and did a PhD.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: At least that's what I thought at the time.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I still wasn't sure that that was the right thing.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: So here I am working in this gold mine, and this is now in Alaska, and I'm thinking, you know what, this is so relevant.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: People need materials that come from the earth, so it doesn't matter if it's gold or if it's copper, if it's industrial minerals, this stuff has to be mined, and geologists around the world help with that.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought, I gotta get into mining geology.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: I felt that it was a job security decision for the rest of my life because there's uh so much you can do that is tied to mining, even if you're not actively working in the mine.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: But I also started to realize that the people who I was looking up to in the industry had a little more education than I did.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's what made me decide to go on and do the masters.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I did the master's in economic geology, and then I worked again uh for about two years after that.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess uh something similar happened is that I was working with people who I don't know, they seem to have like the more interesting work.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: And those were the people with PhDs or with just a lot of years of experience under their belts.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: There's a more to the decision to going into the PhD for me.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um should I talk about that now?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I have tons of questions, but yeah, let's let's finish up.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, great.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, uh can I look can I just interrupt real quick then, Steph?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And okay, so you say that the people I forget how you phrased it, but the people who you kind of looked up to had more education than you.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that was because of the degree or because of the skills they got during the degree?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like graduate school is not school, it's a very different thing than like normal school.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like certification, at least how I view it is not really like certification.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's you gain a lot of accessory skills.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I think for people, like I've often heard people say that the master's is kind of the working degree, like you the ceiling is lifted.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a master's, there's kind of no ceiling on your career.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas with a just a bachelor's, not just, but with a bachelor's, there might be some kind of moving up the ladder um ceiling.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I can you disentangle like the degree versus the skills you get during the degree?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of I don't know if that makes sense what I'm asking, but yeah, yeah, it does.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: I I certainly felt that way when I was uh working at that gold mine and I had my bachelor's.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: I felt like there was a ceiling.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: I felt like it had to do with not having the master's.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I know for oil and gas, they pretty much they won't generally employ you unless you have a master's.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's not quite the same story in mining.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: You can have a very long and fulfilling career with just a bachelor's degree.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: But it just for me, it was more of like I'm really curious about these things I'm looking at on a much deeper level, and I want to have I want to be equipped with the skills to understand what I'm looking at and and can add value to my company.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I think your question about is it the skills or is it the degree?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the reason I asked that the rare the reason I asked that is like, okay, you're interested in volcanology, but you got an economic geology master's.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: So why it was just the degree maybe you would have gotten a volcanology degree and like gone and studied whatever you wanted to and then got like it what's the difference there and what was that decision like for you?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's an interesting question.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, because I will say now, if I had gone on to do a master's in volcanology, I would have still been employable in this field.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I think when it comes to the masters, yeah, yeah.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: Especially with economic geology, for sure, because economic geology pulls from every aspect of geology.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: It helps if you understand ore systems and hydrothermal fluids, but you can learn a lot of that on the job.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think the most important part of doing a master's degree and re a research master's is the solving of the puzzle that is put in front of you or that you are putting together yourself.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's really, really important.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's great.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: That that that that's that's probably the most important part.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that answers the question for me.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Steph, I wanna Yeah.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Chris.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's okay.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Steph, so you said something really interesting that you could do what you do with a volcanology degree, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think so.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know so.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want to I want to talk about that.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, that's really interesting, especially to Jesse and I, because a lot of our listeners are are super interested in you know going into volcanology, but they're concerned about employability.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so is that not as big of an issue as what it's often made out to be?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Look, I think it depends what they want to do.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: If they want to work as a volcanologist, I think that that there is probably a reason to be concerned about employability.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um look, I don't monitor the the job app the jobs with a fine-tooth comb these days, but in all of the years that I've been looking at jobs, industry jobs, I've only seen one volcanology job come available for a geologist.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: It was working for De Beers, and I thought that was really interesting, but they required the PhD.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, interesting.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought, oh man, that's many, many years away.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I just thought, well, I'll pin that one for later.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, I do think I saved it just because I thought it was so interesting.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought it was one of these rare things I'm never gonna see again.