Treasure hunt

A UK company using advanced technology to find and recover sunken treasure has located its first target — a 19th century shipwreck containing up to £4.5m in bullion.

SubSea Resources, which is employing a range of systems in its treasure hunt, many borrowed from the oil and gas industry, said it plans to begin its first recovery operation on the wreck Ella next month.

The wreck lies about 1,000m beneath the Atlantic, and according to the company contains a haul of gold and silver that can be extracted from the vessel. SubSea hopes to recover treasure worth an estimated £100m from six wrecks by mid-2008.

The planned recovery from Ella will be a testing ground for much of the technology and systems that SubSea plans to use for bigger, more profitable wrecks next year.

The team uses sonar technology from the oil and gas industry to map the seabed. Once it knows roughly where a wreck should be, it maps out a search zone.