Posted on 05/23/2018 9:53:09 AM PDT by Simon Green
A more than 300-year-old Spanish shipwreck carrying treasure that might be worth up to $17 billion was discovered with the help of an underwater robot. It's called the Remus 6000 and it can dive nearly four miles and is loaded with sensors and cameras.
Bronze cannons confirmed "the holy grail of shipwrecks" had been found at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. They are engraved with dolphins a telltale sign they belong to the Spanish galleon San Jose, lost more than 300 years ago.
"I just sat there for about 10 minutes and smiled," said Jeff Kaeli, a research engineer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Kaeli was alone in his bunk on the search vessel when he spotted the cannons.
"I'm not a marine archaeologist, but ... I know what a cannon looks like. So in that moment, I guess I was the only person in the world who knew we'd found the shipwreck," he said.
The exact location of the wreckage is still a secret, but it was discovered in November 2015 off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. Its cargo of gold, silver, and emeralds could be worth as much as $17 billion.
The Remus 6000, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, found the ship almost 2,000 feet below the surface. The underwater robot scanned the sea floor using long-range sonar then went back and took pictures of any objects that seemed out of the ordinary.
"You can take bigger risks with your technology and go to places where it wouldn't be safe or feasible to put a human being," Kaeli said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Jeff Kaeli, a research engineer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
I’m a bad man. I read that as “Wrong Hole Oceanographic Institution”.
Cool find! I remember when the Atocha was found off Florida, and a buddy of mine purchased a coin from her.
Unbelievably clear photos and the cannons aren’t seriously encrusted to be obscured for some reason.
Several years ago I watched an episode of a reality show where a group of people went to one of the most remote and miserable places in the world looking for gold. Gold still does something to people when it gets into their head.
Yes thank the globalists for rewriting maritime law.
It used to be that if you lost a ship, and couldn’t salvage it in a reasonable amount of time, the contents belonged to whoever found the ship and salvaged it. If an insurer payed out on a ship, they might have a claim, but only for a limited period of time. Suddenly by new law, any really old shipwreck became a warship or government owned ship. Even if the new government overthrew and destroyed the old government 50, 100, or 600 years ago. I’m surprised that the US doesn’t claim a piece of any old ship found, after all we were English or Dutch or Spanish or French or Chinese or Japanese at the time. And how do we know that the sunken ship wasn’t taken by privateers before it’s sinking.
Careful! Be very, very careful about attributes and reputations of the (original) Wood Hole Oceanographic Institute, and the much newer enviro-ecotechnical-fuzzy-green Wood Hole Research Center and the closely associated Woods Hole Group - both quasi-study groups that specialize in fund-raising and publicity stunts using their near-duplicate of the (original) Wood Hole name and its location in Woods Hole, MA.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.