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: But if you want to get into volcanology um in a master's, I would say the best thing is to just be open-minded about what kind of work you want to do afterwards because there can be a lot of related work that is very fascinating in the field of economic geology.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's it's the reason we're asking these career things is not you don't need to know the full uh employability index of the industry.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're just we were asking kind of similar questions to a bunch of different people.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, a lot of people in the we've interviewed people from oil and gas and environmental consulting kind of have the same answer.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it doesn't matter what you do it in, just do it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Then you'll get the skills to to move on and and see what you want to do next with the the sort of research skills, as you mentioned.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we're getting some consistent answers here, Chris.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like, which is good because I think students try and over-optimize.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, oh, what should the title of my thesis be so that I can get the job I want?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, you're overthinking it, is kind of the advice.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it's good to hear.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: The master's, I think, is really about about learning how to do research, which is solving a puzzle.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Solving problems.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Solving problems.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: The people that you work with stuff, do they have a like a diverse educational background then?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I as I was talking about the the uh diamonds and the volcanology, I do work with a volcanologist, um, a person who has a PhD in volcanology.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: I work with, and he's working in in this gold industry.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: I've also worked with a girl who had a master's in, I think it was polynology, so the study of of pollen, fossilized pollen, you know, and there she is doing ore control, and now I think doing resource geology.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: So this is all um heavy into the economic geology side of things.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I think what these people have in common is that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: They learned how to do the problem solving through their their studies.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: And then they could transfer those.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Jesse you've said that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really that's really interesting.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So okay, then fast forward.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you got your master's and then you went back to work for a little bit and then decided you want to get a PhD in SCARNS, which I'm excited, super excited to talk about SCARNS because they're like the totally craziest rocks out there.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: What was that that master's to work to PhD sort of decision tree like?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I have to just say my master's was on a SCARN.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: It was on a SCARN.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: My master's was on a SCARN in the Yukon.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: And while I was working on my master's on the academic side of it, so I did my field work on that SCARN in the Yukon.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then I went, you know, to do the write-up and all this.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I had to work to pay my way through school.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I was working at a different SCARN in Alaska while I was writing up my master's on this SCARN in the Yukon.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I started to get a lot of SCARN exposure like right out of the gate.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: And that's one of the many reasons why I just absolutely love SCARNS.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: But the SCARN in the Yukon was a funny one.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: It was a gold scarn.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was not a very big SCARN.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I think this is very typical of the industry where whichever type of deposit you're working on, the people there like to compare it to something significantly larger.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: World class.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's exactly like the world class deposit, you know, in Mexico or something.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's a form of optimism.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, and that was that place was no different.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_03: So here I am working on this dinky little scarn in the Yukon, and they're like, it's the next Antamina.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so Antamina, which is where I ended up doing my PhD, is actually the largest continuous scarn body in the world, which at the time, you know.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Steph, can I interrupt you a second?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Can you set the stage for us about what a scarn is?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: We jumped ahead around a little bit.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into that.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, all right.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Wiggling around in the weeds here.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's gone.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So a scarn.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Joyce is saying right now, my mom is saying, what is this thing you speak of?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we gotta spell it, right?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Joyce mentioned it.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Joyce the word is S-K-R-N, Skarn.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it you know, it's kind of like a S-K-A-R-N.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh S-K-A.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Joyce.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Joyce, come on.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's S-K-A-R-N.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm I'm glad you didn't spell it with a C, because I've seen that.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I I it makes my skin crawl.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, um, yeah, S-K-A-R-N, Skarn.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: So the actual word Skarn is an old Swedish mining term that is has been used to describe gang, gang mineralogy, the waste rock.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um that is scarn altered.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: However, that's G-A-N-G-U-E.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: G-A-N-G-U-E, yes, that's right.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, my spelling is terrible today.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, okay.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: We uh in the industry we don't we don't use SCARN really to describe the waste rock now.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: Generally, when we're talking about SCARN, we're talking about something that is very flashy.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: So, what a SCARN is, is it's a metasomatic, I know that's a big word, metasomatic replacement of typically uh carbonate rocks, most typically carbonate rocks.