Coopers Treasures

[sphillips]

The value of a hit TV show like "Deadliest Catch" outweighs the value of most wrecks by a good margin and that is where the value is to the TV folks, but if I find a wreck today for the TV show, I still have the GPS numbers on where to find it if permits are ever to be had. Jim, Mike and Eric make a nice chunk of change and get to do cool stuff on NEW equipment and boy...that's unusual in this business.
I agree that the premise is scientifically unlikely and that the drama quotient is too high for my tastes but it has been getting 800,000 to 900,000 households to watch according to Nielsen...by comparison NCIS reruns get 12,000,000 , Deadliest Catch 3,000,000 and any news show on Fox gets 3,000,000.
I don't remember who it was that found that big anchor in the Turks the first time, but that was a known anchor for 30+ years. Someone posted pictures on the Atocha Golden Crew Facebook group of that anchor being on the deck of a barge back in the 70's or 80's. As I recall, the gendarmes were on their way to revoke their salvage permit so the anchor was put back on the seafloor to await the arrival of the Miklos crew decades later. The pictures were taken down from Facebook fairly quickly. I suspect there was some question as to the statute of limitations or something.
It's a show. I'm glad some friends are making a few bucks on the deal. Do I think it represents treasure salvage well...not really, but if you Fast Forward through the drama and just watch the crew work, it beats watching Wheel of Fortune.

well said

 

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[barney]

Being interested in remote sensing for decades, I found the main premise for the show far fetched, to say the least. Turns out I'm not alone. I found the show reviewed by The Space Review:
The Space Review: The magic MacGuffin of Mercury 9

Here's part of it:
Specifically, reports Miklos, Cooper told him he found the potential treasure spots using a secret military sensor that had been installed on the spacecraft originally to hunt for Soviet nuclear missile bases hidden in the area of Cuba–where a major international crisis involving such missiles had occurred only a few months before the flight.

“They were utilizing some kind of long-range detection equipment to look for nuclear threats,” Miklos told Fox News. “With that, his acute vision [and] possible cameras, he started identifying things that looked like shipwreck material. Once he had written all the coordinates down, he went back to Earth and put together this incredible treasure map from space on a sea chart."

And it’s not as if Cooper was crisscrossing Caribbean skies sightseeing. If the show is claiming that Cooper photographed the whole Caribbean area, it doesn't jibe with the actual flight path of the mission. Cooper only passed across the northern edge of the sunlit Caribbean on his fourth and 20th orbits (and a south pass Cozumel to Maracaibo on orbits 5 and 21.) He was busy with other stuff—as shown on the transcripts—on both the fourth and fifth orbits, when he explicitly described himself viewing the northern horizon, not nadir ground landmarks, and was doing deorbit preparations on the 20th and 21st orbits.

In the bigger picture, any pressing justification for the alleged capability the device exclusively offered is also impossible to find. The spacecraft only orbited between 32 degrees latitude north and south, and all that airspace was fully-accessible to heavily instrumented airborne sensors already in the US inventory. Highly-capable US military spacecraft were routinely flying in orbit, able to carry such sensor systems, if they even existed. No Soviet nuclear missile sites in that near-equatorial band were ever found by any means.

Flight transcript shows Cooper took 29 photos, not 5,245, which would have been mathematically impossible, not to mention that the capsule wasn't always pointed at the ground.

Choking yet? Read the whole review. And the comments, some by ex-NASA vets.

I love a treasure story (real ones preferred) as well as anyone, but this one careens from the preposterous to the absurd with Miklos scrambling from Spanish treasure to Sir Francis Drake to keep himself on the water, and presumably to contract. Hopefully, some vice president is in trouble for signing Miklos.

This was all discussed during the nonsense of last season. People always seem to ignore the old adage and apparently the first rule of "reality" TV: never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

I'm surprised no one caught the fact a hand-held metal detector went off and "found" a deck prism. C'mon folks, this show is contrived and manufactured.

 

[diverlynn]

The value of a hit TV show like "Deadliest Catch" outweighs the value of most wrecks by a good margin and that is where the value is to the TV folks, but if I find a wreck today for the TV show, I still have the GPS numbers on where to find it if permits are ever to be had. Jim, Mike and Eric make a nice chunk of change and get to do cool stuff on NEW equipment and boy...that's unusual in this business.
I agree that the premise is scientifically unlikely and that the drama quotient is too high for my tastes but it has been getting 800,000 to 900,000 households to watch according to Nielsen...by comparison NCIS reruns get 12,000,000 , Deadliest Catch 3,000,000 and any news show on Fox gets 3,000,000.
I don't remember who it was that found that big anchor in the Turks the first time, but that was a known anchor for 30+ years. Someone posted pictures on the Atocha Golden Crew Facebook group of that anchor being on the deck of a barge back in the 70's or 80's. As I recall, the gendarmes were on their way to revoke their salvage permit so the anchor was put back on the seafloor to await the arrival of the Miklos crew decades later. The pictures were taken down from Facebook fairly quickly. I suspect there was some question as to the statute of limitations or something.
It's a show. I'm glad some friends are making a few bucks on the deal. Do I think it represents treasure salvage well...not really, but if you Fast Forward through the drama and just watch the crew work, it beats watching Wheel of Fortune.

Brought up the anchor being found previously on the CT Facebook page and it was immediately deleted. Smoke and mirrors Hollywood style.

 

[boogeyman]

yea makes sense.

I was thinking They may have a way of Opening the Bottom Long enough To Drop the ballest,
and till stay Dry. Like putting a Jar upside Down in Water
I don't know much about Ships.

