National Geographic: Treasures of the Deep (1998)

[bunniefuu]

Thousands of feet beneath the seven seas

lies the history of the world buried

in the wreckage of lost ships.

It is a realm of precious artifacts

and priceless treasures.

A world of ancient mysteries long

beyond our grasp.

Until today.

Now the sunken marvels

of the ocean deep are up for grabs,

from ancient Roman ships to

Spanish galleons

to luxury liners like the Titanic.

I dream about gold and

emeralds every night.

And you gotta believe it's there

and you gotta want it bad.

Some people are out to plunder the past.

While others archeologists

and scientists

like the man who first found

the Titanic, are out to preserve it.

They are all armed with million-dollar

high-tech tools,

and the will to spend years

on the arduous search.

Just running out on a boat

with a metal detector

and hoping to jump over the side and

pull up a beached basket of gold coins

that's stuff of fantasy and Hollywood.

that really doesn't happen very often.

It is a world where controversy reigns

where there are confusing laws

and no rules.

Does anyone have a right

to excavate shipwrecks?

Should the past be protected?

Or should it be picked clean for profit?

So it's a very big difference

between doing something to

fill in a missing chapter

in human history

and doing it for personal greed.

Explorers and archeologists.

Entrepreneurs and salvagers.

Some will risk everything

reputation, fortune, even their lives

to possess the treasures of the deep.

The Mediterranean Sea.

On its shores grew the great

civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

And from its banks,

ancient peoples sailed beyond the

safety of land in small wooden ships.

For hundreds of years,

Roman ships controlled these waters,

creating a vast empire.

But the moods of the sea are harsh

and unpredictable,

and a Roman vessel 100 feet long

had no defenses against storm

and wave and wind.

Over the centuries,

countless ships were lost

and countless sailors k*lled.

Now the man who discovered the Titanic

Dr. Robert Ballard,

is again hunting for shipwrecks,

ancient shipwrecks in the Mediterranean.

For hundreds of years,

scientists have looked

in the ocean for our history.

And for most of that time

they've only been able to

look a very short distance

of one or 200 feet,

which represents an insignificant

amount of the ocean.

And what we're trying to accomplish is

something that's never been done before

and this is to try to excavate a ship

of antiquity

that is thousands of feet

beneath the sea.

To bring up ancient vessels

buried a half-mile down.

It's never been done before

and Ballard only has five short weeks

to do it.

You know, it's ironic that we have

sent robots to Mars

and we've mapped the far side of Venus

in fact, that we know more about

the moon's surface than the ocean.

To make the impossible happen

Ballard will need a floating

laboratory as mission central.

The Carolyn Chouest, a U.S. Navy vessel,

will journey 80 miles west of Sicily

into international waters,

where no one has a claim on lost vessels.

Ballard believes the Mediterranean

is strewn with ancient wrecks

and he has long dreamed of finding one

We're sitting right now in ruins

that are on the island of Sicily.

To get to Rome you have to cross

the Tyrrhenian Sea;

to get to Carthage you have to cross

the Straits of Sicily.

To travel from civilization to

civilization here in the Mediterranean

you must cross the Mediterranean,

and many of those ships didn't make it

Many of those ships went to the bottom

and many of them went into the deep sea.

Between ancient Carthage and Rome,

it's 12,000 feet deep.

And no one has ever gone to the bottom

of the Tyrrhenian Sea

to look for those ships that sank

most surely sank there until now.

It was a decade ago when Ballard

and a team of archeologists

first surveyed an

unexplored Mediterranean region

called Skerki Bank.

In 1988, he made a startling discovery

nearly 3,000 feet down,

the remains of an ancient Roman ship

lying untouched for almost 20 centuries

The find confirmed,

for the first time ever,

that an ancient trade route

had flourished across the open sea,

from Carthage in North Africa to Rome.

Now Ballard has returned to Skerki Bank,

where he'll attempt to excavate

the ancient Roman ship.

