Nautilus completes Phase one deep sea exploration program

Nautilus Minerals Inc. announces that Teck Cominco Limited (Teck) has completed the first phase of its $US12 million 2008 offshore exploration program over Nautilus’ exploration tenements.

These tenements are located in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and exclusive economic zone of Tonga.

The phase one program was completed on Tuesday May 6, 2008 with the demobilisation of the MV Sepura in Port Moresby. This phase involved a 28-day bathymetric mapping program within the territorial waters of PNG that was designed to define targets for subsequent geochemical surveying and Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) based sampling.

VP Exploration for Teck, Fred Daley said, our dedicated crew of technical, safety, and logistics personnel has been able to complete this program on time and under budget, without a single lost time injury or safety incident and with greater seabed coverage than was originally planned.

We are excited by both the quality of the data and the results which are a significant improvement on previous data sets. Our geologists and geophysicists are currently working with Nautilus personnel to interpret this new data and prioritise targets for our follow-up sampling program which we are planning to launch in mid-May, added Mr. Daley.

Nautilus CEO, David Heydon, said the bathymetric survey is phase one of Teck’s $US12 million 2008 exploration program. After this program Teck can elect to form a joint venture with Nautilus and invest to earn an interest in up to six countries, as per our December 2007 agreement.

Nautilus is fortunate to have a company of Teck’s size and “ore finding” expertise spending significant money on Nautilus ground in parallel with our own exploration to fast track a resource pipeline. We are eagerly awaiting the results of their follow-up program, concluded Mr. Heydon.