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: And basically those carbonate rocks are most often marble, which I just said carbonate rocks, that's a metamorphic rock.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: So how scarns form, and this will explain metasomatism, is typically, I'll just say typically, because there's many ways that this could happen, but you'll have some carbonate stratigraphy and it gets intruded by an intrusion, and you'll have a contact metamorphism take place around that intrusion, right?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: We're probably all familiar with that general process of contact metamorphism.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you'll expect some changes in the rock just based on the contact metamorphism.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: But if that intrusion has the right chemistry, for instance, if it contains enough uh fluid that it releases, and with that fluid comes a lot of foreign ions that carried get carried out into the country rock, you get addition of elements to this metamorphosed rock, and you get further changes, you get more dramatic changes.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the metasomatism.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: The metasomatism is like you could think of it as like a way more advanced form of the contact metamorphism, it's but it requires addition of elements and removal to some extent, and a big change in the rock to the point where you can almost not recognize it as being a carbonate rock.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, Steph, can I interrupt you and then I want you to fill in the holes here then?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of like a layer of limestone forming, or a layer of limestone that has been formed.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: It gets intruded by an igneous intrusion, and that contact metamorphism turns the limestone into marble, but then what turns it into a scarn from there?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: Then the next uh step that turns into a scarn is the hydrothermal fluids interacting with the marble.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's easiest to think of marble in an isochemical sense as if you know there's no chemical change happening.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's just, you know, you're getting recrystallization of the limestone.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: You could go from really fine-grain limestone to coarse grain marble.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: That I think is the most useful because you're still starting with kind of a a blank palette.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: But then when you introduce the hydrothermal fluids that are being driven off of this magma body, and those have all the goodies, everything that we're after, that will actually replace that marble.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: It'll dissolve it in places and it'll just replace it with all of the uh the gang minerals that make up a scarn, which are typically calc silicates, calcium-bearing silicate minerals, pyroxene and garnet primarily.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: And then you'll also get your metals if they're present.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So scarn is always contact metamorphism, like it's always related to an intrusion, a scarn deposit, like an economically viable scarn deposit, or not always.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Not always, okay.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: But most uh typically and the largest scarns in the world are related to intrusions.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're related to porphyry intrusions.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay, gotcha.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that brings us back to your the I think you said Antamina.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: You were about to talk about where you did your PhD.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we were it during my master's, we were comparing this little dinky scarn to Antamina.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I had to look up what the heck Antamina was, you know, at that time.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, anyway, I I finished my master's, I went back into uh work exploration.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: It was actually a really interesting job I had.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: It was I was an exploration geologist now instead of a mind geologist, and I was enjoying it a lot better.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it was with a really uh great company too.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: But this opportunity, I had expressed interest, I'll put it this way, I had just expressed interest to a professor who was looking at getting a project started on Antamina.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought, well, that's a wild shot in the dark, right?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: I said, well, I'll just let them know I'm interested.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: So when it became available, I applied and I told myself, if I get selected for this, I'm taking it because it's Antamina.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I will just quit my job, I will go back to being a student because there's never going to be an opportunity like this ever again.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: To go from every other scar in the world is going to be compared to Antamina.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then to get to actually study Antamina, well, that's what happened.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: I got selected, and I remember that moment because I thought, oh God, I'm letting go of this job security, and you know, I like this job, and here I am going back to be a student, but it was worth it.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Steph, can you tell our listeners what is so special about Antamina?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think a lot of them may not have heard about this.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And what and what is it mind for it's mind, presumably.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: What is it mined for?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like what elements, what's the commodity that of interest in Scarf?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's mainly copper, and secondarily, I'll say zinc.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a bunch of other interesting metals that occur there too, molybdenum, galena.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so you the the results of your PhD, I mean, how cool was it?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: What was like the the elevator pitch summary of your PhD?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: I've summarized it as big plate, move bad, make good rock.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Antamina is in the Peruvian Andes.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: So what's happening in that part of the world is we've got subduction of the NASCA plate.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: So there's your big plate, and it's colliding with the South American plate.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_03: So there's your big plate move bad part.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: And what happens in that process is sometimes you can actually make some really nice rocks, which, well, let's face it, most of the Andes has very nice rocks in terms of copper endowment.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: And antimina is no exception.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: The thing that makes antimina different, though, from all of those other, and they truly are world-class deposits in that part of the world.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: Antamina is different because of the host rocks.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: And the host rocks at Antamina are carbonates along the length of that chain.