Working in close collaboration

with archeologists,

Ballard hopes to uncover something

nobody has ever seen before.

My greatest dream is that these ships

are buried and well preserved,

and that their cargo in preserved and,

and who knows, maybe there's people

that are preserved.

I'm not sure I want to find people,

but it would be fascinating.

We won't know until we dig them.

Could there really be the remains

of ancient seafarers

at the bottom of the Mediterranean?

It is an extraordinary idea,

and to find out Ballard will use

an extraordinary machine.

The NR-1.

The big g*n of deep-diving submarines.

It is capable of going

all the way down to 3,000 feet

and staying there for a month.

Built during the clashes of the Cold w*r,

the NR-1 was a crucial w*apon in

the U.S. Navy's arsenal for 30 years,

designed to search the ocean depths

for downed planes and lost missiles.

It's the best in the world, outfitted

with lights, sensors, cameras,

and a mechanical arm for digging,

all of it powered by a nuclear reactor

which won't need to be

refueled for 20 years.

Even now, its sonar equipment

is still classified,

so sophisticated NR-1 can find a soda

can sitting on the seafloor a mile away

The NR-1 is a marvel,

but it's a cramped one.

The 11-man crew shares one bolted-down

kitchen table

just big enough for two people at a time.

For this mission,

Ballard has added something brand new

to the sub's digging arm

a powerful suction pump

that will dredge the ocean bottom.

Ballard believes the seafloor

is sandy and soft,

ready to reveal whatever

secrets lie hidden underneath.

What is actually down there?

Will Ballard find the timbers

of an ancient Roman trading ship,

and the bones of the men

who sailed it 2,000 years ago?

Sunken treasure.

It has drawn people into the seas

since the first cargo ship apart

on the first shallow reefs.

Relics, gold, gems, pieces of eight

it is the stuff that countless dreams

and schemes are made of.

Obsessed with the promise of riches,

undersea treasure hunters today

scour the world's oceans,

crowding serious archeologists.

The king of the undersea dreamers

and schemers

is a stubborn rebel name Mel Fisher.

In his quest for treasure,

Fisher let nothing stand in his way,

and came to be known as a swashbuckler

a very successful swashbuckler.

In 1997, family and friends joined

with fisher

to mark the spot where

he struck gold nearly 25 years earlier

The reason we picked today

was rather appropriate.

It's Mel Fisher's 75th birthday.

Here, here.

Long live the king. Long live the king

But the plaque and let me

unveil it here take it off.

You notice we have a picture

of the Atocha, and it reads:

In sincere appreciation to Mel

and Deo Fisher

in their extraordinary efforts

in accomplishing

mankind's most elusive goal.

They've followed their dream.

In the 1960s,

Mel fisher is a man with a mad dream.

Often short of money and deep in dept,

he hunts the shallow waters off coast

for treasure.

He is determined to find

the shipwreck called the Atocha,

a Spanish galleon that had sunk

in 1622 in a hurricane,

reportedly carrying king's ransom

in sliver and gold.

Year after year, with the help

of his wife and children,

Fisher combs the Florida sea.

Until 1975, when his son, Dirk,

finds the first real evidence

of the ship nine bronze cannons.

Just a week later,

while returning to the site

of his triumph,

Dirk Fisher's boat capsizes

in the dark of night.

Dirk, his wife,

and another diver die tragically.

Fisher is devastated.

But he vows to continue

and to honor his son's memory.

The Atocha seems so close.

But she continues to elude Fisher,

to tease him for over a decade.

Then in 1985, in 60 feet of water,

he finds her, the Atocha,

the mother lode of all treasure ships.

It's worth 400 million dollars so far.

And today,

Mel Fisher is counting the riches

still out there on the ocean floor.

So right over here about

a quarter of a mile

is all the kings taxes for five years,

all the church collection money from

all the Catholic churches

in this hemisphere for five years,

all the wealthy merchants,

there was 28 of them on board

all their lifesavings for 10

or 15 years in business over here.

