ALEX: The caisson’s advancing pretty easily.
KATYA: It is. Look at that, look how much it drops when they turn it.
KATYA: Good progress.

NARRATOR: A day of unrivaled hope and anticipation has begun on Oak Island for brothers Rick and Marty Lagina and their team.

Vanessa. What’s going on?
JARED: The pressures are starting to drop. It’s definitely loose now. Like we went through something.

NARRATOR: And that is because, in the fabled Money Pit area, they are conducting a massive excavation that may soon reveal the answers to the 230-year-old treasure mystery.

ALEX: Hey.
-Hey. What’s up?
-So, uh… The dig is at 95 feet.
ALEX: Mm-hmm.
-Right on. So, about three feet away from that target area.
-The first of, the first of many.
-Yes.

NARRATOR: After breaking ground one week ago…

VANESSA: Nice job. You’re oscillating.
(cheering, applause)

NARRATOR: …under the supervision of Vanessa Lucido and her company ROC Equipment, along with representatives from SB Canada…

MARTY: This is great. Let’s dig.
(cheering)

NARRATOR: …a seven-foot-diameter steel shaft dubbed “True Believer 1” has reached a depth of nearly 100 feet, and is believed, for a number of reasons, to be located within the original Money Pit.

NARRATOR: First, it is in this area where recent groundwater tests have revealed high traces of precious metals below the 100-foot level. Second, it is near that depth where the team has retrieved remnants of a mysterious wooden tunnel.

This looks like the vault.

NARRATOR: And third, it is where a previous core-drilling operation this year recovered possible evidence, approximately 150 feet deep, of the fabled Chappell Vault, a seven-foot-high container that was first reported by treasure hunters Frederick Blair and William Chappell back in 1897.

Really interesting, for the last four feet, the casing has gone in ridiculously easy.
-Oh, really?
-So, we are not oscillating. That casing is just going in.
ALEX: It’s just dropping?
-It’s just dropping.
-Yes.

What do you think it might be?
VANESSA: This would either mean sand or easy, soft soil.
-Mm-hmm.
-Two, a cavity, right?

VANESSA: Some void or something like that, that we are just installing it through.
TERRY: We’re still only about three and a half feet away from our very first target horizon. And that is 98.5 to 99, we hit the top of what we think might be a tunnel.
-Right.

So, we’ll watch what the grab’s bringing up and what that material is.
-Yeah, that-that’s gonna be an imperative, right?
-Yeah.

NARRATOR: As the TB-1 shaft advances deeper towards the possible tunnel, an 18-and-a-half-ton tool known as a hammer grab is being used to bring the spoils, and hopefully, evidence of man-made workings, to the surface.

But at the end of the day, it’s what comes out of the hole that probably tells exactly what we’re into.
ALEX: Yep. Patience will ultimately carry the day.
TERRY: For sure.

NARRATOR: We’re approaching the depth of the tunnel. You should encounter a lot of wood if it is indeed a tunnel. There’s a top, there’s a bottom, there are sidewalls. So, my hope is that this will be very definitive in supporting the idea that there was a tunnel at this depth.

MARTY: Whenever we the fellowship are watching the hammer grab, we really have high hopes that the very next scoop, every time, is gonna be something hugely meaningful.
GARY: Ooh! Look at that.
MARTY: Wood, baby.
ALEX: Yeah.

ALEX: Well, we’re at about 110, 111 feet right now, which is the very end of our first zone of interest. And that’s a lot of wood we’re bringing out.
GARY: And it’s all short timbers. Kind of like a tunnel.
ALEX: I agree, Gary, it looks like a tunnel.
GARY: Yeah, it does. Let’s see if there’s anything in that tunnel.

♪ ♪

-Hey, Terry.
-What do you got?
Found an interesting piece of wood, mate.
-Yeah. It’s got grooves and… Look at that.
-Let’s show it to Marty.

-All right, mate.
-What do you think of that, Marty?
-There’s an interesting…
-Yeah, that’s marked.
TERRY: Yeah.
MARTY: Roman numeral. Number three there? Is that what that is?
TERRY: That looks like a pretty distinct three to me. And look, we’ve got a dowel there.

MARTY: Same as the U-shaped structure. It implies the same construction. Same construction methodology, for sure.
-I think that’s really cool.
-Yeah.

It’s basically the oldest looking wood we’ve found. Could be the cribbing from the depths of the Money Pit.