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: There are some other scarns and some other carbonate bodies, but none as extensive as Antamina, which has a mineralized depth of about two kilometers.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: It actually exceeds two kilometers.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: Think about that.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: Two kilometers of continuous mineralization at from surface to depth, and it was open at depth, meaning that the mineralization continued beyond the length of drilling.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is beyond the scope of contact metamorphism, then, right?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Way beyond the scope of it.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is a very active system.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: And in terms of antimina, so the the next part of, I guess, the more detailed part of the elevator pitch is that there are at least 13 fertile porphyries that intruded kind of in a very close space, basically along a structural corridor.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: So they were confined as to where they could occur, and that basically created a coalesced body of scarn around this intrusive complex.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh like two, almost three kilometers long, kilometer and a half wide at least, and then at least two kilometers deep.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: And keeps going.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: So it's huge.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, huge.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And very concentrated, I assume, right?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: Very concentrated.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, just absolutely gorgeous rocks, like Jesse said, very complicated looking.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I hear this a lot.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: People get really freaked out by scarns, but I love them.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: They're just they're absolutely beautiful.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: Now they there is a porphyry, there's many porphyry's actually in the core of Antamina, and those are interesting too.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: But porphyry's tend to be lower grade in terms of a mining way we would look at it, is like a low grade high tonnage.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: And the scarns tend to be high grade, low tonnage, but at antimina, that's not true.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: They are high grade, high tonnage.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can Steph, can we differentiate between the porphyry and the scarn then?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the porphyry is it's an igneous rock, right?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not where you're finding all this mineralization.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'll speak about antimina in this example, but yes, in antimina, there is mineralization in the porphyrys.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's just not as high grade as it is in the scarn.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that has so much to do with the reactivity of the carbonate wall rocks.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: Generally, the magmatic hydrothermal fluids are a little more acidic.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you react that, geology 101, with your carbonate wall rocks, you get massive changes in the chemistry, just disequilibrium and metals are dropping out right there.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: So cool.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: So Chris and I visited uh once in uh in in uh Vermont or Maine, Chris.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Was it Maine?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh Vermont, it was in Maine.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was Maine, okay.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: So my memory, my spelling's bad, my memory sucks.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we visited uh we got grossular garnet.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: We were looking for Grossular Garnet in, you know, these these like uh cavities at this kind of scarn deposit.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember Chris almost died, I think.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: We were it was like this, you know, it was one of these mineral collecting hotspots.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was like in some national forest and like way back in the middle nowhere.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was with my buddy Andrew, and we were walking in the woods, and all of a sudden we realized we're we're like, I don't know where Chris is.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: We get to the edge and we look down and there's a pit beneath us, and we're like, Chris, where are you at?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he is actually underneath, and we read what we were walking on was this like slab of rock that was overhanging, and Chris had walked underneath of this thing, and I don't remember.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think Chris, we walked down next to you, and we're like, Holy crap, that thing is super unstable.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we actually collapsed part of it because we thought it was so dangerous.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: We were shocked it hadn't collapsed before.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we like, I'm getting this wrong probably, but you are getting this wrong.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's my memory of it.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was that complete mistake.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I almost did die because I was with two idiots that walked out onto this onto the top of this thing, and then Andrew uh jumped up.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why, because he's just excitable and it collapsed.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so we were we were like, wow, that was that was good that it but this leads me to a question because we were looking in these cavities with like beautiful grossular crystals in them.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: And my memory, the metamorphic you know, reactions as you go from like carbonate to marble and then up to these sort of decarbonization reactions, you like lose a lot of mass, you lose rock mass at higher grades.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, does a scarn deposit, an economic scarn deposit, have to be pretty high temperature to form?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do you have to lose the initial limestone, like the carbonate mass, to put these other elements that you're speaking of in during metasomatism or not?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: It you do, okay.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so they have to be like 500 degrees C or 400 degrees C or something?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: At least.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's amazingly hot.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: This actually, yes, this gets into some scarn terminology that we refer to as prograde and retrograde.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: We probably you probably do that in Metamorphic World 2.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: But prograde scarns are the high temperature event that forms the anhydrous minerals, the garnets and the clinopyroxines generally.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: And those could be higher than 500 degrees C.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then what ends up happening generally is the system starts to cool and the fluid circulating will start to deposit what we call the retrograde phases as the system is cooling down.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so those are much lower temperature um hydrous phases.