They were gonna go home and retire.

They didn't make it.

So there's probably another four

and a half billion right over there.

Today, aging and ailing,

Mel Fisher is still bringing up treasure.

These days, it is emeralds.

His passion for treasure

has been passed on

to his youngest son, Kane Fisher.

Is there more come from their cursor

and they want our men for this

When we found that... ah... we found that

court martial referee

in our linds send the leve

I got one...

Here me go. that ahold a half carat

that about 3000.a carat 6000

You got to be real persistent

and not give up, no matter what.

And you got to believe it's there.

And you got to want it bad.

If you want it bad enough, you'll get it.

You just got to keep looking

and don't stop no matter what.

I dream about gold

and emeralds every night.

And you'll never know what's

five feet away from where you left off.

That's what keeps it exciting.

The Atocha puzzle still isn't solved.

I don't know

when we're gonna figure it out.

And you just keep going and going.

It seems like you

never get done working a shipwreck.

We've been working those wrecks

for 34 years now

and still finding stuff.

It's exciting.

That's what keeps you going.

Today, Mel Fisher is big business,

and almost respectable.

But a swashbuckler makes enemies,

big enemies.

Charging that Fisher has

seriously damaged the seafloor

with his salvaging techniques,

the federal government has dragged him

through the courts.

And Fisher's had to pay hundreds

of thousands in fines.

But Fisher knows how to change

with the times.

Conservator Sid Jones,

who worked extensively

with Fisher on the Atocha,

acknowledges the need to protect history.

In the past treasure hunting,

back in the '60s or the '50s

when it was really getting started,

there wasn't much

thought given to recording data

or preserving the artifacts.

Of course, there was a large emphasis

on finding something of value,

but we've learned in time

that every artifact that comes

from these ships has value.

Once you understand the complete picture,

the items not only have a monetary value,

but they have a historical value as well,

which didn't always exist in

the early phases of treasure hunting.

After finding and

carefully cataloging his treasures,

Fisher sells most of it off

piece by piece.

Fisher believes that two billion more

is just waiting to be recovered.

Deep in the Mediterranean,

the NR-1 is still hunting for

archeological marvels with no luck.

After three weeks of trying,

the sub and its robot arm

have been unable

to make a dent in the ocean floor,

which unexpectedly turns out to be

sticky and thick like clay.

Ballard's master plan

is just not working.

Do the wooden hulls of the Roman

vessels still exist just beyond reach?

Or has time stolen them away.

Ballard wonders if he'll ever find them.

The deep sea is always surprising me.

I every time I think I understand it,

it throws me another curve ball.

But that's okay. That's part of it.

I think it wouldn't be fun

if it if I knew it that well,

and it wasn't full of surprises.

Ballard decides to change

the way they use the NR-1.

He sends the sub out to do

what it does best,

to act as a high-tech bloodhound,

to roam over Skerki Bank

and to explore as much as possible

with its exceptional sonar senses.

Sir, request permission to rig ship

for deep submerges.

Rig ship for deep submerges.

Rig ship for deep submerges, aye sir.

Rig ship for deep submerges.

Will the NR-1 discover the unknown,

the unexpected?

Ballard will just have to wait and see

By working to develop

new underwater technology,

Ballard has revolutionized deep

sea archeology.

At the same time,

he has inadvertently helped to blow

the world of treasure hunters wide open

Now anyone with $150,000

to spare can buy an ROV,

a remotely operated search vehicle,

right off the shelf and set off for gold.

Still there are only a handful

of successful deep-sea salvagers.

Seahawk Deep Ocean Technology,

out of Tampa, Florida, is one of them.

Seahawk hit the jackpot in 1989

discovering a 17th century Spanish

galleon, heavy with gold and jewels,

off the Florida coast

in 1,500 feet of water.

Seahawk is looking for treasure again,

this time in the seas off the coast

of Georgia.

Michael Reardon,

Seahawk's current expedition leader,

sees himself as a treasure hunter

with a difference.

