Besides coins, the salvage company brought up cannons, pottery, jewelry, and a myriad of other items, which are now on display at the El Cazador Museum in Grand Bay, Alabama. D uring salvage, a large vacuum sucks up masses of debris, sand, and pebbles, which are deposited on the deck of the salvage ship. The treasure salvers rummage through each load of rubble, first removing coin clumps and other large items, and then sifting it for progressively smaller objects.
Fine gravel is examined for tiny items such as prayer beads and broken bits of silver jewelry.
A n otolith serves as the measure of a fish's growth, indication the animal's age and also how fast it has grown. It develops in layers, or rings, from it's core, a tiny sphere present when the fish hatches. As the fish grows, new rings of calcium carbonate are added, one each year as in trees. Besides age in years, analysis of an otolith can determine growth rates and, in young fish, even the day it was spawned. Otoliths are routinely examined in the institute's Age and Growth Laboratory as a valuable source of fisheries' life history data.