The Wonderful Thing About Gold as Discovered by Mel Fisher

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In the '70s, Indiana-born Mel Fisher, a dive store owner from California, stumbled across the 1622 wreck of the Spanish galleon, the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, west of Key West. It had been loaded with treasure, and his perseverance in tracking it down made him and his supporters rich and famous. Today, Key West hosts a museum devoted to their decades of effort in recovering gold artifacts.

Atocha' gold spent 350 years buried beneath the ocean and sand off the Florida Keys before Fisher found it. With a specific gravity about twice that of lead, a one-kg. (2.2 lb.) ingot is about the size of an iPhone, making it unique in its absolute density. When other metals get covered in growth or deteriorate, gold continues to shine. Its specific gravity is what Goldfinger called its "divine heaviness."...

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