Tracking Treasure: Romance and Fortune Beneath the Sea and How to Find It!

Trupp, who has written about ocean exploration for Smithsonian magazine and other publications, provides here a kind of guidebook for undersea treasure hunters. He includes information on how to raise money, how to dig, where proven and likely treasure sites are in the waters of North America and the Caribbean. Trupp describes in detail the inspiring 16-year search of Mel Fisher for the ""mother lode'' of the Atocha, a Spanish galleon that sank near Key West in 1622. (Discovered last year, the silver and gold have an estimated value of $400 million.) In addition to the practical advice, Trupp attempts to address the important controversy between ``treasure hunters'' and archeologists, but his presentation is absurdly one-sided (in one section, Trupp ridicules the phrase ``priceless cultural resource'' and regularly refers to government officials as ``bureaucrats''). (July)