Today was a big day for everyone here at Mel Fisher’s Treasures. As is customary each year we appeared along with our faithful attorneys Professor William Vandercreek and Gene Lewis before Federal Judge King for the Adjudication of Title for the treasures recovered on the Atocha and Margarita wreck sites in the year 2007.  View Entire Story Here.

The “Dare” has been undergoing extensive upgrades and repairs since it was hauled out of the water November 28, 2007.  View Photos of the Work and Details Here.

The crew of Good Morning America ventured down to the Treasure Coast last week to spend some time learning about treasure hunting. The 1715 Plate Fleet was the focus of their weekend special. Taffi Fisher- Abt and her family also made a trip to the Good Morning America studios this past weekend and brought priceless treasure artifacts with them to share with the country during their live broadcast.  View Entire Story and Photos Here.

There is a lot of work to be done in the conservation process aside from electrolysis. Immediately after an artifact is taken out of the electrolysis tank it is tested for chlorides, if any are detected then it is placed back into electrolysis. After we are sure the chlorides have been completely extracted, the item is placed in several different distilled water baths over the course of 2-3 weeks to leech the sodium carbonate out of the metal.  View Entire Story and Photos Here.

We would like to give a brief update on the status of the pearls that were found this past summer on the Blue Water Rose, our joint-venture partner. We have started the very beginning stages of the conservation process and the pearls are currently going through desalination.  View Entire Story and Photos Here.

The 28th of November was a big day for the DARE and her crew. At 10 am Captain Jose "Papo" Garcia navigated the harbor around sunken boats and through a small opening to get to the boat lift that would pull the 83.5', 90-ton vessel out of the water into the boatyard.

Crewmembers and boatyard employees slowly moved the boat into position over-top the slings and with one guy in the water began to tighten the slings around the bottom of the DARE. The man stayed in the water as the lift began to pull the DARE out of the water and a few adjustments were made using hand signals to make sure she came out of the water straight and level. The tires strained under the weight of the boat but there were no glitches in the process and the DARE was lifted easily out of the water.  View Entire Story and Photos Here.

An interesting part of the archaeological process that most people may not be aware of is the trip to the hospital that they sometimes take. That’s right, last week 13 artifacts from Mel Fisher’s Treasures’ conservation lab took a trip to the Lower Keys Medical Center to undergo CAT Scans. Why? Because sometimes it is critical to know where exactly the artifact is inside of the concretion and how much of the metal is actually left, if any at all. As you may recall in a previous article we talked about how the encrustation could be used as a mold if the artifact itself had completely eroded over the years. By performing a CAT Scan on the encrusted object (mainly swords, arquebus and other unique items) the conservationist is able to know where the metal is inside the encrusted object and can then figure the best way to approach conservation of these very delicate artifacts without destroying any portion of the metal.  View Entire Story and Photos Here.

Due to the extreme number of Encrusted Objects that have been found this summer I thought it might be interesting to take a little bit closer look at the conservation process for these items. When an Encrusted Object is found the archaeological process begins. As with any other artifact found on the wreck sites the boat captain will number, tag and record each item and the coordinates of where it was found. Upon returning to shore the artifacts are brought back to the conservation lab and are checked in by John Corcoran, our Senior Conservator and the boat Captain one by one. They are then placed in wet storage to avoid interaction with the air, which would harm the artifact until we have a chance to work on them.  View Entire Story and Photos Here.

As many of you know this summer has yielded many artifacts on both the Atocha and Margarita sites. Because of this our Senior Conservator, John Corcoran has been extraordinarily busy taking care of the many items the boats have been bringing in. There have been numerous Encrusted Objects (EOs) brought in; which are items that have a thick concretion on them and we are unsure of what exactly they are before conservation. It is John’s job to determine if the artifact is salvageable or if it has already completely eroded away while sitting on the ocean floor. In this case it is better to use the encrustation as a mold for a replica of the original artifact.  View Entire Story and Photos Here.

Mel Fisher’s Treasures hosted our first Bike Wash during bike week and The Poker Run here in Key West this past weekend. While Friday was a bit slow because everyone was just getting into town and getting settled into their hotels, Saturday was a completely different story. We washed bikes 4 at a time for the entire scheduled length of the bike wash, plus some.  View Entire Story and Photos Here.

The Canadian film crew from Arcadia Productions is back in town this week getting more footage for the hour long show they are producing. The piece was originally only supposed to be 15 minutes long but has turned into a full hour show of its own. The crew was here when the Blue Water Rose found all of the gold and pearls in June and couldn't resist coming back for more. After diving out at the wreck site yesterday this afternoon they are flying high over the Atocha wreck site in a helicopter getting some aerial shots of the Magruder. The show will be one of seven hour long shows in a series called "Go Deep". It will air in Canada on the History Channel and in the United States on the Discovery Channel. It is set to air this fall, so keep an eye out for more information. Today's the Day!

Akira Hyatt, a gemologist from the New York office of the GIA (Gemological Institute of America) has come to Key West to assist Gary Randolph, Jim Sinclair and Duncan Mathewson with the examination of the Margarita Pearl collection and to help us in structuring a plan to take 30 selected pearls to their lab in NY for some non-destructive analysis and testing. They will then be giving us a report on their condition and any impurities that may have leached into the pearls, possibly from the lead box in which they where found so that we will have a better idea on how to conserve and stabilize them properly. This first batch of 30 pearls will be our test case and once the GIA’s testing and reports are complete, our conservation process can be implemented and evaluated. Once the first batch has been put through the conservation procedure, we will check our results and continue to do the rest as long as we haven’t encountered any problems with the conservation processes we decide to use. Our sorting and counting of the pearls is continuing and it has becoming apparent that our initial estimates of 2,000 pearls where a bit low. We are currently over that number and have not even started counting the smaller pearls as of today. This will most likely take another week or two to complete the sorting and counting of this extremely rare collection of pearls.  View Photos Here.