MARTY: I think we’ve been fairly convinced that the TB-1 area is roughly the site of the original Money Pit. There’s a lot of evidence that there is still something here. We’re zeroing in on possibly finding the treasure.

ALEX: Hey, Vanessa.
VANESSA: Hey.
-Hey, Vanessa. I got some new numbers for you, guys.

-What do you got?
-We just took a measurement. We’re at 117 with the dig. And then, what we’re really chasing is the treasure vault below at 150 feet.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Laginas and their team might soon be able to finally reveal the truth?

All right. Keep digging.
-Okay.
MARTY: Yeah, full speed ahead. We’re on something.

NARRATOR: …an intense situation is developing in the Money Pit area.

Uh, what depth do you think the teeth are at right now?
I would say 160.

NARRATOR: Upon reaching a depth of 160 feet in the TB-1 shaft, where the team hopes to encounter a concrete-encased chest, known as the Chappell Vault, the steel caissons have hit a mysterious obstruction.

VANESSA: Is she cutting through it?
JARED: She’s trying to. Come on.

NARRATOR: As eager as the team is to find out what they may have discovered, it could take some time for the caisson to breach the obstruction, and allow the hammer grab to bring more spoils, and potential valuables, to the surface.

We want to get to depth. So, we’ve got to get down there.
JARED: Ah, we’ll get through it.

NARRATOR: …later that afternoon…

VANESSA: Our pressures are dropping. So, that means whatever we’re cutting through is hard at first, but we’re cutting right through it, so…
TERRY: That’s great.

VANESSA: My dig is at 160 feet.

NARRATOR: …Marty Lagina has joined Rick and other members of the team in the Money Pit area. Now that the caisson has breached the possible obstruction, a breakthrough discovery could be just moments away.

ALEX: Dig’s at 160.
-Yeah. It could be the treasure vault. We’re about to get into totally new territory.
ALEX: Mm-hmm.
-Yep.

So, the normal high intensity is heightened in this case because we’re very close to the vault.

NARRATOR: Now we’re thinking, hey, the next thing is gonna be a handful of doubloons or something. You know? A chalice, something. We really are thinking that. You can feel it.

(rumbling)
Are you feeling those tremors occasionally?
-No.
-I just did.
-Really?

(machinery whirring) (rumbling) (metal clanking)
RICK: That ain’t good. It’s caving!
Hey, stop. It’s (bleep) caving in.
(hydraulics hissing)
Holy (bleep).

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: After more than two centuries of previous treasure hunting activities… which have left abandoned tunnels and backfilled shafts buried across the Money Pit area, the ground surrounding and beneath TB-1 suddenly starts to collapse.

MARTY: This is a huge deal. This is how disasters occur.

If you want to look up in there, you can see it’s starting to cave.
-Oh yeah.
-Oh, my God, yeah.

MARTY: There’s only a certain amount of iron that’s supporting that very massive oscillator. And that is sitting on the ground. And if the ground is caving away, the whole thing can cave away.

I am very concerned about this. This is not good.

JARED: It’s 30-feet drop all the way right here.
RICK: Holy… That is huge.
-It’s a lot of material.
JARED: Yeah.

It suggests there’s something down hole swallowing all that stuff.

NARRATOR: As I’m peering down, the situation appears somewhat grave. Something’s happening underground that is taking an enormous amount of material and swallowing it.

Will we be able to advance the caisson?
Let’s just decide what we’re gonna do.

RICK: Is this becoming unsafe to the point where we have to remove the oscillator? We have to move off of this area? Which is our priority target, number one.

So, there are a lot of issues going on.
MARTY: Is it likely we are really going to advance this casing? We’d like to proceed, if it’s safe. We’re far from quitting right now.
-Yeah.
VANESSA: Yeah.

-So, we’re going to backfill that area.
STEVE: Sure.
VANESSA: And then we’re going to be monitoring, you know, every couple feet, making sure we’re not having any caving. But, um… it is setting us back a little bit. We keep losing the material. I can’t guarantee we are going to keep advancing.

(machine beeping)
MARTY: If that stabilizes and we can do it, we’ll keep going. Just see what happens.
ALEX: Yeah.
-Yes.

NARRATOR: Just as the team may be closing in on answers, and a fabled treasure vault, their most ambitious operation to reveal both is now in jeopardy.

NARRATOR: Will Oak Island prevail once again and keep hold of its precious secrets? Or can Rick, Marty, Craig and their team outmaneuver…