BBsGal
Forum Supporter
That's the operating theory per the show anyway. It may be a try for more tourism to the island, but it's still pretty interesting and catches the imagination.
Curse of Oak Island TV Program
- Thread starter OleSarge
- Start date
That's the operating theory per the show anyway. It may be a try for more tourism to the island, but it's still pretty interesting and catches the imagination.
pescadore
Elite Member
I enjoy the show and have watched all the episodes. It's entertaining from a treasure hunter's point of view. I really wished for more of a discovery than a Spanish copper coin on the last episode but hopefully there will be better discoveries in the future.
scorpio264
Senior Member
Totally bummed and unsure how to feel about the final episode.
I have dug coins from parks, lakes, yards, oceans, schools, mud, sand, rocks, and virtually every other type of surface that exists. I have NEVER found a coin more than a week old floating in vegetation. I have also never seen one that had a greenish patina like that from underwater. Usually the coins from underwater are black, not green. As others have mentioned the coins in that swamp would be DEEP.
The condition of the coin they found is just too good to be true. It has to be a recent drop. The swamp would be brackish since it sits right next to the ocean. That brackish water would have caused some crust to form on the coin. I just have to think the Norwegian guy dropped the coin. The targets that kept disappearing were probably the other coins he threw in there as they were being moved around and allowed to sink deeper. What better way to make sure they investigate his pet project than by seeding the area. It's just too good to be true.
I have been following this show with a lot of enthusiasm and I have felt the lure of the treasure just as strongly as the people on the island. I bought in to the Mercy Point theory for a little while. Now I'm not so sure.
This turn of events doesn't make me discount the entire island, just the Mercy Point. It is far too unlikely that this random Norwegian dude shows up and leaves. Then BAM, a treasure coin right where he was standing. Yeah right.
I have dug coins from parks, lakes, yards, oceans, schools, mud, sand, rocks, and virtually every other type of surface that exists. I have NEVER found a coin more than a week old floating in vegetation. I have also never seen one that had a greenish patina like that from underwater. Usually the coins from underwater are black, not green. As others have mentioned the coins in that swamp would be DEEP.
The condition of the coin they found is just too good to be true. It has to be a recent drop. The swamp would be brackish since it sits right next to the ocean. That brackish water would have caused some crust to form on the coin. I just have to think the Norwegian guy dropped the coin. The targets that kept disappearing were probably the other coins he threw in there as they were being moved around and allowed to sink deeper. What better way to make sure they investigate his pet project than by seeding the area. It's just too good to be true.
I have been following this show with a lot of enthusiasm and I have felt the lure of the treasure just as strongly as the people on the island. I bought in to the Mercy Point theory for a little while. Now I'm not so sure.
This turn of events doesn't make me discount the entire island, just the Mercy Point. It is far too unlikely that this random Norwegian dude shows up and leaves. Then BAM, a treasure coin right where he was standing. Yeah right.
CoiltoSoil
Elite Member
I agree copper does not hold up well in most environments, I find coins from the 1800's that are far worse than that coin which was "in a swap for 400 years." But who knows, maybe the swamp soil is special. They really didn't do much treasure hunting on the island, they drained the swamp and used detectors for about 2 days but that was pretty much the extent of their search. I just find it suspicious that on the last day of the search they happen to find a coin which could suggest Spanish treasure. To me it appears like every other venture on Oak Island when funds run low a sudden mysterious find is made. I also believe they knew planting silver or gold would immediately throw up red flags with most people so using a copper coin made it more believable. Another thing that made me suspicious was the main guy talking about "3 foot of vegetation over the site", this was not there when the treasure was buried, so why was the coin on top of the vegetation which likely grew many years after the treasure was buried and the swamp was filled, if anything the coin would be down in the original soil layer below the swamp deposits and vegetation, right?
