Deep sea gold rush could bankroll Bermuda

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28: Billions of dollars in gold and other precious metals lying beneath the ocean could fund the island’s economy for years to come, according to former Premier Dr David Saul.

Speaking after his international exploration company discovered 200-tonnes of silver on a World War II shipwreck off the coast of Ireland, Dr Saul said the deep-ocean off Bermuda harboured similar treasures.

He believes there are undiscovered shipwrecks thousands of feet below the surface that could be found using the same technology his firm Odyssey Marine — used to locate the SS Gairsoppa.

But he said shipwrecks formed just a fraction of the wealth waiting to be discovered in Bermuda’s territorial waters.

“The future wealth and prosperity of Bermuda is probably going to be under water. The real treasure won’t be defined in Spanish doubloons but in precious metal deposits.”

Odyssey Marine, of which Dr Saul is a co-founder, made world headlines this week for the $150million-haul of silver coins discovered on a cargo ship, that was sunk by a German U-boat 300 miles off the Irish coast in 1941.

Dr Saul, who also made hundreds of dives with pioneer of Bermuda wreck hunting Teddy Tucker in the 1960s, believes a new-era of underwater “prospecting” could generate enormous wealth for the island.

“There is incredible potential. Shipwrecks would be just a speck of what could be found. Copper, gold, zinc and manganese nodules are all incredibly valuable. You’re talking about 1,500 miles of ocean in Bermuda’s Exclusive Economic Zone. There has to be things down there.”

In the early days of ocean-exploration in Bermuda the favoured method was to drag two SCUBA divers, hanging on to a tow-rope, behind a boat for hours as they scoured the ocean-floor in search of relics from drowned ships.

Those rudimentary methods deployed to find shallow-water wrecks, most in no more than 60ft of water, have long been surpassed.

Dr Saul’s firm uses sophisticated equipment, including magnetometers and sonar side-scanners, to scour the ocean looking for wrecks as deep as 20,000ft — way beyond the limits of SCUBA.

Even more hi-tech equipment is then used to excavate the wreck.

Bermuda firm Ocean Projects Limited  was granted  a contract to explore within Bermuda’s 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone in 2007. It is not clear how far they have progressed with the project and the firm’s founder Nick Hutchings was unavailable for comment yesterday.

But Dr Saul believes the potential is enormous.

“If this company is able to find a fraction of what I think is out there then this could be our third economic pillar.”

Dr Saul said countries like Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea were already leasing out large tracts of ocean-bottom within their economic zone to recover precious minerals and metals.

And he said Bermuda had prospered once before from finds under the ocean.

“Teddy Tucker was initially hired by the Government of Bermuda to go and pick up non-ferrous metals, such as bronze boat propellers, from fairly recent shipwrecks.

“The older shipwrecks and the treasure he discovered were adjuncts to that search for metal he was bringing up to be sold as scrap.

“For a number of years that was a bigger generator of foreign-currency for Bermuda than anything else, including tourism.”