That's one of our goals,

is to choose shipwrecks

that are archeologically important

as well as having a commercial cargo.

So we're playing a fine line

between the archeological community

and the out-and-out smash-and-grab

treasure hunters, which we're not.

Reardon is after

a 19th-century paddle wheel steamer,

which they've code named

The Golden Eagle,

to keep her identity hidden

from other salvagers.

Now they've narrowed the search

to a mere 200 square miles.

It's very difficult locating shipwrecks.

Un, with all the sophisticated

equipment we have today,

it's still quite a chore.

Keep in mind right now

we're 433 feet above the seafloor,

trying to put a small vehicle

on a shipwreck.

There is no road sign over there.

It has taken Rearden and his colleagues

years of hard work

to reach this point.

Now, using some of the same high tech

tools to Ballard.

They are hoping to claim their fortune

Yeah. The vehicle is on the bottom.

Roger that, I copy.

The vehicle is on the bottom.

According to Seahawk,

the Golden Eagle, in 1865,

found herself caught in a hurricane

with nowhere to hide.

They fought the storm for two days

all hands and passengers bailing

and bucketing water out.

And finally,

the seas and the weather calmed down,

and it went under.

She went to the bottom,

carrying a bellyful of

gold coins $400,000 at the time,

now valued at 20 million.

Six years of work coming down to a dive

with a remote vehicle and, hopefully,

when we get in on the site,

it'll be the right wreck.

We have a very good sonar images

of the wreck,

and dimensions are almost exact

the same with target vessel

a code name Gold Eagle.

...get the target at the right.

As the ROV descends into

the glittery murk of the deep sea,

project manager Brett Hobson discerns

the ghostly outlines of the past.

That's the beautiful part

of these old wrecks.

They're little time capsules

and nobody's seen it.

And we're just sleuthing

through trying looking for clues.

And it you definitely feel like

a detective.

So far, everything we have seen

is a, telling us it could be the one.

Looking straight down, now, right?

Yes.

We've got the way over there

near the site, OK?

It's very quiet here

and the scenes is very dark.

The light, the first one illuminated

when we went down.

It's a very weird feeling.

As the ROV makes a closer pass,

they see things that don't match.

Round.

Really round.

Well, we've got some very

flat-sided bulwarks here.

See the big cutout going down to

the keel, and the on the right?

I don't know what else it could be.

It looks just like what

I had hoped we would not find.

No paddle wheels I know of

has a propeller like that.

I think we're in trouble.

It's very disappointing at this moment

to be sitting here

with a target that we have pinned high

hopes on and now have proved that it,

it's not the right vessel.

But can't think of the right words

to describe how I'm feeling right now.

It's not good.

It takes time and luck to find

a pot of gold in a vast, deep ocean.

And Reardon has run out of both.

Reardon abandons the ship to the sea.

There's no profit to be made

from the wreck

and unlike Ballard, treasure,

not history, is what drives him.

In the Mediterranean,

the search for history does not let up

With only a few weeks left,

Ballard and the NR-1 continue

to hunt Skerki for new wrecks.

Ballard also deploys Jason,

a remotely-operated search vehicle,

designed and built by engineers from

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Archeologists have already spent

many hours carefully surveying

and mapping artifacts on the seafloor.

Now it's time for Jason to retrieve them.

Guided by the team,

the robot vehicle plunges 3,000 feet

to locate fragile relics.

Most are roman amphoras.

They're 2,000-year-old

terra-cotta containers,

the cargo holders of the ancient world,

filled with olive oil, dried fish,

or wine.

Safely cradling its fragile haul,

an elevator of metal and mesh

slowly traverses the half mile

separating the centuries.

For the first time in 2,000 years,

human hands will hold

the ancient artifacts.

Next stop for these delicate pieces

of the past is the ship's laboratory,

where they'll be examined

by archeologist John Oleson,

expedition archeological director

Anna Marguerite McCann,

and conservator Dennis Piechota.

