In 2013, the news of an underwater pyramid off the coast of the Azores burned around the planet. Many speculated that it was a 20,000 year old pyramid resting on the ocean floor between two Azores islands and had been part of the legendary island city, Atlantis. The legend of Atlantis states it disappeared beneath the ocean during a catastrophic world event, such as a meteor strike at the end of the last ice age. Atlantis has long been an elusive treasure for many underwater archeologists (1).









Amateur Sailor Claimed He Discovered Underwater Pyramid

Fishing off his yacht, Diocleciano Silva claimed he’d discovered the pyramid using “bathmymetry navigation”. Bathmymetry studies underwater depths through the use of maps and digital terrain models. These are often combined with topography data.

This data is usually generated from an echosounder (sonar) that is located either beneath or on the side of the boat. A beam of sound is pinged to the seafloor. Depending on the time it takes for it to bounce off the seafloor, determines the depth, size and shape of the terrain. Remote sensors, such as LIDAR or LADAR systems can be conducted with airborne systems, even satellites (2).

Using GPS technology, Silva surmised the pyramid is almost 197 feet high with a base that is over 86,000 square feet.

To give an idea of the size of such a pyramid, two modern landmarks can be compared to the submerged anomaly (3):

The Christopher Columbus Monument in Barcelona, Spain stands 197 feet.

The average football field with two end zones measures, 57, 600 square feet.

The most well-known Giza pyramid, The Great Pyramid originally stood 481.4 feet, but due to erosion it now stands at 451.4 feet (4). By comparison, the supposed Azores pyramid would have been considerably smaller, but still a significant size. Silva stated that the tip of the pyramid was only 40 feet below the water’s surface (5).