Bayoutalker
Elite Member
I agree copper does not hold up well in most environments, I find coins from the 1800's that are far worse than that coin which was "in a swap for 400 years." But who knows, maybe the swamp soil is special. They really didn't do much treasure hunting on the island, they drained the swamp and used detectors for about 2 days but that was pretty much the extent of their search. I just find it suspicious that on the last day of the search they happen to find a coin which could suggest Spanish treasure. To me it appears like every other venture on Oak Island when funds run low a sudden mysterious find is made. I also believe they knew planting silver or gold would immediately throw up red flags with most people so using a copper coin made it more believable. Another thing that made me suspicious was the main guy talking about "3 foot of vegetation over the site", this was not there when the treasure was buried, so why was the coin on top of the vegetation which likely grew many years after the treasure was buried and the swamp was filled, if anything the coin would be down in the original soil layer below the swamp deposits and vegetation, right?
Or could it have been sitting on top of the stones they removed and was disturbed when they started pulling the vegetation out of the way?
CoiltoSoil
Elite Member
Could be but it appeared the coin was located several feet away from the spot they cleared to dive in?
OleSarge
Elite Member
Yup, I saw that too, made me instantly super-suspicious that coin was planted as a carrot for the proverbial mule... for funding the next season purposes. I mean, if they were going to pull real treasure out of there, why not a nice chunky gold or silver coin instead of a chintzy copper one?
I thought the first signals they got were probably old beer cans sloshing around in that swamp muck myself, seems like the ones I hit here at the lake where it's mushy ground come up as a pretty good sounding signal in the silver range, and even my little F2 can find them at about 18" or so, but they do seem to "move" around a lot for whatever reason.
I did get a kick out of the diver wearing a ring while using a pinpointer, that was pretty funny and is one of the reasons I don't wear my rings while detecting aside from not wanting to lose them, cause I've done that myself too.
A small park here in Lakewood has a beautiful little park with a man made lake covering a couple acres of the grounds. This is a perfect lake for all the water fowl we have both as year round residents and migrating through the area. Because it is the only park for quite a distance around this neighborhood there are people there even when the others are empty. So, it's a prime haunt for a Sunday metal detect without involvement of blackberry bushes and ants. Anyway, when I first recieved my new AT Pro this was THE area to check out its underwater capabilities. Donning my waders and working up my nerve to really submerge this piece of high tech electronics into a certain death plunge, I gingerly searched along the shore at first. As my confidence grew I bravely went deeper and deeper into the water loving all the clean 80's signals I was hearing with visions of hundreds of Rosies and Mercury's in my pouch. Going as deeply as I dared, I turned around and MDed my way back to shore....but all the signals had disappeared. Again, I attacked the water with the vengance of a mad man, but still no signals. So, removing my jacket and gloves, I dug a hole about 6" deep in the mud and threw it up on the bank. Examination with my GPP showed a lot of targets, but I couldn't find one...of course looking for that elusive dime. Finally, handfull by handfull I examined the mud with my GPP. What I found was loads of .177 lead pellets and BB's which had been fired by people at the ducks over the decades from the shore. By walking back and forth on the muddy bottom I was forcing the tiny pellets below the range of the ATP and they were disappearing. Needless to say, this was a lesson I'll not soon forget.
ATP/GPP/Fiskars Diggers/BH Outback/CT handheld
CoiltoSoil
Elite Member
A small park here in Lakewood has a beautiful little park with a man made lake covering a couple acres of the grounds. This is a perfect lake for all the water fowl we have both as year round residents and migrating through the area. Because it is the only park for quite a distance around this neighborhood there are people there even when the others are empty. So, it's a prime haunt for a Sunday metal detect without involvement of blackberry bushes and ants. Anyway, when I first recieved my new AT Pro this was THE area to check out its underwater capabilities. Donning my waders and working up my nerve to really submerge this piece of high tech electronics into a certain death plunge, I gingerly searched along the shore at first. As my confidence grew I bravely went deeper and deeper into the water loving all the clean 80's signals I was hearing with visions of hundreds of Rosies and Mercury's in my pouch. Going as deeply as I dared, I turned around and MDed my way back to shore....but all the signals had disappeared. Again, I attacked the water with the vengance of a mad man, but still no signals. So, removing my jacket and gloves, I dug a hole about 6" deep in the mud and threw it up on the bank. Examination with my GPP showed a lot of targets, but I couldn't find one...of course looking for that elusive dime. Finally, handfull by handfull I examined the mud with my GPP. What I found was loads of .177 lead pellets and BB's which had been fired by people at the ducks over the decades from the shore. By walking back and forth on the muddy bottom I was forcing the tiny pellets below the range of the ATP and they were disappearing. Needless to say, this was a lesson I'll not soon forget.
