Nautilus Minerals has completed the world"s first commercial seafloor electromagnetic (EM) survey of copper-gold massive sulphide deposits at its Solwara 1 Project in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea.

Fifty two line-kilometres of EM data were recently acquired from a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) operating in 1500m water depth at Solwara 1.

Nautilus, together with its shareholder Teck Cominco Limited, have partnered with the Vancouver based Ocean Floor Geophysics to develop, deploy and protect the intellectual property associated with the deep-ocean electromagnetic technology.

Electromagnetic data has long been the geoscientist's preferred geophysical technique for locating and mapping massive sulphide mineralization beneath the land. Now after solving the problems associated with inducing measurable fields from within the conductive sea-water environment Nautilus and its partners have shown the electromagnetic method can be utilised not only by plane and helicopter over land, but also by ROV on the seafloor for the detection of massive sulphide systems.

The survey at Solwara 1 clearly showed an anomaly coincident with the mineralization tested by recent drilling confirming the effectiveness of the EM technique to detect the presence of massive sulphide systems on the seafloor. This EM data adds value to the current diamond drilling program and the evaluation of future prospects by accurately delineating near-surface massive-sulphide boundaries.

Nautilus CEO David Heydon says: "Whilst the survey data is still being processed, Nautilus has already identified a series of EM anomalies that are peripheral to the area tested in this current drilling program opening up the potential for the discovery of further massive sulphide mineralization - potentially extending the main Solwara 1 zone.

"We plan to follow up these anomalies in our 2008 field program and with the success of this program, propose to conduct EM surveys over our other projects. Nautilus has identified eight Solwara projects to date."