Captain Drake and the crew of Mel Fisher's Shipwreck Expeditions recovered a 22.5-pound Mel Fisher Atocha silver bar from the wreck site of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha off Key West, Florida. The find came from approximately 50 feet of water.
The recovery is the first silver-bar discovery at the site since 1999. Silver bars were among the primary cargo aboard Atocha, and the crew was searching for treasure still left at the site.
DARE and the Atocha site
Drake, captain of the salvage vessel DARE, found the bar while the crew attempted to uncover more treasure at the site. Mel Fisher's team first discovered the Atocha shipwreck in 1985, and the new recovery adds to a search that has continued for years.
Historical records cited with the find say the ship carried thousands of silver coins, hundreds of silver bars, gold artifacts, jewelry and emeralds from Colombia's Muzo mines. The bar recovered now sits within that larger cargo record, but its retrieval also shows that material is still being pulled from the wreck site.
Key West recovery
The site is being actively searched even though no silver bars had been recovered there since 1999. That gap makes the 22.5-pound bar the first silver-bar recovery in almost three decades, a sign that the wreck site is not fully exhausted.
For the crew, the next step is straightforward: keep working the wreck site for remaining treasure. The unanswered part is how much still lies there, and this recovery suggests the search is not close to finished.