ATP/GPP/Fiskars Diggers/BH Outback/CT handheld
haha that does suck, you could try raising the coil some, you should lose the BB's after a few inches or so, you could lose deep dimes but at least you wont be digging up hundreds of BB's.
DenDen
Forum Supporter
One of the thingsI couldn't understand was why they used ground penetrating radar when they had already found a signal with the Minelab?
Fake, fake, fake. The entire series has no creditability at all.
Fake, fake, fake. The entire series has no creditability at all.
CoiltoSoil
Elite Member
True, if the CTX found the item it should have been easily recoverable, why bring in a GPR to locate what you already located. Just dig, the target didnt seem or sound huge, it should have been easy to get to with a guy or two using shovels and throwing the muck on a sifter.
Bayoutalker
Elite Member
I think they were trying it to see if there was anything deeper than the MD could detect and maybe map it.
i've always wanted someone to get to the bottom of Oak Island so I'm glad they are there/trying even if the (revisionist)History Channel is playing up all the 'curse' and 7 must die !!!!. Lets just assume for a second the coin wasn't planted. If anything, I'd say that verifies that they should continue to drain and excavate the swamp more. As has already been said, they really hadn't done a whole lot of exploring yet.
The 'mercy' point might not be exact.. Also, if that whole theory based on Shakespeare is correct, there are plenty of other points they should be exploring. Maybe i missed the part where they explained why the entire treasure trove was at the mercy point.. Anyway, its worth GPRing all those points eventually if they really want to be thorough/scientific. Anyway, I hope someone figures it all out. I think there is enough evidence to suggest something is there..
The 'mercy' point might not be exact.. Also, if that whole theory based on Shakespeare is correct, there are plenty of other points they should be exploring. Maybe i missed the part where they explained why the entire treasure trove was at the mercy point.. Anyway, its worth GPRing all those points eventually if they really want to be thorough/scientific. Anyway, I hope someone figures it all out. I think there is enough evidence to suggest something is there..
Again I couldn't help myself ,watched the final episode . Just when I think it couldn't get worse it did. These morons all high five each other as the idiot older brother convinces the bigger idiot younger brother to continue the joke . We all knew it would happen but a small part of me was hoping he would blow up and say how idiotic the whole thing is. I know i'am part of the problem and I hate myself for it. But when I watch a solar eclipse ...I always sneak a peek. So next time I dig a Spanish reale in a corn field i'am gonna call the history channel and tell tell I've got undeniable evidence of a tunnel that contains the Ten Commandments.
CoiltoSoil
Elite Member
Haha, if you actually ready the history you will start to doubt anything ever really happened on the island. Most of the stories are second hand accounts printed decades after the fact. Basically a kid in 1795 see's lights on an island, so he goes out and find's a tackle block above a depression in the ground which is weird considering if 100+ foot hole was just dug and objects added to the hole it would be a mound of dirt, and there would be much more evidence than a tackle block in a tree. I doubt this event ever happened as it was not mentioned until the mid 1800's and if it did happen I believe he was just an overexcited kid who's excited tempted other men with big imaginations to go looking for treasure. Basically the whole legend relies on an article written 60 years after the event which claims a kid found an indentation in the dirt, and a tackle block in a tree. Everything beyond that is unknown, and I believe all finds since then have been plants, which has been made obvious by the fact that they were all found just before the companies went broke and the objects all mysteriously disappeared not long after. I love treasure stories, especially when those treasure are found, however I do believe this one to be nothing more than a legend.
