← Snap Judgment
Snap Judgment
The Golden Lure - Snap Classic
00:49:45
A fisherman down on his luck finds gold at the bottom of the sea. It’s only after his treasure hunt is underway that he discovers what is truly valuable deep down.
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- [00:03]
Glenn Washington
Snap Studios.
- [00:08]
Christopher Kimball
Hey, it's Christopher Kimball from Milk Street Radio. Sounds like I'm bragging. And I am. We're the number one most downloaded food podcast in America. You know, Milk Street Radio travels the world in search of the very best food stories. You'll hear about smuggling eels on the black market, the secret intelligence of plants and and insider tips to eating in Paris. And every week, listeners call in with their toughest culinary mysteries. Discover a world of food stories by searching your podcast app for Mill Street Radio.
- [00:37]
Glenn Washington
How about some good news for a change? Because there's a cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door. And not just any thc. Fast acting gummies designed to target specific moods and needs. I'm talking about Mood.com's incredible line of functional gummies. And you can get 20% off your first order at Mood Mood.com with promo code SNAP. So head to Mood.com, find the functional gummy that matches exactly what you're looking for, and let Mood help you discover your perfect mood. And don't forget to use the promo code SNAP when you check out to save 20% on your first order. Hands down. No question, my favorite meal of the year is Thanksgiving. And here's your pro tip. Whole Foods Market has great everyday prices on Thanksgiving essentials. And that includes friendsgiving celebrations as well. 365 brand has all the must haves to complete your Thanksgiving spread with. The mashed potatoes, the organic baking spices, the whatever else you need. Yes, they have the appetizers, the quiche, the butterfly shrimp, the breaded calamari. So much. Just add family and friends. What are you waiting for? Enjoy. So many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market. Okay, so I tell my mama, mama, I'm dropping out of high school. My mama's like, what? Lord Jesus savior, Pastor deacon. But she doesn't need to worry. My buddy stumbled on the foolproof plan. See, you can get lists from the government for free of people, individuals, corporations, organizations the government owes money to. Most of the time, people don't even know they have cash coming. You take that list, find that person, call them and tell them, hey, I've got a proposition for you. Free money. No strings attached. I'll tell you the amount. I'll tell you how to get it. All I ask is 10%. My buddy says people are owed hundreds of thousands, millions. You can make one million dollar deal with one person. And 10% of that million dollars is 100,000 clams, baby. That's a lot of scratch. All Yours for five minutes. Work. I can't wait to pull up to East Kentwood High School in my new Porsche 911 and tell the principal to kiss my. Anyway, it takes a little while, but I do in fact get my list of names to call. And I'm considering whether to order the interior wood package for my new Porsche when I start dialing. Hello, Mr. Johnson. Yes, well, who I am is not important, sir. But what I can offer you is. I need you people to stop calling me. You think I don't know my own business?
- [03:32]
Christopher Kimball
Click.
- [03:35]
Glenn Washington
Seems like somebody might have already called, Mr. Johnson. Let me move on to the next one. Ms. Star, let me cut right to the chase.
- [03:43]
Narrator
Now.
- [03:43]
Glenn Washington
This may sound unbelievable, but I'm thrilled to let you know that.
- [03:47]
Christopher Kimball
Click.
- [03:49]
Glenn Washington
Click.
- [03:50]
Narrator
Hello?
- [03:51]
Glenn Washington
You want some money? I know you can get some money.
- [03:52]
Christopher Kimball
Click.
- [03:56]
Glenn Washington
Turns out that perhaps a few hundred thousand people have gotten my list before I've gotten my list. Catastrophe. After all my hopes and dreams and whatever I may have mentioned to the cheerleaders, I'll have to drag myself to high school portionless. Today on Snap Judgment, the golden lure. One man's quest for the big score. My name is Glenn Washington. I'm still waiting to upgrade the wood trim in that Porsche I do not have. When you're listening to Snap Judgment.
- [04:50]
Joe Panisi
We.
- [04:50]
Glenn Washington
Begin with a request. Be careful what you wish for. Snappers. Because our storyteller, Joe, he's about to rediscover that old piece of wisdom the hard way. Snap Judgment.
