DEVELOPMENT OF MARINE PLACERS, NORTHEASTERN QUEEN-CHARLOTTE-ISLANDS, BRITISH-COLUMBIA, CANADA

The possibility exists for economic gold and titanium placer mineral d eposits in the nearshore and shelf regions off western Canada. On the eastern shores of Graham Island of the Queen Charlotte Islands, a regi onally extensive (60 km) upper shoreface heavy mineral deposit occurs that contains variable gold grades between 0 and 4 g/tonne and Ti of u p to 7.0%. The deposit in any particular area is ephemeral, the result of wave action in a macrotidal setting along an eroding unconsolidate d coast. Similar offshore deposits likely exist along drowned paleosho relines and fluvial channels that formed during the early Holocene in the same setting as found today on Graham Island, The preservation of drowned beach and fluvial heavy mineral concentrations arises from a r apid relative sea level rise that occurred across the shallow shelf ea st of the Queen Charlotte Islands approximately 10,500 years ago.