"Is There Pirate Treasure On Oak Island?"

With a great deal happening but no news, I figured I'd turn to a subject I've intended to cover for some time anyhow, the Oak Island treasure and the current status of the search. We went to cable in 2012, not long after the Curse of Oak Island series started on the History Channel, and for several years I didn't bother with it, taking what I now recognize is the elitist approach that the whole thing is a fraud. It wasn't until about season 5 that I started paying attention, and after several years, it's become our must-watch show above all others.

The YouTube link above consists of a university-educated toff from the UK sneering at the whole enterprise, which for me is an indication that he simply doesn't watch the show. He does mention the current main players, the brothers Rick and Marty Lagina -- he mispronounces their names, which are spoken with a hard "g", another clear indication that he's probably never watched the show, and he basically dismisses them as a couple of rich eccentric Americans.

The problem is that the Laginas, especially Marty, are rich, but they aren't trust fund dilettantes. The family money seems to come from Marty, who first made a fortune from fracking, but when that became politically incorrect, he sold that business, turned around, and made another fortune from wind power, currently much more politically acceptable. This is a canny guy. He runs a vineyard as a sideline, but it looks like much of his surplus wealth goes to indulge his older brother Rick, a retired postal worker, who'd grown fascinated with the Oak Island mystery after seeing a Readers Digest article in January 1965.

To me, the actual story arc of the show revolves around Marty, even though Rick is the true believer. Marty pretty clearly began the project from love of Rick, but for much of the story was a treasure skeptic until very recent finds. On the other hand, the fact remains that Marty is an extremely canny guy. Whether or not Rick was chasing a will-o-the-wisp, when he sank money into the island, he was careful to negotiate a very favorable agreement with the province of Nova Scotia that ensured, should there actually be treasure on the island, that it would get 10%, the Laginas and their partners the remainder.

This was maybe a decade ago, when it was plenty easy for the province to sign anything on the bet that the Laginas were just as crazy as all the unsuccessful searchers had been for 200 years. Crazy indeed. The History Channel had also been negotiating with the Laginas from the start to run a show along the line of their other fare like Ancient Aliens, but it looks like Marty also held out with them for the best deal possible, and he now pretty clearly has control of the show, leaving aside the money it brings in. I agree with the YouTuber to some extent when he says, "There definitely is money there, if you own the History Channel." But Marty gets a cut, and he ain't done.

The problem for the province is there's incresingly money there in the presence of the show, but worse, Marty's canniness is coming through year on year. He runs what can only be characterized as a business operation behind the scenes. The dialogue alone in the show suggests that this is a structured operation, with Marty as CEO with signature authority, Rick as COO, and other Lagina family members and business partners with strictly delegated areas of authority. My surmise is that there are attorneys and accountants -- good ones -- behind the scenes. The intent is to make money.

We now get to the current state of the story arc: over the past couple of years, the systematic effort Marty has sponsored, with serious investment money to bring in heavy equipment for search and excavation, has been making it more likely that something important is actually down there. The YouTuber above thinks it's just random coins, brooches, and baubles that don't prove much of anything, but just in the last two seasons, the Lagina operation has uncovered a road, acknowledged to be a major piece of European civil engineering from the 1500s or 1600s, leading from a potential dock to the money pit area.

Among other things, this has led Marty to buy up almost all the rest of the island. He's a canny guy.

This in turn has led the province to realize there's more to the project than they'd thought when Marty negotiated the first agreement, and over a few seasons, it has been trying to increase its control over the operation. They appear to have unilaterally revised the agreement to place archaeoligists who report to the province on site, with increasing requirements to approve all activity. Marty up to this year has gone along, since academically respectable archaeologists on site do nothing but increase the prestige of the Laginas.

This has also done a great deal for the neighboring area around Lunenburg, NS. Occasional interviews with local business owners indicate that the popularity of the show has extended what had been just a fair-weather vacation season to year-round business. Tourists swarm to pubs sometimes featured on the show in hopes of spotting the Laginas there. Stores, restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and so forth all benefit. The Irving Company, a New Brunswick based player in construction and heavy equipment, is also doing quite well.

This year, Nova Scotia made a heavy-handed effort to shut down much of the operation on the island on the archaeological excuse that First Nations artifacts had been discovered in the search, and nothing much could be undertaken until the First Nations had also gotten involved. Right.

Marty is a canny guy. A not much emphasized plot line over recent episodes suggests the province is backing down. After all, the Irving Company wants the business. The Lunenburg businesses want the search to continue. Marty kicked most of the archaeologists off the island as the province finds it will nevertheless actually approve new excavations. It's good not to have bad publicty on one of the most popular TV shows. I've got to assume the offstage attorneys also earned their fees.

The show is popular because it's an American story, much as UK toffs miss the point. My admiration for Marty Lagina grows by the week.