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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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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...)