The Deep Fox deposit is located just 2 km northeast of the port of St. Lewis on the southeast Labrador coast, within 12 km of the Foxtrot resource. It became Search's second major discovery in the Port Hope Simpson – St. Lewis Critical Rare Earth Element District, following an initial channel sampling program during the 2014 field season.
Exploration and resource delineation at Deep Fox has consisted of diamond drilling, surface channel samples, geophysical surveys, and surface mapping. In total, Search has completed 137 drill holes (25,741 m), and 44 surface channels (1,096 m), and assayed almost 15,500 samples.
The mineralized horizon at Deep Fox consists of steeply dipping, highly strained peralkaline gneiss – named pantellerite. Pantellerite is a high Fe, low Al felsic rock enriched in high field strength elements (i.e., REE, Zr, Hf, Y, Nb, Ti). The current extent of the mineralized zone is up to 42 m thick, with an approximate strike length of 400 m. Lithologies outside of the mineralized zone consist of unmineralized peralkaline gneiss (comendite and comenditic trachyte), augen/porphyritic granitic to granodioritic gneiss, anorthositic suite rocks, and mafic to ultramafic rocks. The main CREE-bearing minerals in the Deep Fox Deposit are allanite and fergusonite ((Ce, Ca, Y, La)2 (Al, Fe+3)3 (SiO4)3 (OH), and (Y, REE) NbO4, respectively).
A mineral resource estimate for Deep Fox was released in April 2022, and is summarized in the table below:
