Search for Sunken Gold May Make Pair Partners

Famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher announced Tuesday that he may soon join an Oceanside man in searching for sunken treasure off the Southern California coast.

Fisher, newly arrived from Florida, joined singer-turned-treasure-seeker Bill Warren in a dockside news conference to announce that they are on the brink of a partnership to scour the sea bottom for Spanish galleons they believe are laden with gold and valuables.

For Warren, a singer of religious and pop music, such a partnership would represent a leap forward toward the realization of his decade-long dream of finding the Trinidad, a galleon some historians believe sank off Oceanside four centuries ago while carrying $11 million in Aztec gold.

“It’s mind-boggling to think how much treasure there is to find out there,” Fisher said.

Like many other treasure hunters, Warren has been vexed by disbelief (some historians say the Trinidad story is an aging hoax), the high cost of hunting and the technological difficulties involved in making the ocean give up ancient booty.

Fisher, a one-time chicken farmer and lobster farmer, has been searching for treasure off Florida’s celebrated Treasure Coast since 1962. He has often financed his expeditions by attracting investors--and crew members--with the prospect of sharing in the riches.

“He’s considered the godfather of treasure hunting,” Warren said.

In 1986, Fisher and his Treasure Salvors Inc. crew began removing emeralds, gold and silver bars, pieces of eight, religious artifacts and other valuables from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622.

One estimate puts the loot’s worth at more than $130 million.

Speedy Expedition Planned

Fisher had been hunting for the Atocha for 16 years. A computer was used to keep track of 600 investors and employees who had been assigned a share of the treasure.

Fisher’s interest in searching the depths off San Diego dates from 1950, when he took a homemade underwater sled to Bush Rock, 120 miles offshore, in search of a Spanish galleon. Fisher was unsuccessful but vowed to return someday.

Fisher and Warren told reporters Tuesday that negotiations should be complete within a week and an expedition might be under way within a month.

John Ford, an anthropology instructor at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, has signed on as the on-board archeologist.

Warren has filed documents in federal court laying claim to 22 shipwrecks off Southern California, one off Northern California and one off Oregon. He hopes to make a movie of the search; Fisher has been the subject both of a made-for-television movie and a Public Broadcasting System documentary.

To announce their impending partnership, Fisher and Warren chose a location beside a full-scale replica of the Golden Hinde, the 15th-Century warship captained by explorer Sir Francis Drake.

The new Hinde, built and run as an educational ship by a group of British businessmen, sailed into San Diego Bay on Saturday to be part of the America’s Cup celebration. The ship has no connection with Fisher and Warren except that the original Hinde may have sunk some of the ships the two are interested in raising.