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's where you'll start to get your amphiboles and possibly some calcite, and that's typically where your metals come in.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this sort of you've you've set the stage at the high temperatures, and then as the system's cooling down, the the metals are deposited.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's super interesting.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like we could talk about scarns for a long time.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're just like totally crazy uh environments.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: But if we come back focusing on your career sort of trajectory a little bit, so you started out interestingly as a mine geologist, or you you you worked your way up to a mine geologist, then went and got your master's exploration geologist, then PhD, super expert in the like world's biggest scarn deposit.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess maybe you could explain just really briefly the difference in those job descriptions.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: It just it seemed like you weren't super taken by being a mine geologist, and why and what is the difference there.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: Gosh, this is gonna this is gonna be a bit of a thought.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was a long if you need Jesse to break that up.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was like a five-minute question.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: I guess I don't want to be um all of those jobs are important, and you're right.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: It just it just comes down to what you're most taken with, I guess.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was a mine geologist in the position that I described at that, it was an open pit gold mine in Alaska.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: I actually did enjoy it.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: I really did enjoy that.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: But I also felt like that at that time of my life there was more.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Can I interrupt real quick and ask what can you just describe quickly what a mine geologist does on a day-to-day basis?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I guess it sort of depends, um, because you could be a mine geologist in an open pit mine or an underground mine, but there's some some similarities in terms of what the general job description would be.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: And is that you are uh basically keeping up with production in the sense that when drilling takes place, we collect samples and then they get assayed for, in this example, gold.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: Once those assays come back, there'll be uh a type of mine geologist, generally called an ore controlled geologist, who will receive the assays and kind of map out where the high grades are and decide sort of how the material is going to get divided and where it's going to get sent.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: So that person may spend all of their time doing that specific job is just sort of mapping out material across a mine depending on production needs.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: But then you may have somebody who actually goes in the field and makes sure that that material ends up where it's supposed to go.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: So that could involve doing some visual or control, like on the ground.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes when I was doing that job, I would sit in the shovel and I would actually direct scoop by scoop where does the material go?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: No kidding.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: So it sort of depends.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's fun.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's not typical, but that's fun.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: Or, you know, you're gonna go check on drill rigs, you're gonna go see, you know, what's coming out of the next round of drilling.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: There'll be some mapping involved.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: There's almost always mapping involved.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so, yeah, whether or not you're underground or in an open pit, you'll be involved in mapping as soon as new ground becomes available.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's what I mean by keeping up with production.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: So they'll blast an area, they'll remove the rock, and then you've got to go in there and it's a whole new part of the earth that's never been exposed before.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: So you'll get in there and map it.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: You usually have to do it pretty quickly because they're gonna blast again.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: Being a mine geologist is a very fast-paced job that involves all aspects of you know, what type of material is this, where is it going, and also just keeping up with uh mapping and thing like in line with the drilling and with the blasting that's taking place.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Got it, not hindering those processes.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it sounds fascinating.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: It could be could it sound like it could potentially be fascinating or rather tedious depending on what it is.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's both.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: So exploration geologist, what is that and what attracted you to that or what attracts you to that side more or did at at that stage of your life, maybe after a master's?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: So exploration actually has to take place before mining can take place.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: And exploration has a couple of different uh divisions as well that we'll just generally refer to it.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: There's greenfields, which is the very early stage exploration, and then there's brownfields, which if there's say there's an operating mine, you'll have uh a production group in that mine, but you will also have a group of geologists that are looking at expanding the footprint of the mine or finding nearby deposits, expanding the resource.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so they're not typically involved in the day-to-day production needs, but they are doing what we call brownfield exploration, which is near to an existing mine.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: There's that group of exploration, then there's the greenfields.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: The greenfields is where you're generally the first boots on the ground in an area that you wonder if there's ever been a human there before.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: And uh you might be just prospecting, like to some extent, collecting samples, mapping if there's enough outcrop.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: You may be doing soil samples at this early stage, also stream sediment samples with the aid of remote sensing, like whatever you can use to help vector you into an area that is most prospective for further exploration.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so just pure sort of discovery at that stage.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: You're just like, you know, I I could see why it's excitement, that a little higher excitement potentially.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it it's it is exciting.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you're covering a lot of ground um as a greenfields exploration geologist because you're kind of just grabbing a lot of samples and moving to the next spot every day.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: You're in a different location.