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The ‘Holy Grail of Shipwrecks’ Is Still Underwater. So Is Its $17 Billion Fortune.
(www.popularmechanics.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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Colombia has declared it an important cultural heritage site; a limited archeological survey is underway while techniques are developed to allow for the excavation and preservation of the site. (Edit: the first artefacts were recovered a few days ago!). There's also lots (30+ years) of lawsuits and drama that is too tedious to summarize but everyone sucks (although imo its good that the Colombian government seems to have emerged victorious over SSA, after umpteen years of them being just total dicks to each other. Go check out the wikipedia page, it's pretty fun.)
As to why it hasn't been looted, the location has been kept a secret but we can guess it's down -deep- deep, by the type of UUV (AUV?) used in the discovery. This means that anyone who knows where it is still has to have the resources to actually go down and loot it, and ultra-deep equipment like that is pretty hard to come by.
This guy loots.
I decidedly don't "loot", I "acquire". Usually by having have my ambassador nab things while nobody's looking. Much more respectable, I'm sure we all agree.
Well, if this is a consular ship, where's the ambassador??
Yes, your Highness. Will you be needing any further artifacts aquired for safe keeping and preservation?
“Legitimate Salvage”
Can u tell me where I can find some treasures closer to the surface:) ty
Recommend your local library! Treasure abounds there!
Nah I want old antiques and gold
Well we have vintage books and comedy gold....
It says it was located 600m down in 2015. That's not too bad, military subs have a max depth of like 400m, but deep sea submersibles can get to like 11km. An remote vehicle would be much cheaper at this depth, and wealthier financiers could easy afford salvage expeditions.
But where it was located is not public information. That limits it's salvaging opportunity immensely. I would also suspect that Columbia has spent some effort securing the salvage, if they can't afford to retrieve it.
Getting to that depth with a submersible is one thing, but being able to enter, navigate inside, grab stuff, and bring them out is another.
Oh my apologies, I did not intend to imply it's impossible to get down there, just that the resources needed to recover the treasure aren't ones that can be surreptitiously obtained. There just aren't all that many ROVs in the world capable of this work, so while the act of getting down there and looting it isn't difficult, getting away with it after the fact is the challenging part.
(also the depth claim is... well there's a few reasons to be skeptical of it. This whole saga is already rife with accusations of coverups and intentional deception, and both parties involved are incredibly motivated to lie about it for their own gain. It's good to take anything either side announces with a big ol' skepticism pill...)
Thank you for the insight.