TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 14.1

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V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 22, 2026, Article 16

In January 2025, our good friend Bob Evans began publishing a series of blog articles on the Finest Known website detailing his experience as co-discoverer and curator of the treasures recovered from the wreck of the S.S. Central America. Subject of the book "Ship of Gold", many exhibits, countless interviews and articles, books and auction catalogs feature the legendary haul of gold coins, bars, nuggets, gold dust and more from the 1857 shipwreck. Here's another excerpt - see the complete article online. -Editor

When we did find the S.S. Central America shipwreck, we were met with a previously hidden community and their world. A hundred years before us, the instruments used during the voyages of the Blake had penetrated deep below the waves and discovered the lay of the land, and the general form of some of the animals living there. But no living thing dredged up from the great depths arrived alive at the surface, probably succumbing more to the temperature difference than the pressure.

Renowned American biologist Alexander Agassiz, of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology served as the principal scientist for those expeditions. In his comprehensive two-volume report (1888), he laments, "We can scarcely hope ever to watch the habits of the deep-sea dwellers, and see them in their natural attitudes, and we must be satisfied to imagine what these are by analogy with their shallow-water allies."

The SSCA Project gave us a chance to fill in some of those blanks, a century after Agassiz expressed his frustrations. As we arrived on the shipwreck in 1988, we were greeted by the sight of those deep-sea dwellers, and because we returned day after day, and year after year (for 4 summer seasons, 1988 – 1991,) we were able to see them in their natural attitudes. We also found that some of those habits differed from the shallow water allies.

The S.S. Central America shipwreck teems with life. When found, a portion of the exposed treasure was covered with a rich community of invertebrates. For our peer-reviewed monograph about our scientific efforts we selected this image for the cover.

Growing on top of the top of a pile of gold bars, there sat the deep-sea equivalent of a coral reef, a virtual forest of corals and sponges crawling with strange denizens like feather stars (crinoids,) sea cucumbers, starfish, barnacles, and mollusks.

Hundreds of miles to the north, off Greenland and the shores of Canada, in the seas of the near-midnight sun, long dusks and dawns are separately only by brief darkness. The extended hours of light permit algae and phytoplankton to bloom in riotous abundance, infusing the surface waters with oxygen, and nutrients foundational to the food chain. These northern waters and their annual burst of productivity draw all parts of the aquatic community to the feast: fish and whales and birds and seaborn humans.

This high-latitude water becomes heavier as it cools, denser than the warm Gulf Stream waters flowing into the area from the south. So, the cold, oxygen and nutrient rich water sinks and flows southward, as a countercurrent to the Gulf Stream, a flow known to oceanographers as the Western Boundary Undercurrent. It is this water that washes continually over the SSCA shipwreck, bringing life as it also nourishes the organisms that are consuming the wood and corroding the iron.

Nemo worked within an interesting neighborhood, and our cameras allowed us to see a wild array of seldom or never-seen animals, while we worked on the treasure and explored other parts of the shipwreck. Here are some of my favorites, and some highlight memories.

Brisingid Starfish: When we first saw the shipwreck in September of 1988, we were greeted by a host of strange 14-armed starfish arrayed on the corroding frames of the paddlewheels.

These are "Brisingid" starfish, (genus Brisingia) also sometimes called basket stars. The echinoderms, the group of animals that includes starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, crinoids, sea cucumbers and their relatives, do very well at the shipwreck site.

Corals: These feathery corals, Chrysogorgia, seen here growing on top of a corroding iron water tank, were another filter feeder found almost everywhere on the site.

Here is a detail of the Ohio Journal of Science cover image, showing a colony attached to a gold ingot in the commercial shipment deposit. Chrysogorgia means "Golden Coral." The stems of these "plumes" have a golden or brassy sheen.

The family they belong to are known as gorgonian (from the multi-headed gorgon) or soft corals, possessing a stem with multiple branches and heads. A Smithsonian biologist studying these animals with us said it was the first instance he knew of Golden Coral growing on blocks of gold.