Coopers Treasures

Simon1

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Who is this guy's backer ? Tonight alone, I have seen a couple large salvage boats, a few smaller craft, magnetometers, underwater LIDAR, an airplane, and even a 2 person submersible. Seems like he could extend his finances by scaling back on some of his expenses ? I guess it is " Go big or go home ". Have yet to see anything to be impressed with. :dontknow:
Last week ended with this weeks previews of the guys on the bottom saying they found "gold", then saying there was "gold" everywhere. On the episode for tonight, I did not see this. Did they decide to edit it in at a later date or did not find gold, or paranoid and deleted the scene entirely ?
 

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RTR

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Yeah that show last night (S-2,E-5 "dragons teeth") was probably the best one so far.What they need is a boat with a mailbox system to remove the sand around that three 10 ft. cannon area.
 

jeff of pa

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Sadly , When it comes to Previews "gold everywhere" Could mean many different things.
including someone telling his friend about a dream he had, or about a show he was watching
about Mel Fisher or something.
Previews do have allot of Lies in order to get viewers to tune in.
I'll hold my beliefs till next week.
 

Salvor6

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Yeah that show last night (S-2,E-5 "dragons teeth") was probably the best one so far.What they need is a boat with a mailbox system to remove the sand around that three 10 ft. cannon area.

They can't do that. I found out from a friend that lives in the Bahamas that Miklos does not have a permit for excavation. There is a treasure hunting moratorium in the Bahamas. Miklos has permission to look only and don't touch anything.
 

ropesfish

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islamoradamark

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Lots of money with TV help finance exploration and do TV commercials fun show to watch
 

xaos

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I watched this show for the first time ever, they were scanning with a mag for ballast piles.
That in itself I found mildly entertaining, especially when I noticed Sinclair, then it made sense.
Towing a tad fast with a rigid inflatable in pretty rough seas, wanting to open fire on any boat that came close, and of course the mag targets. (suspense building or folly?)
Commercials between every hit, the show moved very slow. Diving on each scrap did not help and I really did not see any evidence of them following any kind of a debris trail. Still I kept watching.
They have a big hit on the mag and decide to dive on it. (the biggest one they have ever seen! no wonder!)
They cannot find the hit (looking with hand held probes and a metal detector) and figure it must be in deeper water. The inability to save the location of the hit and dive on it was especially confusing, but alas, the best is yet to come.
The hit turned out to be a large modern steel wreck.
How can one looking for a Spanish Shipwreck not understand the meer size of mag hit was a large steel hull? (The mag has a nose cam!)
They cant locate a 70 foot steel hull, yet the viewers actually expect to find items from a shipwreck?

Seems a shame. I know there are quite a few experienced people out there who would really do some great things with this kind of financing and equipment. I guess that is my opinion on my first episode.
 

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RTR

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Maybe you guys can help me understand this question I've had for some time now ....... When treasure hunters(looking for something like a 1700s ship,like a Spanish galleon) come across a Hugh ballast Rock pile ,Why do they go soooo crazy ? I understand the ballast pile indicates their in an area of a period correct wreck, BUT. The way I see it, The bigger the pile of 'rocks' is, The less cargo like gold /silver the ship would of been carrying....What am I missing here ?
******************
Its either Rocks or Gold.
Granite (cubic yard) weight =2,400 to 2,900 pounds.
Gold (cubic foot) weight = 1,206 pounds.
 

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jeff of pa

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Maybe you guys can help me understand this question I've had for some time now ....... When treasure hunters(looking for something like a 1700s ship,like a Spanish galleon) come across a Hugh ballast Rock pile ,Why do they go soooo crazy ? I understand the ballast pile indicates their in an area of a period correct wreck, BUT. The way I see it, The bigger the pile of 'rocks' is, The less cargo like gold /silver the ship would of been carrying....What am I missing here ?
******************
Its either Rocks or Gold.
Granite (cubic yard) weight =2,400 to 2,900 pounds.
Gold (cubic foot) weight = 1,206 pounds.

though I was guessing,

I took it to mean ballast Piles from Many Wrecks. Piled on top of each other.

But can't a Ship Drop their Ballast in order to Get higher & avoid Wrecking ?
Making some of The Ballast Completely useless for Wreck finding.
 

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Au_Dreamers

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Maybe you guys can help me understand this question I've had for some time now ....... When treasure hunters(looking for something like a 1700s ship,like a Spanish galleon) come across a Hugh ballast Rock pile ,Why do they go soooo crazy ? I understand the ballast pile indicates their in an area of a period correct wreck, BUT. The way I see it, The bigger the pile of 'rocks' is, The less cargo like gold /silver the ship would of been carrying....What am I missing here ?
******************
Its either Rocks or Gold.
Granite (cubic yard) weight =2,400 to 2,900 pounds.
Gold (cubic foot) weight = 1,206 pounds.

You answer your own question.

How many cubic foot of gold do you think treasure ships carried?
 

BVI Hunter

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They can't do that. I found out from a friend that lives in the Bahamas that Miklos does not have a permit for excavation. There is a treasure hunting moratorium in the Bahamas. Miklos has permission to look only and don't touch anything.

They also got their butts kicked in the last series (Turks and Caicos) - the large anchor they "found" was already well known to loads of locals and scuba guys. They lifted it for the show but were not permitted to. What they did not show was them having to sheepishly take it back and re-sink it after filming!!!
As a result the second series was banned from being filmed in the TCI.
 

