The fantasy of stumbling on a lost fortune is no longer confined to pirate tales. In deep water off Colombia and the Mediterranean coast of France, underwater robots have turned that dream into a very real, very valuable haul of gold, silver and centuries old artifacts. What was once unreachable to human divers is now being mapped, filmed and delicately lifted by machines that can see in the dark and feel through the hands of a remote operator.
At the center of this shift is a new generation of humanoid and autonomous robots that can work hundreds of meters below the surface, where pressure would crush a human lung and light barely penetrates. Their most spectacular prize so far is a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure that lay hidden for more than three centuries, but the same technology is already rewriting how I think about shipwrecks, cultural heritage and even the future of ocean science.
The “holy grail” galleon and a fortune on the seafloor
When the Spanish galleon San Jos went down in 1708 during a battle with British ships, it carried a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds from the Americas that modern estimates value at up to $17 billion. For generations, the wreck was a rumor and a set of coordinates that never quite lined up, until an autonomous robot survey led by the Colombian Navy finally pinpointed the site in deep water off Cartagena and the then President of Col publicly announced the discovery of the long lost vessel. The ship, described as a 64 gun three masted galleon, has since been documented as one of the richest wrecks in maritime history, with the potential value of its cargo calculated at about $17 billion as of 2023 according to detailed records on San Jos. In 2015, an autonomous robot equipped with high resolution cameras captured the first detailed images of the wreck, revealing intact cannons, stacked cargo and scattered treasure, and Colombian authorities promptly classified the exact location as a state secret, as later reporting on the San Jos search effort makes clear.
The scale of the find is staggering even by treasure hunting standards. One technical analysis of the site describes how a deep sea vehicle filmed chests and coins encrusted with marine growth, estimating that billions of dollars of gold, silver and emeralds lie across the San Jose Wreck. Another account of the same discovery describes a deep sea vehicle that revealed treasures of roughly $20 Billion on the site, again emphasizing that Billions of dollars of precious metals and stones are visible in the imagery captured by a high resolution camera system, as summarized in a report titled Sea Robot Revealed. Social media commentary has amplified the legend, with one widely shared post describing the San Jos as a legendary Spanish galleon, lost in 1708 and carrying an estimated $19 billion worth of treasure, a description that has circulated under the banner of Just and repeated in another version that highlights the Spanish identity of the San Jos.
The robot that finally reaches where divers cannot
Finding a wreck at that depth is only the first step, and it is here that modern underwater robots have quietly become the indispensable explorers of the twenty first century. Colombia has now committed to using a dedicated underwater robot to remove treasures worth billions from the San Jose galleon, with officials specifying that the vehicle will work at a depth of 600 m to recover items from the San Jose, which sank in 1708 while laden with gold and other cargo, as outlined in a detailed plan for the San Jose recovery. Earlier coverage of the discovery itself described how an underwater robot located a 310 year old Spanish shipwreck carrying treasure that might be worth up to $17 billion, with video segments explaining that the Spanish vessel was identified by its cannons and cargo, as seen in footage shared under the title Underwater robot. A separate clip of the same story, hosted on another platform, repeats that an underwater robot finds a shipwreck with treasure worth up to $17B and again stresses that the wreck is a 310year old Spanish ship.
What makes these machines so effective is not just their cameras but their ability to act as remote avatars for human operators. One widely shared video describes how ocean One is a unique kind of underwater robot that actually lets a human reach beyond where human divers can go, with the operator feeling resistance and texture through haptic controls as One manipulates objects on the seafloor, a capability highlighted in a short clip on Jul. A similar description appears in another video that explains how ocean One is a unique kind of underwater robots that actually lets a human reach beyond where human divers can go, again emphasizing that One can operate in places that would be lethal for a person, as shown in a segment shared by a major broadcaster about Jul. A separate Instagram reel reinforces the same point, describing how One extends human reach into depths that would otherwise be inaccessible, and showing the robot’s dexterous arms in action in a short One clip.
From King Louis XIV’s flagship to a “robo mermaid”
The San Jos is not the only spectacular prize that robots have brought back into view. In the Mediterranean, a scuba diving humanoid robot uncovered treasure from King Louis XIV’s wrecked ship, a royal vessel that sank off the coast of Toulon, France in 1664 while carrying cargo for the French crown, as detailed in an early report on King Louis XIV. The robot, designed to be extremely human like, was able to scuba dive down to the wreck and carefully retrieve artifacts that had sat undisturbed for centuries, demonstrating that a machine could perform the kind of delicate work usually reserved for highly trained divers. A separate overview of the project notes that the same scuba diving humanoid robot uncovered treasure from King Louis XIV’s wrecked ship and that it was created by researchers at Stanford University as a means for future ocean expeditions, underscoring that the team at Stanford University always saw treasure hunting as a test case for broader scientific missions.
That same machine, known as OceanOne, has since picked up a more playful nickname as a “robo mermaid” in popular coverage, but its core innovation lies in its hands. One technical profile explains that it is All in the Hands Researchers at Stanford University originally designed the anthropomorphic robot with coral reef work in mind, but its skills translate easily to treasure hunting, because its grippers can sense pressure and texture, as described in a feature on All. A more irreverent take notes that we already know that robots are destined to steal all our jobs, But thanks to some foolhardy researchers at Stanford University who built a deep diving robot, they might also end up with all the gold doubloons it finds, a tongue in cheek warning that appears in a commentary about how a deep diving robot is going to steal all our pirate treasure, which singles out But the work of Stanford University as a turning point. A separate image link to the same story reinforces that Stanford University researchers built a robot that can dive deep and potentially scoop up gold, a detail that appears in another reference to Stanford University.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
