So, here we are again, on our way to Oak Island.
How are y’all feeling?

[Alex]
Well, it’s exciting because I’m basically satisfied
that something happened on Oak Island
that’s outside of recorded history.

[Peter]
Yep. We’re finding more things that say
that the legend is true.

[Rick]
Absolutely.

[Narrator]
For brothers Rick and Marty Lagina,
their partner Craig Tester, and the members of their team,
a new chapter in the world’s longest-running treasure hunt
is about to begin on Oak Island.

[Rick]
We begin a new year with this mission statement —
let’s solve it. Let’s find the answers.

[Marty]
We’re here.
Our hopes are as high as they’ve ever been,
and I’m really and truthfully pretty excited about it.

[Crowd]
Hey, everybody!
[cheering]
We’re back!

[Rick]
When you walk into the museum, everyone is smiling.
There’s a certain energy in the room,
a sense of commitment.

[Rick]
Hey, partner. Welcome, everybody.
Back to the quest, right?

[Group]
Yep.

So, let’s start with this:
If you try and make sense out of everything
other people have done — and what we’ve done
over the last 12 years —
what makes sense is that the treasure has gone even deeper
in the Money Pit and is now in the solution channel.

[Narrator]
In 1804,
a large stone bearing strange carved symbols
was discovered in the center of an oak platform,
exactly 90 feet deep in the Money Pit.

Upon its removal, the shaft flooded with seawater —
fed from a cobblestone tunnel that originated 500 feet away, at Smith’s Cove.

Over the next two centuries, numerous companies of treasure hunters
dug more than a dozen adjacent shafts and tunnels,
hoping to bypass the believed booby trap
and recover whatever had been so skillfully buried at the bottom of the Money Pit.

Each one fell victim to flooding and cave-ins.
The ground across the area became unstable, prone to collapse.

One year ago, Rick, Marty, Craig, and the team
believed that their efforts would finally pay off
after groundwater testing pinpointed a large source of precious metals
more than 100 feet underground.

They began digging a series of seven-foot diameter steel shafts.

[Marty]
What is that?

[Narrator]
But while recovering numerous artifacts —
including digging tools that predated 1795 —

[Worker]
We found this concrete.

[Narrator]
…and obtaining possible evidence of a treasure vault nearly 160 feet deep…

[Jared]
Stop! It’s caving! It’s caving all the way back!

[Narrator]
The earth beneath two of the shafts, known as TB-1 and TOT-1, suddenly collapsed.
This has led the team to suspect that the treasure has fallen deeper than 200 feet,
now resting in a natural feature in the bedrock known as a solution channel.

[Terry]
Here we go — down into the solution channel.

[Narrator]
While core-drilling proceeds deeper in the Money Pit area,
over on the eastern end of the island at Smith’s Cove…

[Marty]
Let’s go find something, guys.

[Craig]
Billy.

[Marty]
Billy’s here.

[Narrator]
Marty Lagina, Craig Tester, and metal-detection expert Gary Drayton
join Billy Gerhardt to further investigate the massive collection of spoils
from last year’s excavations in the Money Pit area.

[Gary]
Yeah. We found that old iron —
it went back to the 1600s.

What is that?
This looks like it’s part of a tool.

[Narrator]
After finding the potentially 16th-century pickaxe during the excavation of TOT-1…

[Gary]
That could be a really old tool, mate.

[Marty]
Yeah.

[Narrator]
…the team began scouring through the Money Pit spoils
deposited here at Smith’s Cove.

Incredibly, they found an iron chisel dated to the same era.

[Gary]
Whenever there’s a lot of iron, there’s the possibility of iron masking.
There could be a gold or silver coin waiting for us, mate.

[Billy]
Yeah.

[Narrator]
Now, the team continues to search the remaining spoils
in hopes of recovering more artifacts — or evidence of treasure.

[Gary]
So this should be good.
Yeah, I’ll probably need this digging out.
It might be on edge.

[Marty, laughing]
We’re all on edge.

[Gary]
There we go. That’s more like it.
That is a tool of some kind. Look at that.

[Marty]
Wow. That is unusual.
That’s got the look of being old as well.

[Craig]
Definitely has some heft to it.

[Marty]
Could be a chisel — chiseling in the tunnels or…

[Narrator]
Marty isn’t surprised.
Once again, possible proof that somebody — other than searchers —
was deep in the Money Pit centuries ago.

Still, they must keep going through the spoils carefully.
Anything here could be significant.

[Gary]
And we’ve picked up where we left off last year.
We were finding great old tools and artifacts in these spoils,
and now we’ve pulled up another one —
potentially from the 1600s or older.

[Marty]
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Good digging, guys.

[Gary]
The gold’s still in there, right?

[Marty, laughing]
That’s the hope.

[Marty]
Okay, everybody —
this is the first of what’ll be, hopefully,
a whole bunch of sessions in the lab.

[Narrator]
Rick and Marty Lagina, along with the team,
meet with archaeologist Laird Niven and archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan
in the Oak Island laboratory.

Emma has prepared a report on the chisel recently found in the Money Pit spoils.

[Marty]
What did you find out, Emma?

[Emma]
All right. So, the chisel did get a good strip of bare metal from this area right here.
I have the compositions up here.

[Narrator]
Earlier today, Emma scanned the artifact using an X-ray fluorescence device —
a tool that emits nondestructive radiation to identify an object’s chemical composition,
which helps determine when it may have been created.

[Emma]
It lacks any modern alloying elements like manganese,
which indicates it’s older — probably the 1700s.
Maybe older.

[Rick]
Sweet.

[Marty]
I love those dates.

[Narrator]
The chisel is exciting — it predates the first treasure-hunt efforts on Oak Island.
It could even be part of the original deposit.

[Rick]
It’s a great find to start the year.
We have an old tool found at depth in the Money Pit.
This isn’t the one thing — but we’re getting there.

[Marty]
I’m satisfied. Well done. We’ll get you some more.

[Gary]
There’s gonna be more finds coming.
And I’m hoping the next one’s gold or silver.

[Rick]
As I always say — we gotta go find it.