60's TV Show "Seahunt" Leads to Lacey Resident's Lifelong Interest in Shipwrecks

A chance encounter with a scuba diver in a Florida hotel when he was a child changed Michael Egolf’s life forever and led to a lifelong fascination with shipwrecks.

Egolf, a 40-year resident of the Lanoka Harbor section of Lacey Township, was a young teen when his parents took him to Florida on vacation and met a man in their hotel who agreed to take the family scuba diving.

“When I was 13, I was a big fan of Lloyd Bridges’ Sea Hunt ,” said Egolf. “I thought this really looks cool, I want to try this. It looked fascinating.”

That very first dive off of Florida’s west coast town of Crystal River was 90 feet. After listening carefully and doing everything he was told to do, the guy said Egolf was a natural.

At the end of 1966, Egolf enrolled in a YMCA diving course and became YMCA-certified. Then, he passed the National Association of Underwater Instructors course.

In 1967, he had his very first open water dive exploring two shipwrecks off the coast of Spring Lake -- the Dutch barge, Adonis, sunk in 1859, and the steamer Rusland, which was forced onshore in 1877 and ran over the Adonis.

From then on, Egolf was hooked and dived every weekend with friends who had taken a 28-foot lobster boat and converted it for diving.

“A lot of people dive off the coast of New Jersey,” said Egolf. “It depends on how the seas are running, some days the water can be crystal clear, others you can hit the bottom before you see it.”

Another chance meeting, this time at a wedding in Maryland, he met Gretchen Coyle, who was involved with the Museum of New Jersey Maritime History in Beach Haven. They got to chatting and Coyle told him he had to come work at the museum, where he now serves as a docent.

“At the museum, we have the listing of 3,000 sunken ships off the coast of New Jersey,” said Egolf. “During both World Wars, German U-boats were very active off of our coast. During World War I, U-151 sank six U.S. ships off New Jersey’s coast on June 2, 1918, known as Black Sunday.”

Egolf said he’s never been diving to those wrecks since they are in rather deep water, but he has dived to 100 other sunken ships in water anywhere between 30 and 130 feet deep.

“I have a porthole from the general merchandise cargo ship Western World, which ran aground off of Spring Lake in 1853, and I have a couple brass suspender holders and pennies I found while exploring the Delaware, which had burned to the water line and sank off of Barnegat in 1898,” he said.

The Treasure Hunter Treasure Hunting |Florida Shipwrecks – Florida ...

Treasure hunting operations, becoming a profitable business to compete in very many in the modern era Was the discovery of many ships wrecked each other in shallow water Easy access of the process of discovery has been made a lot of divers and many discoveries to find the treasures of enormous I told a lot of stories about the treasures that they contain water, Florida, where this was the state with a history of maritime transport is very important, and from this stories:

The Emanuel Wreck 1559

This was the first attempt by Europeans to colonize Florida The ships were anchored in the Gulf, where the hurricane hit and destroyed the ship before they can be discharged. The shipwreck site discovered in 1922 by a team from the Florida Office of the archaeological research and discovered more than 3000 relics and the remains of plants and animals have been under studied.

The Tierra Firme-The Atocha -The Santa Margarita 1622

The fleet set sail from the Terra Firm heading from South America to Spain The fleet of 27 trucks estimated 250 colored people, including gold, silver, emeralds and pearls was snaked two ships and 380 people died in 1985, found tons of treasures of gold pieces shown in the exhibition’s main search

The Henrietta Marie 1701

It is the vessel for the shipment of African slaves in Jamaica to work in sugar cane plantations. Ship was discovered in 1972 by accident while searching for Arica was the vessel loaded with ivory from Africa.

The Urca de Lima 1715

It is a ship designed to go in the water so shallow to can shipping This ship used in trade it was carrying a cow leather, incense, vanilla. The ship sank off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and sank with more than 15$ million of treasures to the bottom of the ocean. Spain was able to recover about 4 $ million and remained the rest of the treasure of more than 250 years in the bottom.

The Nuestra Espana Fleet-The San Pedro 1733

This fleet consists of 3 armed vessels and 18 merchant ship full of leather, spices and precious jewelry, silver and gold. This ship was based in Florida during the hurricane the remainder of the fleet was scattered over 80 km away. The painted sites of wrecks on the official map and the rescue operation continued for several years, archaeologists have studied the wreckage of the fleet of 13 ships and the sunken fleet is open to divers.

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