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that and that is where you are now?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: Now I'm an exploration geologist.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: My official title is a project geologist, but I'm an exploration geologist.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I should say I work in in a project that is in an exploration stage.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we are uh So can we talk about that?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what are you doing right now?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you working?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us a little bit about what your day-to-day looks like as an exploration geologist?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, okay.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm a little higher up the the food chain, I guess, in in terms of exploration geology by now.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I spend my time doing a lot of modeling.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_03: I do spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer, whether the field season is on or off.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so my project is in Alaska, the Donlin Gold project, and that project isn't an advanced stage of exploration.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: So we've got uh many drill holes.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: We have a lot of data to support a resource that has been calculated for a pretty big footprint.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: And my job is to mostly deal with the data.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: So when you say modeling stuff, what data are you using and and what are you modeling?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are you like trying to model out the deposit and refine like what we think three dimensions is in the earth?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: And how are you doing that?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can you kind of walk us through that?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: So uh mostly the data is gold values, gold assays that came from drill core samples, and also uh the core logging information that we get from those same drill core samples.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: So uh when the core is drilled, the geologists, the other exploration geologists who mostly spend time on site will be the first to see that rock, and then they will log it for its many properties.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: Lithology, they'll look at geotechnical aspects of it, they'll look at the physical mineralization and record a bunch of information about these rocks.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: I will receive that information and I will build a model that reflects the observations from the field.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll be putting together shapes of intrusions, looking for continuity of intrusions.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: And then they'll sample those very same rocks, and then within about a month or so, we'll get the results from those assays.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then I'll be able to put those gold values into that model and see uh what's controlling the gold distribution.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that helps us plan for more drill targets and really just understand what's controlling the gold in this deposit.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell How deep do these cores go?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: How how how deep are you capable of going?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: And is that an expensive process?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's an expensive process, yes.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um deep?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um, like at Antamina, we had our deepest drill holes were 2,000 meters.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: Whoa.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: Two kilometers.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how I know that the but the deposit continued because those were our deepest drill holes and they kept going.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: The deposit kept going.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: So at Donlin we don't drill quite as deep, but it just depends on the deposit, you know, because um every deposit has a different shape.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_03: So some are like kind of more tabular, um, and they have like they're shallow, but they have long lateral extents.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: Some are quite deep, you know.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like uh another deposit I worked on was veins, and some of those veins were dipping quite steeply.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so the drilling would basically drill until you cross the vein, and then that's
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: So where you currently are, how many core sand or how many cores have you drilled or are you gonna drill?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't know.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'd have to guess like 3,000.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's a guess.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, okay.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually this is yeah, that's a lot.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's this is kind of high pressure then, right?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I mean it's not cheap.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: No, it doesn't drill this.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: But look, this has been going on now for at Donlin, um, I should say since the 80s.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, then can we maybe ask a broader question then that like how long can a job like this last?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, whether it's Anamina or, you know, something else, right?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like how doing an exploration geologist job, how long can you expect to stay at that one spot?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, that's an interesting point.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: If you're looking for job security, it's probably not in exploration, not as much as it is in mining.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like if you uh get in when a mine starts, you could probably stay there for the life of the mine, which could be, you know, 10, 20, 30 years.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: You could have an entire career at one spot.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: You may probably change your job role over that period of time, but you could stay in one location.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_03: But as an exploration geologist, generally you're going to be moving around a lot.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: You might see a project through to uh a certain stage and then you move on to the next project and do the same thing.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to ask a couple questions about that stuff because I think this is there's a bunch of people.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my students in my research group would find this information valuable, and I'd imagine a bunch of our listeners would too.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: That seems stressful.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, on like a personal level for you, if you're willing, can you talk about how you view that?
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like you've moved around a lot in your career, different companies, different deposits.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is that always stressful?
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is that getting less stressful?
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Are you kind of always moving up?
