A new modern ship will search for treasures in the Black Sea. The vessel will be purchased by the Centre for Underwater Archaeology in Sozopol. The delivery of the ship will happen after a competition that already started. The estimated value of the ship is about 375,000 leva or approximately 180 000 euro. It will be used for underwater archeology, and one of the requirement is to be able to operate a minimum of 12 nautical miles from shore.

The ship must enable it to carry out marine geophysical and hydrographic research submersible devices and to be able to explore the Black Sea for traces of past centuries. The ship should assist to the divers’ work and provides them with a safe descent to the underwater world.

According to the legends in the Black Sea can be found tons of gold and silver, sunk in different periods of the history. Among them is the British ship “Black Prince”, sunk during the Crimean War, a Venetian galley and Cossack fleet, who sank after they grabbed the monasteries along the Bulgarian coast. Suspected to lay under the waves of the Black Sea are at least 25,000 shipwrecks from different periods, but the depth at which they now not allow the scientists to explore them with the present gear.