Good idea, only problem would be all the gun ports and other openings like access to the deck would have to be air tight. Otherwise you'd take on water & be sitting lower in the water than when you started. Scary times back then! Pretty much everything was a do you want to die fast or slowly decision.

 

[ropesfish]

The Commonwealth of the Bahamas is not an easy place to do business apparently and no place is an easy place to do treasure business.
Discovery Channel treasure hunters had permits to film and research only | The Tribune

 

[mdj]

Cooper was a treasure hunter from way back. That's the impression I got anyway. I know he wrote a treasure book back in '51. Years before sputnik or astronauts! We may never know the technology he was able to use. But I'm sure he knew the areas he wanted to concentrate on.

 

[ropesfish]

About that ballast...The reason that these old ships carried a massive amount of ballast stones was so they would stay upright. They were round bottomed ships that were easily capsized without enough ballast, in fact, there are quite a few recorded instances of ships of the 1400-1800 era capsizing as they were launched. Those masts were around 80-100 feet tall (rig height on the modern reproduction El Galeon is 121') and when you hang thousands of square feet of sail and fill it with wind there is a mighty set of forces trying hard to push that mast into the water. Later ships used pig iron ballast and eventually ships were designed with a hull profile more like today's vessels with a heavy keel and less like a half-barrel with pointy ends.
My point is that you would be ill advised to throw anything heavy out of the ballast areas in the ship. Cut away the rigging, throw over your Aunt Josefina's piano, the King's silver chests and Sir Robert's entire collection of jade bedroom appliances first, because when that ship flips, yer swimmin wit di charks, mon.

 

[xaos]

I'm surprised no one caught the fact a hand-held metal detector went off and "found" a deck prism. C'mon folks, this show is contrived and manufactured.

Competent crews have done far more with far less, that is the burn.

 

[grossmusic]

About that ballast...The reason that these old ships carried a massive amount of ballast stones was so they would stay upright. They were round bottomed ships that were easily capsized without enough ballast, in fact, there are quite a few recorded instances of ships of the 1400-1800 era capsizing as they were launched...

Even in modern times. Here is how the launching of Spain's replica of Magellan's Nao Victoria (same folks who gave us El Galeon) went in 1991:

 

[FISHEYE]

Lol.Looks like they didnt put enough treasure and ballast stones in the hold to keep the replica ship upright.

 

[barney]

Competent crews have done far more with far less, that is the burn.

you are missing the point entirely.

 

[Togreenfeet]

Is anybody, other than me,frustrated with these Coopers Treasure shows? Every Friday night show is nothing more
than a re-cap if the previous shows plus a couple minutes of what is supposed to be next weeks show...... quite discouraging

 

[Bum Luck]

Cooper was a treasure hunter from way back. That's the impression I got anyway. I know he wrote a treasure book back in '51. Years before sputnik or astronauts! We may never know the technology he was able to use. But I'm sure he knew the areas he wanted to concentrate on.

There wan't much technology back in those days. Just a hope and a prayer and maybe a WW2 mine detector.

Of course one thing there was more of was opportunity since so much has been found since.

Potter blew the doors off of wreck hunting in '64.

 

[bobinsd]

Didn't Miklos show Kim a spot on the chart where there was an anomaly?? And didn't that spot
turn out to be the location of the piles of silver bars?

 

[Togreenfeet]

Milkklos produced a chart from Cooper that correctly showed the Atocha as an anomaly 20 years before the Atocha was located.

 

[bobinsd]

What kind of camera could do that back then?

 

[enrada]

No camera would see a ballast pile in 55 feet of water especially from space. Maybe a blue green laser developed by CSIRO in Australia could have seen a ballast pile.

 

[ropesfish]

What kind of camera could do that back then?

None in existence before the late 70's.
Oh...and a magnetometer in orbit would have less resolution than that camera. That one is just pure unadulterated nonsense.
A mutual friend told me today that Darryl spent some time in acting school with Val Kilmer. 'Magine dat....

 

[Togreenfeet]

Ropesfish — the more I watch this show, the more I have to agree with you. Nothing falls into place like this show and since this show has been made, I haven’t heard of anybody finding anymore gold. It’s run like a soap opera just enough to make you want to watch next week. Like someone else said “ who the heck is sponsoring these guys?” Has anybody taken notice of the gear they’re using? More than I’ve made in my lifetime!!!!

 

[capt dom]

Ropesfish – the more I watch this show, the more I have to agree with you. Nothing falls into place like this show and since this show has been made, I haven’t heard of anybody finding anymore gold. It’s run like a soap opera just enough to make you want to watch next week. Like someone else said “ who the heck is sponsoring these guys?” Has anybody taken notice of the gear they’re using? More than I’ve made in my lifetime!!!!

I have had a lot of production companies approach us over the years. Sponsoring capital does not appear usually until the second season, once a show has proven it can retain an audience. Its probably a good thing Mikilos went to acting school... Many real treasure hunters come off as tongue tied or paranoid types on screen and don't fit the demographic of couch potatoes that can make up a following. Back to the sponsor question: Brownies Gear has a vested interest in getting public exposure but note much of the logos are often blocked out. Operation Baseline is establishing itself as a scientific "bridging corporation" attempting to document ocean resources while working with the scientific community... I have spent some time on Operation Baseline vessels as a guest. My wife actually filled in a few times as a chef. Once JWI sorts out its right to get back to work issues - I have proposed to Robert we can possibly work together and actually find some "REAL" treasure right here in Jupiter while actually setting a baseline to help protect onshore coastal resources, bait fish habitats and provide local governments with the right material for dune and beach restoration...

NOW! This will make for a great show!

Plus Robert, its founder has a spirit of adventure and is an astute business man. Seeing his equipment package in the back ground is giving this show much credibility... This is the only real treasure thus found...