On this week’s Cooper’s Treasure, it’s all about the actual mechanics of assembling a trustworthy crew and using the right equipment as Darrell Miklos continues his search for sunken riches using maps drawn by astronaut Gordon Cooper from space.
In our exclusive clip below, we are on board a ship with Darrell in reef-strewn waters off the Turks and Caicos islands, after a series of events that has given him the green light to explore for wrecked vessels.
The episode shows how the team use a magnetometer to carefully map out a potential treasure site by dragging it behind them over the seabed in a particular pattern.
All of this prep and planning leads to concrete finds, including an anchor believed to be from one of Columbus’s ships that went back and forth from Spain to the New World.
But ahead of this, the details must be hammered out.
Darrell must get a lease and permit and then assemble a trustworthy crew. This proves to be a very tricky endeavor, as the exact parameters of who gets what in the salvage recovery are hammered out by a government bureaucrat in a closed-door meeting.
Miklos and his team then use the magnetometer, a high-tech metal detector, in a “mow the law” pattern so no stone, or piece of metal, is left unturned in the area plotted for salvaging.
Also in this week’s Cooper’s Treasure, nature throws a curveball as Darrell encounters mercurial weather — and then sharks.
He also faces the threat of what he calls “modern day pirates” and those untrustworthy souls who might use Cooper’s information to end his efforts.
His interview process is a mind-boggling dance of reading someone’s vibes and acting on due diligence. Will he assemble a good crew?
Cooper’s Treasure airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on Discovery.