Oleson is delighted to

find the simple clay pots.

Well, to find

several cooking pots together,

adjacent to one another,

just as they would have been left

on a kitchen bench,

is extraordinary

at this depth 2,600 feet.

Treasure hunters would find little

of value here.

Yet to archeologist Jon Adams,

a shipwreck is a slice of time

unexpectedly preserved.

So when a ship sinks it is,

it's a cross section of society

structure, contents,

personal possessions,

contextual relationships, etcetera

lost at a single moment in time.

Nobody decides what to take away,

what to leave behind when a ship sinks

It all ends up on the seabed

at the same time.

And ships have been described,

rightly so in a way, as time capsules.

As they continue to explore,

Ballard and the archeologists

are excited to see things

they've never seen before.

Skerki is turning

into more than they ever expected.

Could you zoom in on that?

Keep zooming.

Isn't that beautiful.

They've identified the remains of a ship,

but it's definitely not Roman origin.

Nobody knows, at first, where it's from

It's particularly interesting,

because it seems to be

a relatively small ship,

and we don't see cargo,

just ballast stones,

which help steady a ship

when it's not carrying cargo,

or if it's a pleasure craft,

such as a small personal yacht,

or possibly a type of warship.

Look at the reflection on those glasses.

Keep driving straight. Don't stop.

It's glasses.

I'm just amazed that there's glasses.

Glass. Lamps that brightened

the darkness centuries before.

And despite thousands of pounds

of sea pressure,

they have survived unbroken.

Obviously one of our big concerns is

that these artifacts are very,

very fragile.

Jason weighs 3,000 pounds in air

and he's got a tremendous amount

of momentum.

And we want to pick them up

without breaking any of them.

We've never picked up glass before.

Once the objects reach the surface,

they help reveal the nature

of the mysterious vessel.

It comes from the 16th century

or 17th century,

when Arab traders sailed these waters.

Look at this.

Could someone hold that open?

Look at that.

Isn't that amazing?

They are not gold or studded

with emeralds.

Yet for Ballard, a delicate

glass object is the real treasure.

They are evidence that Skerki Bank

may have been a crossroads

for many countries and civilizations.

What has surprised me the most is

that we thought this was one event,

that this was a fleet of ships,

a group of ships

that sank together, and it's not at all.

We have ships spanning over

one thousand five hundred years

of history,

if not more.

I am just amazed.

I thought that there would be

a ship here and then,

way far away, another ship.

And yet, in this particular area,

miles we have found, now, six ships.

This area is it's sort

of like a graveyard.

Ballard is no stranger

to undersea graveyards.

He is the man

who discovered one of the most famous

burial grounds in history.

The Titanic.

The largest,

most luxurious ocean liner ever built.

Called a "Floating Palace,"

the Titanic sails April 10, 1912

on her maiden voyage.

She is believed to be unsinkable

until her tragic rendezvous

in the North Atlantic.

Sideswiping an iceberg,

the great ship sinks

in less than three hours:

of all those aboard,

die in the icy waters.

For decades explorers are obsessed

with finding the final resting place

of the great liner.

But no one is more intent on the hunt

than Robert Ballard,

who spends 13 years looking.

Finally, in 1985,

Ballard and French explorer

Jean-Louis Michel

discover the remains of

the ruined giant over 12,000 feet down

Ballard always treated the grand wreck

as a site to be explored.

But he did it with respect.

To him it was a shrine for the dead

to remain untouched, intact.

Ballard and the crew even held

a memorial service

for those who d*ed in the tragedy.

When I found the Titanic,

certainly I became emotionally

attached to it.

And Jean-Louis Michel,

who was co-discover

of the Titanic with me,

was equally moved.

And I can remember both of us saying,

well, we'll never let this ship

be spoiled or desecrated.

Ballard discovered the Titanic, but

he never claimed the laws of the sea.

Inadvertently,

he was opening a Pandora's box.

