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The ‘Holy Grail of Shipwrecks’ Is Still Underwater. So Is Its $17 Billion Fortune.
(www.popularmechanics.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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So why hasn't someone salvaged the gold coins yet? Seems odd, and the article offers no answer.
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. (Edit: the first artefacts were recovered a few days ago!). There's also lots (30+ years) of lawsuits and drama that is too tedious to summarize but everyone sucks (although imo its good that the Colombian government seems to have emerged victorious over SSA, after umpteen years of them being just total dicks to each other. Go check out the wikipedia page, it's pretty fun.)
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.
This guy loots.
“Legitimate Salvage”