RTR

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Au_Dreamers

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Maybe you guys can help me understand this question I've had for some time now ....... When treasure hunters(looking for something like a 1700s ship,like a Spanish galleon) come across a Hugh ballast Rock pile ,Why do they go soooo crazy ?

IMHO, it's a few things.

The thrill of the hunt thing is one. Maybe television treasure hunting set aside....You've been out looking for "signs" of a shipwreck. Finding a ballast pile is a great sign "something more" could be near. So now you've found something in part that you've been looking for which leads to the affirmation thing. "You're possibly in the right area." That area now may be smaller than the 5 - 50 square miles you were intending to search. Which could lead to that relief thing. A bit of relief that you may have enough funding, investors might not jump ship since you're not searching and searching and searching without finding anything. Crew will stay on, you don't have to exhaustively keep searching, if they're getting crew share it's a better sign that possibly something might come their way....

As a treasure hunter that loves history ( I know, right?) it's pretty cool to see. Remember these are not "sunken" ships sitting on the bottom of the oceans. They are wrecked ships with few remains scattered over the oceans floor. Few things are just laying in plain sight that give one a visual of something old and majestic that once sailed the Spanish Main lies around.

Known treasure wrecks do have large piles or large ballast drop areas, so yeah it can be a pretty exciting thing, especially if you're in an exploration phase!
 

Au_Dreamers

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They also got their butts kicked in the last series (Turks and Caicos) - the large anchor they "found" was already well known to loads of locals and scuba guys. They lifted it for the show but were not permitted to. What they did not show was them having to sheepishly take it back and re-sink it after filming!!!
As a result the second series was banned from being filmed in the TCI.

I thought the replacement of the anchor was in the show?
 

RTR

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IMHO, it's a few things.

The thrill of the hunt thing is one. Maybe television treasure hunting set aside....You've been out looking for "signs" of a shipwreck. Finding a ballast pile is a great sign "something more" could be near. So now you've found something in part that you've been looking for which leads to the affirmation thing. "You're possibly in the right area." That area now may be smaller than the 5 - 50 square miles you were intending to search. Which could lead to that relief thing. A bit of relief that you may have enough funding, investors might not jump ship since you're not searching and searching and searching without finding anything. Crew will stay on, you don't have to exhaustively keep searching, if they're getting crew share it's a better sign that possibly something might come their way....

As a treasure hunter that loves history ( I know, right?) it's pretty cool to see. Remember these are not "sunken" ships sitting on the bottom of the oceans. They are wrecked ships with few remains scattered over the oceans floor. Few things are just laying in plain sight that give one a visual of something old and majestic that once sailed the Spanish Main lies around.

Known treasure wrecks do have large piles or large ballast drop areas, so yeah it can be a pretty exciting thing, especially if you're in an exploration phase!

Thanks,All that said.Wouldn't it better to find a pile of ballast rocks that weighs 50 tons (that belonged to a ship) that hauls 500 tons of cargo ? Thats the only point I was trying to make.Not the other way around.
 

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Simon1

Simon1

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Apparently Darrell has some backing for the show that has deep pockets. I've talked to a couple of guys that work on the show and it is being run with a good budget.
All supplied, apparently, by Brownie's Marine Logistics:
Brownie's Brand Featured on Cooper's Treasure | Brownie's Marine Group

Here's the present location of GO America: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-77.8/centery:24.7/zoom:11

well done.
==========
Thanks ropesfish, now it makes more sense to me. Salvor6's information makes some sense as well, yet I wonder why back an expedition that can only look but don't touch ? ( Which this offers an explanation into the "alleged" Columbus anchor which they had to put back. In order to save face with the viewers he blamed this on a rival. )
 

Bum Luck

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It was in the show. Still don’t understand what technology allowed Gordon Cooper to pic out ship wrecks from space.

None, if you're talking Spanish treasure wrecks.

In 1963, the Hycon-73b was the state of the art aerial camera. It had a resolution of 2.5 feet, great for its time, and more than enough to find Soviet submarines in Cuba which almost escalated to nuclear war.
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/camera-aerial-hycon-73b


That's if Cooper was using official NASA film and if that camera was on board. It was not.

Instead, he had this camera, a 35mm:
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/camera-robot-35mm-ma-9-faith-7

The idea that Cooper could get that kind of resolution with a 35mm camera and even the finest Zeiss glass shot through the thick window of the capsule is absurd to anyone who has looked at even good air photos pushing the limits of that resolution. I know, I have tried, logging many hours in doing so. That is aside from the issue of picking out any features that you could identify as a 1700s wreck.

In about 1990, I gave Mel Fisher a poster size plot in stunning detail of the area from Key West to the Tortugas that I got from a friend "in DC", but I went over it with a magnifying glass first and was unable to find any cannons or ballast piles. That era cameras had 6 inch resolution, but was "limited" by the finest plotter available, costing tens of thousands of dollars.

Any of you that have taken pictures out of a 747 with your digital phone can see that for yourself. That is many magnitudes better than any camera Cooper may have had, or that his conditions could have produced. Think of it this way: you are taking hundreds of miles of landscape and reducing the information to a piece of film 35mm wide.

I call BS.

Actually, if you wanted to use air photos ( and why not), you would fly (photograph) a low level flight and possibly multi-spectral scanning, cheap. I'd guess that would be a budgetable item in an expedition with a high daily cost.
 

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