Once the location of the Titanic

became public knowledge,

it was a target for salvagers.

A new expedition,

led by Connecticut businessman

George Tulloch,

probes the rotting remains

of the Titanic.

Tulloch spends tens of millions

of dollars to send down robot vehicles

and bring up jewelry, eyeglasses,

furnishings anything within reach

from the devastated liner.

Once Tulloch retrieved the objects,

he legally claimed the Titanic

for his own.

Ballard never thought

this day would come.

I don't think in my wildest imagination

did I think they would go out

and salvage it.

I mean, I was convinced they wouldn't.

And it just caught me by surprise.

I was really shocked.

And there was nothing

I could do about it,

because, since I didn't claim it,

I mean, it didn't even cross my mind

to claim it!

Eighty-five years ago this month,

the luxury ship, the Titanic, sank

on its maiden voyage across

the North Atlantic.

Tomorrow, mid-Southerners

and people from across the world

will be able to see the treasures

that that disaster left behind.

Like Ballard, George Tulloch expresses

deep reverence for the Titanic's dead.

But he argues that people will

better understand the tragedy

if they can see the artifacts firsthand.

I think Titanic is by itself

capable of saying it is,

it is incomparable in terms of tragic

suffering for that moment in time.

And I think the objects from that moment

deserve to stay with us.

Tulloch says his company

will never sell the artifacts,

never sell off the possessions

of the dead.

But his company will profit handsomely

from the traveling exhibition.

I think the blessing we have is that

the court says that it's ours

the company that I'm the president of.

And we don't feel that it's ours.

We feel that we're the guardian of it.

Tulloch's historian, Charles Haas,

does not want to deny ordinary people

an opportunity to experience the past.

One only has to look at the museums

of the world to see

that part of the archeology process

is recovering artifacts

from the ocean floor.

There are ample demonstrations

of Mediterranean vessels

of all kinds of shapes having

their contents brought up

and placed in museums

for people to enjoy.

I think it's certainly preferable

to have the Titanic's artifacts

guaranteed to be placed

before the public and teach them,

than to allow them to sit on the

ocean floor where they'll be ravaged

by time and the elements down there,

and accessible, really,

by only a very few people.

But to archeologist Jon Adams,

there is no scientific reason for

Tulloch's excavation of the Titanic.

We know a lot about the Titanic.

We know the names of the people on board.

We know its itinerary.

So the question the potential

archeological researcher would ask is,

if you actually go and investigate

that wreck archeologically,

in other words, pull up pieces

of the material remains,

what is he going to tell you

that you don't know already?

Now, this is further muddied by the

fact that there are still people alive

whose relatives d*ed on the ship.

Is there any difference between

exhibiting a teacup from the Titanic

and bringing up an ancient drinking

glass from the Mediterranean floor?

Tulloch doesn't think so.

One of the people that would criticize

is in the Mediterranean

is sucking up the clay containers

from Roman and Greek shipping vessels.

There's something about Titanic

that makes people a bit crazy,

if they feel that it's theirs.

For Ballard,

there is an enormous difference

between an archeological expedition

and salvage for profit.

Every object that's recovered

is recovered

because an archeologist, an expert,

says, I want that.

Sometimes they would say see

that broken jar?

Pick it up.

Well, how about the unbroken one?

No, actually the broken jar

has more scientific value.

Bring it up.

So we'd bring it up.

And so it's a very big difference

between doing something to fill in

a missing chapter in human history

and doing it for personal greed.

Nearly a decade after discovering

the Titanic,

Ballard dove on another grand wreck,

the British luxury liner Lusitania.

High-tech treasure hunters had stripped

as much of the broken vessel possible

looking to sell off the remains.

The salvagers even brought up

three of the boat's propellers.

One propeller made it to

a maritime museum.

The second was believed to be

melted down

and recast as a very expensive

set of golf clubs.

And the last one met

an even gloomier fate.

