Atocha gives up gold again
BY MANDY BOLEN
Citizen Staff Writer

Kim Fisher will not be in his Treasure Salvors office much this week.

"They're finding gold," he said Monday, gesturing to the five-man crew of the Dauntless and looking down at the latest find from the wreck of the Atocha. "I'm going to have to sneak out of the office."

The Dauntless, with Capt. Robbie Hanna at the helm, left the dock Wednesday bound for a spot about six miles away from the site of the famed main treasure pile of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha.

The Spanish treasure galleon left Havana Harbor in September 1622 but was lost in a hurricane and sank off the coast of Key West, killing more than 200 people and spilling millions of dollars in treasure.

Kim Fisher's father, Mel, spent 16 years searching for the main pile of treasure, which was found in 1985.

But the search for Atocha treasure has continued even after Mel Fisher's death in 1998. Kim Fisher has taken over his father's quest and divers continue to probe the ocean floor looking for the rest of the ship's precious cargo.

The remaining gold and silver is believed to have been in the sterncastle of the ship, which would have broken off in the storm, been carried by the waves and sunk in a different place than the heavier hull.

The gold bar found over the weekend in about 30 feet of water has reassured the crew at Treasure Salvors that they are looking in the right spot and following an accurate trail that will eventually lead them to the remaining treasure.

"We're going back to the same spot Thursday," Hanna said, although no one in the room would reveal where that spot is.

The first gold find of the year was helped by a new monitoring technique that uses three different types of sensors to locate ferrous metal on the ocean floor, Fisher said.

The small crowd in his office laughed and admitted that finding gold is much more satisfying than looking for it, and Joe Markovic was a satisfied diver as he held on to the 457-gram gold bar and quietly told the story of his discovery.

The treasure had become buried in a sand berm that forms when the divers' underwater equipment blows holes 10 feet deep in the ocean bottom and throws the removed sand into a different pile.

Markovic, who has been diving with the company for about six months, was fanning his way through one of the berms Saturday when he felt an object that fit the much-talked-about description of a gold bar.

Hanna swam over to help and his trained eyes widened at the familiar shine of gold. "Joe picked the spot to look in that day," he said. "So Joe's going to be picking spots from now on."

The team also returned Sunday night with four silver coins that will be cleaned and polished, several lead musket balls and a jade tile that measures about one square inch.

"I've never seen one cut into a tile like this before," Clyne said. He guessed it could have come from a mosaic, although no one knew for sure.

But the gleam of gold and the unmistakable shape of silver coins held no mystery, only excitement.

"We're off to a good start this year," Fisher said rolling his eyes at a stack of paperwork and vowing to be on the boat some time this week.

mbolen@keysnews.com