• Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Colombia has declared it an important cultural heritage site; a limited archeological survey is underway while techniques are developed to allow for the excavation and preservation of the site.

    As to why it hasn’t been looted, the location has been kept a secret but we can guess it’s down -deep- deep, by the type of UUV (AUV?) used in the discovery. This means that anyone who knows where it is still has to have the resources to actually go down and loot it, and ultra-deep equipment like that is pretty hard to come by.

    • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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      2 days ago

      It says it was located 600m down in 2015. That’s not too bad, military subs have a max depth of like 400m, but deep sea submersibles can get to like 11km. An remote vehicle would be much cheaper at this depth, and wealthier financiers could easy afford salvage expeditions.

      But where it was located is not public information. That limits it’s salvaging opportunity immensely. I would also suspect that Columbia has spent some effort securing the salvage, if they can’t afford to retrieve it.

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Oh my apologies, I did not intend to imply it’s impossible to get down there, just that the resources needed to recover the treasure aren’t ones that can be surreptitiously obtained. There just aren’t all that many ROVs in the world capable of this work, so while the act of getting down there and looting it isn’t difficult, hetting away with it after the fact is the challenging part.

        (alao the depth claim is… well there’s a few reasons to be skeptical of it. This whole saga is already rife with accusations of coverups and intentional deception)

      • scytale@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        Getting to that depth with a submersible is one thing, but being able to enter, navigate inside, grab stuff, and bring them out is another.