De Beers

De Beers is represented in the novel through the technicians and technical expertise it brings to an attempt to remove deep-sea worms. Its contribution is concrete rather than broadly institutional: members of its team are present in the control room, and Jan van Maarten relays an operational command during deployment of the equipment intended to clear the seabed.

Technical Role in the Operation

The De Beers technicians join Stanley Frost’s team in the darkened control room aboard the Heerema. Jan van Maarten is identified among them; the narrative then describes a technology expert as having achieved the promised result with striking speed. The assembled equipment is presented as the world’s first deep-sea vacuum cleaner for worms, coupling a suction tube with a separate lighting unit equipped with cameras.

Deployment at Sea

The apparatus is lowered from the platform by cranes. After the lighting unit has descended beneath the surface, Frost tells the team to stop; Van Maarten relays the instruction to the operator and directs that the unit be opened halfway first, with full deployment to follow if the surrounding area is clear. Four hundred metres below the surface, the compact metal package unfolds into a lattice-like framework as large as half a football pitch. The scene makes the De Beers team’s role part of a coordinated technical operation involving specialists, crane operators, cameras and the suction system, rather than an isolated piece of equipment.

Significance and Limits

Frost’s speech praises the De Beers technicians as he prepares to lower the equipment, casting their work as an essential contribution to an urgent effort against the worms. Yet the scene does not establish that the device can solve the wider crisis: Gerhard Bohrmann has already questioned whether a single suction tube could clear a much larger continental slope, and remains worried that the measures may not prevent the instability of Cumbre Vieja. De Beers’s significance here lies in making an unprecedented tool operational; the larger environmental outcome remains uncertain.