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John Hollenhorst Reporting Some Utahns are heading to Lake Powell tomorrow to train for something straight out of an adventure novel.
Later this month they'll be on the East Coast hunting for sunken treasure-- hundreds of millions in Spanish Gold.
A small office building in Midvale, with big dreams inside.
Wilf Blum, President, Deep Blue Marine: "This particular wreck that we're going after, it is believed by the manifest that there's over 500 million dollars on it."
A company called Deep Blue Marine is going for gold, and silver, and jewels. But first, the promotional video, with a celebrity pitch-man.
Promotional Video for Deep Blue Marine, Inc.: "Hi, I'm Jim Brolin. You know, I've had a lot of great adventures in my life, but the treasure hunters I'm about to introduce you to are about to go on an adventure that we all wish we were part of."
The team appears to have The Right Stuff. Experts in diving, salvaging, history, finance.
Wilf Blum: "I'm living my dream. This is what I've wanted to do for years. And we're doing it. It's exciting."
The company claims to have found what appear to be sunken ships along the Atlantic Coast, using secret new technology.
Wilf Blum: "We've been able to identify more wrecks than.. if I told you the number you'd think I was an idiot. So let's just say we found a lot."
The first ship they'll try to salvage was actually located by another company which brought Deep Blue in as partner.
Tom Holden, Deep Blue Marine, Inc., Diver & Captain: "There's treasure there. They've been working on this long and hard and just haven't completed it."
They claim there's evidence it's the ship "El Salvador," which was part of two Spanish treasure fleets destroyed by a hurricane in 1750.
Wilf Blum: "If the boat went deep, she'll probably be in one piece."
When ships like this went down, they typically hit the bottom, broke open, and spilled their cargo. But if the company is lucky, they may be able to bring up the ship in one piece.
Wilf Blum says he hopes to use profits to build hospitals and schools where the Spanish built slave labor camps.
Wilf Blum: "There's a lot of blood on that gold. My feeling is that, as we harvest that, a portion of it should go back to the descendants of the people that lost their lives mining it."
Whether they've found it or not, "El Salvador" was real, and it's still fueling dreams a long way from hurricane territory.
The company hopes to complete the salvage operation before this year's hurricane season. The location, of course, is a secret.
