Kingston Images

Ilya Inozemtsev of Marine Magnetics meticulously services the sophisticated magnetometer that has become the archaeological team's most crucial tool in their search for Hernán Cortés' lost fleet. This sleek, orange-tipped instrument creates highly accurate maps of ferrous anomalies hidden beneath the seafloor near Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, where the conquistador deliberately scuttled his ships in 1519. Each data point collected by this device represents a potential fragment of the historic vessels that eliminated Cortés' men's escape route, forcing their march inland toward the Aztec Empire. Once the team identifies promising anomalies, divers perform targeted circle searches to investigate these specific coordinates, methodically peeling back five centuries of sediment and time.