"They say it's outrageous that I'm pillaging all these national treasures," Greco said. "But if you're archeologically correct you could never ever bring this kind of show to the world. It's impossible. It's too much. It's a bridge of 2,000 years of Chinese art and history."
Greco says his story is one of hard work and pennypinching entrepreneurism that succeeded because he developed close personal bonds with Filipinos living in remote villages near the islands of Panay, Mindanao and Busuanga.
"I stayed with the natives, the
fishermen," Greco said. "And they led us to the sites."
The shipwrecks, he said, are embedded in reefs off Philippine islands in the South China Sea. "We have 16 sites we've been working in the last six or seven years," Greco said. Three sites have been highly productive, he added, including one his divers are still swimming down to and recovering artifacts from.
The shipwrecks lie at depths as great as 85m, Greco said, which is beyond the range of most sport divers. He said his team used no air tanks but rather weights and lines and hoses that bring air down to men working in the bottom gloom. Some of the divers swam with wooden paddles strapped to their feet, rather than fins. "Tanks are for tourists," Greco said.
Greco, whose company, Stallion Recoveries, is based in Hong Kong, said the lost ships were either going to Chinese trading posts in the Philippines or were on their way to Indonesia, to the south. Experts say the South China Sea abounds in wrecks lost to storms, piracy and ineptitude.
Greco said he always kept a low profile for his operation, even while getting the proper permits from the National Museum of the Philippines and other Philippine authorities. "We never told anybody what we were doing," he said.
He added that he was apprehensive about making his finds public because that could make working more difficult. "In the Philippines and Asia, depending on where you are, they think of them as pots and pans," he said of the lost treasures. "Once they see it has value, and somebody's interested, it's going to be a lot different working over there."
Greco said he planned to plow some of his expected profits back to his crew chiefs in the Philippines.
"I told them I would make each of them a millionaire in their own currency," Greco said. "And I will honor that."
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