OleSarge
Elite Member
capsule, I have looked and relooked the final episode http://www.history.com/shows/the-cu...the-find?m=5189717d404fa&s=All&f=1&free=false and have a few deductions of my own. Note the swamp cuts the island in half, and would flow completely across it were it not for the dam with the road on it. They keep harping that the swamp is man made and I believe it is. If you watch the scans of the map which shows the end of the island away from where the Lagina digs are, you'll see houses there also. Were it not for this land bridge these houses would only be accessable by boat. Sometime in the late 1700's or early 1800's, when the first settlers arrived on the island, they built a dam across the mouth of a cut across the island to allow crossing the cut without a boat. Where did the get the dirt? Lifted from pits using block and tackles and staged in 10 foot increments. Later, when the marsh (aka swamp) formed, ducks or other water fowl used it as a feeding stop during migration. Literally every place I've MDed, the most common thing I've dug is shotgun shells, or at least the metal part. Shotguns fired into the marsh over the years peppered the bottom with lead shot. I looked at the reading on the Deepmax X6 and it was a 61 at sens setting 3. They were walking on old, water staurated plywood after it had been drug through their work sites and probably contaminated with 80 years of metal filings, grindings and brazing slag. I think the 61 reading was massive layers of tiny lead buckshot resting atop the mud and when they jumped in they simply scattered it beyond the point of forming a target reflection. The flat rocks? It would be interesting to see what the dam was made of. Search "Oak Island Tours" if you want to make the walk around in June. Comments PLEASE.....
ATP/GPP/Fiskars Diggers/BH Outback/CT hand held
OleSarge
Elite Member
Gaspipe, during my time in the military I was involved with intelligence gathering and analyzation and there are pieces of this picture missing which are necessary to complete it. I'm going to look into the previous vocations of the Lagina brothers and find out where they came by the vast amount of money they allegedly spent on the island. The credits for the History Channel shows goes by much too fast to see who contributes what to the program..translated, who's making the money. But, I'm interested in what the real treasure is..but I don't think it's in a hole on the island. If you happen upon anything please keep me posted..
ATP/GPP/Fiskars Diggers/BH Outback/CT hand held
OleSarge
Elite Member
I watched the promo videos from Lorance on the Deep Max X6, and it appears to be more suited for finding a sunken airplane or something much larger than a Spanish coin. It really makes sense that the ground balance was on the mud, then they walked on wet and contaminated plywood with the "boss" at the controls while the "expert" watched from the sidelines. In the episode where they find the coin they give the Deep Max a single ground balance...when clearly two is required, and never mark the end of one leg and start a new one when the coil is lifted and turned. No great surprise they came up with a bunch of surface gobbledy goop....they had absolutely no idea what they were doing, and really didn't seem to care. On the depth, note the sens setting was backed of to minus 3 and the target VDI was 61..what does that mean?
ATP/GPP/Fiskars Diggers/BH Outback/CT hand held
Bayoutalker
Elite Member
The thing I noticed when they showed the big target on the Deep Max screen was an "Fe". What makes it hard to determine any real information from what you see on TV is that many of the scenes are actually reenactments necessary due to production needs and not the actual "real" data they may have gotten by legitimate means. So what you see on the TV screen may not be the same as the data they use to make their decisions. Isn't "Reality TV" wonderful??
I saw an interview of the Diggers guys and they say this is a very common thing to do. Maybe the camera shot of the live action was blocked, bad lighting, etc and would not work for TV broadcast so it is reenacted.
If the diver was experienced why didn't he take out the middle piece of his Tesoro detector for diving. It looked funny in 2 ft of muck seeing the arm cuff sticking up out of the water.
Why did he belly flop into the muck?
Why was Fe in the screen when they said it wasn't iron?
Why did the dive tank say Nitrous?
phil
Why did he belly flop into the muck?
Why was Fe in the screen when they said it wasn't iron?
Why did the dive tank say Nitrous?
phil
CoiltoSoil
Elite Member
I thought that too Phil. I figured they gave it away when they showed the display and it said FE after they had the hit in the swamp and using a full shaft when diving in shallow much with the Tesoro was weird. They seem to have forgotten that there has been major construction on the island for centuries there is bound to be tons of trash and old junk laying around. The nitrous tank was weird too. Don't they use that as a mix for deep diving? He could have used a snorkel in that place.
