by Pete Jenkinson
Taking a piggyback on its ship the Odyssey our robotic underwater search machine transports itself to shipwreck sites of old to seek out the booty thats sunk to the bottom of the briny.
Originally designed to fix deep-sea fibre optic cables the device, named ZEUS, can be controlled to such minute degrees that it is perfect to perform delicate procedures when it unearths any relic.
So rather than the gung-ho lets grab the treasure and go ZEUS and its operators uncover sections of sunken vessels, and can do this at a remote distance of over 8,000 feet from the command centre of this remotely operated vehicle (ROV).
Its roll of honour for discoveries includes an American civil war ship in 2003 which had 50,000 coins on board, another recovery of 1/2 million gold and silver coins in 2007 and they’ve just been announced as sole custodians of a new site called “Firefly”.
Keep an eye on what they pull up next at Shipwreck.net, lets hope they have at least a few old boots before grabbing the big time…
