John Corcoran stared down into a cloudy solution at a cannon ball hooked up to electric probes. A smile inched across his face.
“I can’t believe they actually pay me to do this,” he said with a chuckle. “I came down here looking for adventure and I get to live this really adventurous life, this Indiana Jones type of life and I get paid for it!”
The conservationist at Mel Fisher’s Treasures has the best of both worlds – he collects treasure and preserves it.
After all, every little kid dreamed of finding treasure, didn’t they?
Mel Fisher lived out his dream and now his family is carrying on his golden legacy. For nearly two decades, the legendary treasure hunter scoured the ocean off the coast of Key West looking intently for the lost Spanish treasure of the Atocha and Santa Margarita ships, which both sank in a hurricane in 1622 while traveling home from Cuba.
The wrecks scattered millions of dollars worth of rare and valuable treasure on the sea floor. It sat there for nearly 400 years before Fisher and his crew found it in 1985.
“People can’t believe it,” said Angie Crenshaw, who works at Mel Fisher's jewelry store off Greene Street in Key West.
The gallery includes pieces from the ocean floor that have been restored by Corcoran and for sale to those who want to hold history in their hands.
At the time of finding the haul, the estimate worth was $450 million. With new finds, that number has since crept towards $1 billion.
Some of Mel Fisher's Treasures from shipwrecks
“Treasure hunting you do it for the adventure. You do it for the excitement,” said Corcoran. “For finding something that’s been buried for 400 years under the sea and you’re the first guy to see it.”
That’s the feeling that Jean Thornton got the first time she met Mel Fisher. She and a friend were escorted down the docks by Mel and he showed them the latest finds, some emeralds from the dive site about 35 miles off the Florida coast.
She was hooked. She invested and learned to scuba dive so she could find treasure herself. In 1996, she found a “piece of eight” and in 2002, she found her own emerald.
“Falling asleep at night out there thinking what might be right underneath of me and what we could possibly find the next day, it was the most wonderful experience,” said Thornton, who earned the nickname ‘Golden Girl’, along with another diver, for their passionate quests to the deep.
According to Mel Fisher research, there are still 128,000 silver coins, 14 tons of silver bars, 150 copper ingots, over 100 gold bars and discs and more riches waiting to be found at the dive site.
The Atocha coins, without added gold or settings, sell from anywhere between $2,000 to nearly $4,000 in the MFT jewelry store. Each coin represented a month's wages in its day. There are many other items for sale as well, like the 28-foot long, over 2-pound gold link chain valued between $850,000 and $1 million.
“It’s not every day you see something like this and to think this was at the bottom of the ocean for 300 years,” Crenshaw said while holding the Atocha chain in her fingers.
The Fisher family still visits the dive site, weather permitting, about 150 days per year. The company has also started diving for another sunken treasure dubbed the Lost Merchant.
Even now, three decades after finding the Motherlode, Mel’s motto, “Today’s the Day!”, is still being lived out today.