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you must be because you're, as you said, sort of at the at the top of the feeding tower now.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other question is like, has that okay, I'll stop there and then I'll come back and ask my other question, I suppose.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: If you're willing to give us like some personal if there's tension in there for you, or if you just really love that part of it.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um personally, I I find it exciting.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it is stressful though, but it's a choice.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's a choice to be in exploration.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: So prior to this job that I currently have now, which is in exploration, I worked in mining, which I could have stayed in that place if I wanted to.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: But exploration is more exciting, I would say, for me.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought this was a good opportunity.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know how long it would last.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: You never do.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I think if you can if you can accept that it's going to change, and just it forces you to be very responsible, I would say, with uh some of the decisions you make in your life.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't mind that.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: So uh can I maybe and and maybe this is too personal a question, but you know, jobs that are more risky and less security often you get compensated for that.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's compensated by it's just a more exciting job.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: In these boom and bust cycles, you get rewarded during the boom times for the fact that there's a bust coming.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: Is the compensation different between exploration and mining geologists given the stability?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_03: And this is I would think in general that's true.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_03: I I would think in general that's true.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: However, from my own experience, I can't say for sure because all I can say is that my compensation has increased with my experience.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I haven't really had a lot of back and forth, even though I've worked mining, exploration, mining, exploration, mining, exploration.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: Every time I changed jobs, I generally got a higher compensation.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: There was only one time that I can remember when that didn't happen, but it was very short-lived.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's interesting.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it is it is beneficial to work on a bunch of different deposits and therefore a bunch of different companies in instead of move around a bunch and gain this breadth of knowledge.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: If if you're gonna want a career in economic geology, I think it's important to work as many aspects of this industry as possible.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: So try open pit underground, be a mine geologist for a while.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: You have to understand that part of the job.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: Do exploration, do every stage of exploration.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, jump out of helicopters in the middle of nowhere, fight off bears, um, you know, like sit by a drill rig, whether it's um a core rig or RC.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then one of the other things I did recently was work in resource geology too.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's more on like the back end, the numbers side of things, calculating how much gold, using statistics and and locating it and all of that.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: So getting a taste of all of it really makes you a much more well-rounded geologist.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, these are the kinds of people that become the the leaders later on in their career once you've got all this experience.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is great advice, it sounds like, for people, you know, thinking about going down a path like this.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: So on that note, given this critical minerals wave, so this like big wave of critical minerals, lots of seems like new exploration, people looking for lithium pegmatites for the first time in generations.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: How does that feel from your seat?
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Does it feel like there's more opportunities?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I guess that that's one way of looking at it.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so I work in gold, and gold isn't a critical mineral.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: So most of my career has actually been working in minerals that are not deemed critical.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: But what's interesting is gold, while it typically is uncombined in nature, it's it's native gold.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_03: It generally occurs with other accessory minerals.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: For instance, where I work now, we have a lot of arsenic and we have antimony.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: Both of those are on the current critical minerals list.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: So it does force you to take a different look at what would otherwise be considered maybe deleterious elements or waste rock.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: So this is what I find is interesting about this is that it's going to get people to look at maybe their tailings ponds and see what we can extract out of there that we weren't paying attention to before.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe our deposit has more value than just the main mineral of interest, and especially when you're dealing with something like gold, which, like I said, isn't a considered a critical mineral.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're interesting.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing that, we're seeing a lot of that in the UP, Jesse, uh, in Michigan, the upper peninsula, with these old tailings piles.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're reopening those abandoned mines and taking a second look at that stuff.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's interesting.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Steph, can I ask you a philosophical question?
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: Look this is dangerous, Steph, because when Chris pulls these, we just never know where it's gonna go.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: When he goes, Well, I have a random thought.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: I do this.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: I should have put this in the question list, but I didn't.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: But look, every person that goes into geology, we go into it because in part we love where we live.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we want to take care of our planet, you know, we want to know as much about it as we can.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: But yet mining is a dirty business.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so can you talk about that?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe like is the have you ever had or felt conflicted with this?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I haven't.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe that makes me evil.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: No, I want to know about this.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is so interesting.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: I I haven't felt conflicted.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like I recognize what you're saying though.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: And if um you want to be a part of making something better, you have to actually like jump in and be a part of it.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that what I do is just that.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's been very interesting from my perspective as a geologist, though, to see what happens on the environmental side of mining.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: I have a few examples here.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of times these big companies, when they take over an area for a what will be a large deposit, there's been a history there of artisanal mining.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: So small scale mining that tends to be more destructive environmentally speaking than the large the large deposits.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: So the agreements that are made um with these big companies is that you need to clean up this mess that was left here in addition to reclaiming the mine that you're about to build.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I've I've seen the after effects of that.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like I wouldn't have believed it if I was just told this.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, I've driven down a road next to a stream that looked completely pristine, and then I was shown pictures of that very same place later, you know, from a hundred years ago, and what it looked like.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: It was unrecognizable.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: And this is all due to the reclamation efforts of of one company.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen this happen though in a number of places.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I I have faith that the environmental side, the environmental uh groups that work for these mining companies, sorry, they have environmental departments, I should say.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: So those people, they are doing a great job of making sure that we minimize our footprint while still extracting the resources that society needs.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: So there's that.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_03: But then the other thing too is at least in uh the states, like Canada, I'm thinking of places where I've actually like Australia, Chile, like a number of places where mining takes place.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: These places have regulations to protect the environment that basically it's gonna cost companies more to do the job wrong than it will to do the job right.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's very true of where we live.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I think it's not true everywhere in the world.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: So this is also um part of this big problem of not every place in the world has the same level of regulation.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: And not all regulation is great, but it does certainly prevent a lot of these big environmental big environmental damage that we all don't want in our backyard, right?
