What Lies Beneath: Discovering Treasure

Deeper and deeper into the water the diver went.  Down past a goldfish, some aquatic vegetation, straight down to the sandy bottom.  The diver knew treasure was near, as he plunged his hands into the sand.  And he was right!  There they were, dozens of them, maybe hundreds.  And as the mud slowly washed off the spheres of treasure, he smiled.  He had found the sunken treasure he was seeking……golf balls!

Greg Werum grew up loving the water, and swimming.  At the age of 23 Greg purchased a wet suite, diving gear, took diving lessons and purchased a $1000 golf ball washer.  He went into business with a friend retrieving golf balls from ponds, lakes, rivers, even the sea.  They would then sell those golf balls back to golfers like myself, who hit them into the water more often than we’d like to admit.

The two men contacted country clubs and golf courses all across America, called the golf pros, and anyone who would listen.  They called their golf ball retrieving company, “Bottoms Up”.  The two men could recover as many as 5000 golf balls per day.  Their machine could wash 10,000 balls at a time, and before they knew it, they had a successful business.

As years went by, it seemed they were drawn to places with deeper ponds, or along the coastlines where golfers would sail balls far out into the sea, which sometimes meant deeper dives and more specialized equipment, but also larger hauls.  The two would also frequently pull up golf clubs, which had been sent to their watery graves by exasperated owners.  Over the years, they were able to find one of every club to make an entire set of clubs.

And then, on July 20, 1985, everything changed for Greg Werum.  On that day, Greg was working on the side for a salvage vessel, the Dauntless, diving off the cost of Florida, when he spotted what he thought was a coral reef.  But what it actually was was a sunken Spanish galleon, the Atocha, that had coral growing all around and over it.  It had set sail from Havana, bound for Spain more than 350 years earlier, in 1622. 

There were 28 ships in the galleon, loaded with silver from Peru and Mexico, gold and emeralds from Columbia, and pearls from Venezuela.  But a hurricane took eight of their vessels to the sea floor near the Florida straits where Greg was diving.

This became one of the largest treasure finds in human history.  In the recovery, there were 125 gold bars, 24 tons of silver bullion, 20 bronze canons, 1200 additional pounds of silver.  The Guiness Book of World Records declared it the most valuable shipwreck in the world.

Greg, and the other few crew members from the Dauntless received a cut of the discovered treasure, of the gold, and silver, and jewels.  Their cut alone was over $400 Million.

Many stories of business success follow this same narrative.  We start out diving for golf balls, honing our skills, gaining valuable experience, not expecting to find gold and treasure, but often we do.  I know that in our industry, there is gold quietly waiting to be discovered in virtually every health plan in America.  We are discovering it every day.

Without his experience, which he gained diving for used golf balls, Greg Werum would have never discovered the Atocha.

Keep diving friends.