Rick and members of the team supervise the excavation of DH82 as Terry Matheson reports they are at approximately eighty feet, just ten feet above the depth where water samples revealed gold and silver earlier in the year. Peter Fornetti notes that this shaft captures almost the entire center of the Dunfield dig from 1965, which was halted by flooding and cave-ins just ten feet before reaching the depth of the Chappell Vault. Andrew says they should reach 100 to 110 feet by the end of the day. When Dr. Ian Spooner arrives, the material is becoming more native. Gary Drayton scans the next hammer grab and gets a signal, and Rick digs out what Gary believes is a cribbing spike, both ends pointed. Gary wonders whether they have found evidence of a tunnel or shaft at a depth Dunfield never documented. Later, at ninety feet, the hammer grab brings up timbers and Gary detects a large object that Rick pulls from the spoils. Gary suspects it is a tool such as a pickaxe head, and Rick wants it scanned with the CT machine. Andrew reports the dig has reached 99 feet with the caisson at 104, and the team calls it for the day.
On Lot 8, Gary and Marty search an area recently cleared of large trees on the same lot where the rhodolite garnet brooch was found in 2018. At the first flag Marty digs out a linked piece of metal that Gary identifies as part of a bridle, a notable find given that mostly ox shoes have been recovered on the island. At the next flag they unearth a piece of metal the two believe could be from an adze or a similar tool.
At the research center, Rick, Peter, Jack Begley, and Tony Sampson meet with Colin Toole and Taylor Pierce from CSR GeoSurveys to plan a marine magnetometer survey of the waters around the island's northern shore. Earlier in the year CSR scanned Lot 4 and Lot 8 in search of the "hole under the hatch" noted on a map given to the team by Zena Halpern and possibly dating to the 14th century. Those scans revealed a large anomaly on each lot that the team hopes to excavate once permits are secured. Several artifacts found near those areas could date back three or more centuries, including a possible cannon fragment, an adze, and a piece of copper that Carmen Legge felt could have come from a chest. Tony suggests also scanning the area where he and Alex Lagina dove the previous year, as well as the Frog Island shoal, roughly 1,000 feet east of Oak Island. Frog Island is a 54-acre island where previous searchers found European artifacts suggesting an encampment that predated the Money Pit. In 1994 Dan Blankenship formed the Mahone Bay Exploration Company to explore Frog Island and Apple Island, but no significant discoveries were made.
Jack Begley and Charles Barkhouse meet Tony and the CSR team at Tom Nolan's dock for the survey. Using a SeaSPY marine magnetometer that emits low-power radio-frequency energy to detect ferrous objects up to thirty feet below the surface, the team scans the shoreline off Lots 4, 5, and 6 on the north side of the island. Colin monitors the data in real time and picks up a hit off the shore of Lot 6, once owned by Samuel Ball, followed by an even larger target off Lot 4. The group then moves to the Frog Island shoal, where additional targets appear. In the War Room, Colin presents the results, showing clusters of targets within fifty meters of the northern shoreline and another cluster on the shoal. Target M4 stands out as a large concentration of ferrous material. Tony Sampson will dive on the targets to gather more information about who was on the island and what activity took place there.