- [05:05]
Joe Panisi
He's seen it his whole life. He goes, gold makes people crazy. They get, like, gold fever. And just looking at it, it just changes people. And he said that there's a lot of people out there that have this gold fever really bad, and you have to really worry about that. And he said for me to be extremely careful. Don't let anyone know anything. And he said, you're going to have to protect your family.
- [05:33]
Narrator
Joe Panisi's family started fishing in the San Francisco Bay in 1906. His grandfather came from Sicily, and he taught Joe's dad to be a fisherman, just like him. To them, if you were a Panisi, you were a fisherman.
- [05:49]
Joe Panisi
I never, ever wanted to be a fisherman. Never. I was the only kid in my family that got so seasick. I mean, deathly sick.
- [05:57]
Narrator
But Joe's dad didn't think it mattered. He just told him to suck it up.
- [06:01]
Joe Panisi
When my dad was fishing with my grandfather, my dad got seasick, too. My dad would throw his guts up, and my grandfather would put a bucket right next to the wheel and tell him, you want to be a fisherman? There's your bucket. But then when he got older, he got over it.
- [06:16]
Narrator
Joe didn't want to get over it. He didn't want to be a fisherman. He hated everything about it, especially getting on the boat at 2am because he had to climb over guardrails full of bird poop.
- [06:28]
Joe Panisi
You instantly get bird crap all over your butt, your legs, and stink so bad. And so that's how you start your fishing trip, with bird crap all over you.
- [06:41]
Narrator
With the boys on board, Joe's dad would go down into the belly of the ship and get the engines going.
- [06:46]
Joe Panisi
So then once he would get upstairs, he'd get into the galley and then he would dip newspaper into the diesel, get the stove going, which stunk like hell and make you want to throw up. And he had to get his coffee going. That was, that was the, like, the one thing that was a constant on the boat. There was always a coffee pot going.
- [07:05]
Narrator
Like this one night. Joe was 12 years old, and it wasn't just the bird crap or the smelly diesel stuff that was getting to him. It was the terrifying weather and where they were headed.
- [07:17]
Joe Panisi
You only have like, this little sandy spot that weaves in between these big walls of rocks on each side of you. This is called the gates, which is.
- [07:27]
Narrator
Short for gates of hell. In fact, in Loren numbers, a kind of outdated fisherman's GPS, the last three digits for the gates are 666. And that fishing lane was a beast. A lot of other trawlers had lost their nets after they got caught in the reefs below, and some even say they were dragged down with them.
- [07:48]
Joe Panisi
You got to imagine being on a boat and it's rolling back and forth. Now, you know, that's like a natural position for a boat, right? But when you have a net on the sea floor and you're trolling it and you're towing along the sea floor, if your net hangs up on something, all of a sudden, you know, now you are attached to the bottom of the ocean. It's no different than doing a nose dive. If we were towing through the gates and we hung up and we rolled over, you'd be dead. There would be no way of even getting a radio call out.
- [08:20]
Narrator
But Joe's dad didn't seem to care because the gates were teeming with fish that morning, and Joe and his two brothers had just pulled up a huge hole in their net.
- [08:29]
Joe Panisi
My dad made a short tow because the weather was so bad he could not turn the boat to try to follow the contour of the bottom. And he had, like, 5,000 pounds of fish.
- [08:41]
Narrator
And the boys are struggling to get this massive catch down into the fish hold. And even though Joe wanted to stop and go home, he couldn't say anything.