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: See, uh that's really interesting, Steph.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: I because I think uh I've sort of paid attention to the the sort of pegmatite mining debate up in New England area, so m you know, Maine and Vermont, New Hampshire.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like there's a lot of local hesitancy about mining because the mining that is in their heads is like 1920s, 1900s, 1890s style mining.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: Same up in the Northwest Territories, up in remote northern Canada.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: The gold mining up there was 1920s, 30s.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Not great.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't handle the arsenic very well.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh big catastrophic environmental potential disaster hanging out up there.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're saying it's different now.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I I sort of would like to believe that, but I think that's an important like j distinction to make that like not mining is not one thing.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's like a whole bunch of different nuances to mining, and it can be done really well, and and remediation can be done amazingly well, and some places it's not.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: So ha have you ever not worked on a project for reasons like this, I suppose.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: Have you have you like intentionally stuck to working in areas where you are happy with this the sort of mining regulations?
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that that hasn't actually come up for me.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure it yeah, it hasn't come up for me at all.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, generally the places where I've worked have had good records.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the places you listed are the the good I mean, you're not well for the record, it does not make you an evil person.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your answer.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually like I appreciate it.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: I really wanted to hear that.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: And like Jesse said, I I believe you.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's that's I have to say I don't struggle with this at all because and and I'm pretty green, I'll say, been accused of being a little earthy, a little bit of a hippie.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, like a little bit of that in us.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's perfect.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Chris is too.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Chris is just talking about braiding his beard.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_03: We love the environment, right?
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: We love the the natural world, which is a lot of the reason why we all became geologists.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we also love our iPhones and we love our cars.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_03: And and you know, I've been I was a bicycle commuter for many years, but guess what?
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_03: My bicycle is a product of mining, you know, like every single thing.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: I sometimes think, like, what in my life is not a product of mining?
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: No, everything in my life is a product of mining.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: Even when we come down to there's kind of the miner's credo, if it can't be grown, it must be mined.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_03: Have you guys heard that?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, even the things that we grow are a product of mining to some extent when you consider fertilizer, when you consider the metal that is used for irrigation systems and just for planting and harvesting crops.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it is really difficult to come up with a way to live without mining.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so for that reason, I have to accept that it's an it's something that's necessary.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: I do think we just need to manage it as best we can because nobody wants to clean up a giant mess and look at a giant mess.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_03: We also want to get out and enjoy nature.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: Amen to that.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I I completely agree.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're partially preaching to the choir.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, I completely agree.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: And there, like you said, that we have to have some nuance in this discussion of you know, sustainability and environmental sustainability and the the green energy transition and all this stuff, but we have to have some nuance into like how we uh uh tackle it.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: And mining is certainly one part of the answer.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Steph, I thank you so much for your time.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: I want to ask one question.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Our our traditional closing question here is what has been your best day as a geoscientist?
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, I think it's it's gotta be back in 2006 when I first experienced lava, flowing lava.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: That was in Hawaii.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_03: Every geologist, right?
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um it was in Hawaii.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_03: That was an eruption of Kilauea at from the Puvent, which was erupting at that time.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_03: I was in Hawaii.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: I was uh planning to go into volcanology studies, and so I was taking a field course there, and part of it was physical, physical volcanology when we went out on the active flows and observed all of that and took samples, and it was great.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: So it was probably my experience with lava.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty amazing.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: What is the coolest rock you've seen?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: Is it from the the giant scarn mine?
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, some of these rocks must be from Anzameda.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what is in it?
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: What does it look like?
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Bornite and Calcapyrite primarily are the ore minerals, and we're looking at just massive amounts of garnet.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_03: But scarns are are absolutely beautiful.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the garnets are generally well formed and they're just museum quality specimens.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so good.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: So pretty.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Steph, thank you very much for your time.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: This has been uh very informative.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've learned a ton, and I I sort of love love your perspective on mining and geology and education.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's been uh really informative.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for uh thanks for joining us here.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, guys.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's been great.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, that's a wrap.
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• 58:45
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• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: Peace.