I can remember going out and

trying to find the propeller

of the Lusitania and

finding it in this junkyard,

just sitting there amongst

all this other junk.

And I can remember when we were diving

on the Lusitania to have

that empty shaft

something was missing

its propeller was missing.

And if the propeller was in a museum,

if it was serving some purpose,

I could understand that,

but to find it in a junkyard,

waiting to be sold for scrap,

you have to wonder, why did you do this?

What was going through your brain?

And it had to have been just a lark.

And that's really sad.

Ballard's Mediterranean expedition

is down to a precious handful of days.

And now the NR-1 finally pays off.

The sub uncovers two new sites,

including the oldest they've found,

containing a Roman wreck

from the first century B.C.

The evidence is now inescapable.

Skerki Bank has been

a major intersection

throughout Mediterranean history.

Ballard is anxious to find more.

But the seas suddenly turn dark

and angry.

Well, we just found the best ancient

ship we've ever discovered

and we can't get to it.

We got to get in the water.

We can't get in the water.

They're telling us that we've got a

storm that's coming

that's going to be sea state five.

This is our second major storm

on this trip.

We lost 32 hours to the last storm.

How many hours are we going

to lose to this one?

You know, I want to get down.

I can't get to it.

But there is one way

to get beneath the waves.

Ballard decides to send down

the NR-1 during the storm.

Once under the surface,

the sub will be free of the weather,

free to continue exploring.

On board is archeologist Jon Adams,

eater to see the new find close-up.

Unlike most deep-diving subs,

the NR-1 actually has three windows

on its underside.

For Adams, they are portals

to the tragedies of the past.

When you're diving,

you can't get half-a-mile down,

like we are now.

And it's easy to lose sight

of the people.

I suppose their the last moments

for them on board this vessel,

before it sank,

must have been the climax of a crisis

that might have actually been going on

for several hours,

as the well organized machine

that the ship is gradually breaks down

and down it goes.

So it's quite an awe-inspiring sight.

In this graveyard of lost vessels,

the NR-1 explores the very last site.

The new ship is

another Roman trading vessel dating

from the first century A.D.

And a cargo rarely seen by scientists.

An orderly pile of large cut stones

and two pillars,

carefully wrought pieces,

like giant toy blocs,

still waiting after 2,000 years,

for hands to assemble them.

Perhaps they were the pre-fabricated

pieces of an ancient building,

carved out of an Egyptian quarry,

destined for Roman shores.

It will take months, even years,

before the archeologists

know the answers,

if they ever do.

As always,

Ballard is concerned about protecting

the sites for posterity.

When we discovered the Titanic,

we did not file a claim of ownership.

And I was later told

that had we done that,

had we recovered one little object,

we could have claimed it,

and in so doing, helped protect it.

By bringing up the Skerki artifacts,

Ballard establishes his right

to claim the sites in court,

if ever it becomes necessary.

Oh, this is very heavy very heavy.

For now, Ballaard will place

the artifacts recovered at Skerki Bank

in the Sea Research Foundation,

where they will be preserved

according to the highest

archeological standards.

Last one.

Together Ballard and the scientists

have proven that the new world

of deep sea archeology can work wonders.

I feel very good.

I feel that this, you know,

really is an historic expedition.

This is the first major deep sea

archeological expedition,

an incredible team of people from

incredibly diverse backgrounds,

working together for the first time

to try to do something

that had never been done before.

I think we have shown that the deep

sea is a repository of human history

on a scale we've just never

comprehended before.

But are the archeological glories

of the deep sea at risk

from salvagers and treasure hunters?

Yes, Ballard believes,

until they learn to respect the past.

I have no fundamental problem

with treasure hunters,

if they don't destroy history

in the process.

I don't think it's our right

to destroy history.

It's our right to find it

and document it,

but not our right to destroy it.

As long as there are marvels in the seas,

people will pursue them.

Some will be treasure hunters,

dreaming of gold and gems.

And some will be scientists,

dreaming of the astonishing discovery

that next awaits them.