Bryan Wilder is an unsung hero of Discovery Channel’s Bering Sea Gold.

Not only has he dove for gold on Vernon Adkison’s Gold Ship, but he’s worked for the production crew behind the scenes as well.

In a video on his Youtube channel American Gold Prospectors, Bryan answers the question many fans wonder: how much gold are the miners on Bering Sea Gold losing?

He asks Shawn Pomrenke to prospect for gold on the deck of his 130-foot excavator dredge M/V Myrtle Irene to see what the washplant missed, and what he finds is amazing!

Dad doubts, and dirt disappoints

Steve Pomrenke, Shawn’s dad, doesn’t think Bryan’s going to strike it rich.

“You ain’t gonna get s*** off the deck,” Steve says from the cab of his D9 Dozer.

What does Shawn think?

“You think I’m going to get some gold out of there?” Bryan asks him at the Nome harbor.

“You might,” Shawn says, “you might…”

There’s a ton of dirt on the deck. Bryan decides his best bet is going to be under where the bucket swings over the deck, because that gold paydirt likely never hit the washplant.

They shovel for about 15 minutes where the bucket comes up out of the water and find a few flakes of gold in the gold cube.

It’s something, but nothing to write home about.

Mining the Myrtle Motherlode

Thankfully one of the Myrtle’s crew gave Bryan a tip that there’s a hole in the shaker table where dirt escapes.

So Bryan and his friend take a pan from a pile of dirt they find under the shaker deck.

The result? 30-40 pieces of gold.

“Looks like that’s a good place to mine, huh?” Bryan says.

Overall they put about 90 minutes into shoveling the deck dirt into the cube, and the result is a pretty spectacular pan of gold that any gold highbanker would envy.

While he doesn’t weigh it out, Bryan estimates he got about 3 grams.

With gold worth $56 a gram at today’s spot prices, that’s worth about $170. Not bad for an hour and a half worth of light shoveling and drinking beers.

The best part? Shawn let him keep the gold!

Considering they only ran a small fraction of the dirt, it’s likely the deck of Mr. Gold’s excavator barges are paved with thousands of dollars of the shiny stuff at any given time!

Must be nice to be able to not worry about that much gold.

Mr. Gold must subscribe to the same philosophy Emily shares in her guide to building a Bering Sea Gold diver dredge.

“Don’t chase specks,” she says, “because that’s all you’ll end up mining.”

Some people have different standards for what counts as “specks,” though, and Bryan says what we’re all thinking out loud.

“Right behind us there’s the Christine Rose. I’m sure there’s a lot of dirt on that. We can mine that next summer.”

We hope you do Bryan! And share it with us again!

Check out his adventure mining the Myrtle Irene here.

If you liked this check out our other stories from the field! We’re gathering the biggest gold finds and the most unique prospecting adventures from around the web!

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