Unusual Shaped Rough Diamonds
August 07, 2019
Russian diamond mining company Alrosa’s knack for recovering unusually shaped diamonds has scaled new heights with the discovery of a rough stone resembling a fish.
“In the photo, you see a very rare specimen: a rough-diamond crystal which pretends to be a fish,” the Russian miner wrote in an Instagram post Wednesday. The company found the stone at the Udachnaya kimberlite pipe back in 2002, and has publicized it to illustrate the company’s ecology efforts, an Alrosa spokesperson told Rapaport News.
Alrosa ecologists release “hundreds of thousands” of fish into rivers in Yakutia and its other mining regions every year, the company explained in the post. In October, it plans to introduce “valuable” broad whitefish into Siberian waters.
Last summer, the company unveiled a rough diamond resembling a soccer ball in the middle of the World Cup taking place in Russia, for which it was a sponsor. The company also found a stone that looked like a skull in time for Halloween, and stumbled upon a heart-shaped piece a few weeks before Valentine’s Day this year.