The general location of the Santa Margarita site is known as the result of earlier archaeological salvage and historical research spanning many years. The site was first located by famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher in 1980 together with the lower hull sections of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha in 1985, a companion ship that was also lost in the same 1622 hurricane. Further, the initial search by Blue Water has found what appears to be the artifact trail of the Santa Margarita in the form of recovered coins, gold chains, gold bars, pearls, pottery, rock ballast and parts of the vessel that have been recovered which are expected to eventually lead to the undiscovered main hull sections where the bulk of the treasure is expected to be found. On June 14, 2007, following the artifact trail, Blue Water uncovered a wealth of gold and a unique sealed box of pearls whose value management believes exceeds $5,000,000. During 2007, Blue Water, working on the
Santa Margarita shipwreck site, recovered a total of eight gold chains with total length of over 35 ft., 11 ornate gold pieces, 7 gold links, 3 very uniquely intricate gold pieces, 3 pieces of gold bar and hundreds of other historic artifacts. The most intriguing piece was a lead box with a half inch separation in its bottom seal, which revealed that there were pearls inside, over 16,300. Based on the ship’s original manifest as well as documents available in Spanish archives
and records of previous archaeological salvage efforts we estimated that the value of the remaining treasure and artifacts of the Santa Margarita may be in the $150 - $200 million range.