- [08:52]
Joe Panisi
My father had, like, this diesel smell that just permeated in his skin. And he wasn't really super tall, but, man, did he have a set of shoulders on him. I still remember as a young kid watching my dad grab crowbars to move things on the boat and actually bending the crowbars like they were nothing. He was the type of guy where he was very easily excited, and so he was like a powder keg, always ready to go off. And for that moment, all he kept thinking about was the £5,000 we just caught, you know, and so. So he, you know, was just into this fishing mode anyway. The boat is just, like, flying down into these big, vast crevices, and then just waves are breaking over the bow. And then whenever I would look up at the stack, all I could see was this big white ring from all the spray that had been hitting the exhaust. Deck was sizzling into salt right in front of your eyes. So the net comes up like a giant whale, and it just clears the water and then just comes down and just this tremendous splash. I mean, it was like somebody throwing a ship into the water. So it was maybe 30 tons of fish, you know, that was in the net. I hadn't even seen that much fish in my life. That's when I realized that this was what drove my father. And, you know, I could see that, you know, that that one special moment, that's all it took, was just that moment. That's what you live for. And it's such an adrenaline rush, you know, it's a perfect symphony between a man and his craft. And it solidifies everything that you are. You know, it kind of brings you. It makes you whole in that one moment. At that point, I started understanding my dad.
- [10:49]
Narrator
But now the real challenge was about to begin because they would have to bring those 30 tons of fish aboard while they were being pummeled. Wave after wave.
- [10:58]
Joe Panisi
Every time we try to lift the net, it makes the boat lean over further. So you're standing in water up to your waist, and you see your fish boxes and everything just floating right off the deck and into the sea, you know, and as this is all happening, my dad is right there in the middle of it.
- [11:16]
Narrator
He stood at the center, like Poseidon, unmoving, yelling over the wind and the waves, telling his boys to get the fish down into the fishhold faster.
- [11:27]
Joe Panisi
The waves are just smashing the net up against the side of the boat. And the fish, they all have these big bones, you know, rockfish and things like that are all stabbing each other and bruising each other with their hard heads.
- [11:38]
Narrator
It got so bad that the waves started turning purple from a mixture of water and fish blood.
- [11:43]
Joe Panisi
I'm looking at the whole picture going, what are we accomplishing? Everything's getting destroyed and washed over the side. And this is. It's just so dangerous, Especially when you're just there with your. With your other two younger brothers. I mean, you know, we were little kids pretty much.
- [12:00]
Narrator
No, they were little kids, 11, 12, and 13, and they'd already been up since 1 in the morning, and it was pushing past 8 in the evening. So with fatigue setting in, Joe finally spoke up.
- [12:12]
Joe Panisi
Dad, these fish are all beat up. I said, you know, I mean, I don't know if we could save these things, you know. And at that moment, he just looked at me and he said, they're all going to be filleted. You're not going to know, you know, the difference. He goes, you know, just put them aboard.
- [12:30]
Narrator
So somehow, after four grueling hours, they got it done.
- [12:36]
Joe Panisi
The greatest feeling in the world, especially after going to an event like this, is to actually turn the net, reel this big giant spool in the back of the boat, and finally reel the last little bit of fish and net up aboard. So now the whole net is back in the boat, right? You dump out that last little bit of fish, and now you're done. Me and my brothers, we were so exhausted, and we. We finally got back onto the cabin, and we opened the cabin door, took, like, one step in, and we all just fell. Boom, boom, boom, and laid right on the floor. We were sopping wet.
- [13:12]
Narrator
That's when Joe's dad came down into the cabin and told him what a great job they had done. And he told them to get some rest because they were about to go out and do it all again.
- [13:24]
Joe Panisi
At that moment, I truly thought my dad was insane. I truly thought I was like, this man. This man is not right. I was never gonna go on a boat with him again. I was done. You keep gambling with your life, eventually you're gonna lose, especially with the ocean.
- [13:41]
Narrator
Before heading back to the gates, Joe's dad went to make one more pot of coffee. He turned on the water faucet, but it was dry.
- [13:48]
Joe Panisi
And he throws a coffee pot into the sink. And then he goes, well, if something happens, and we need to put water in the engine. We don't have any. He goes, we're going in.
- [13:58]
Narrator
Apparently the boat couldn't take it either. And rather than risking his engine, Joe's dad headed for home.
- [14:04]
Joe Panisi
I mean, you just get happier and happier and happier and then pretty soon you got the waves on the back of the boat that are pushing you right into the bay. When we came in and we tied up next to the dock and I just wanted to like, hug the pilings on the pier.
- [14:19]
Narrator
As they unloaded their haul, the fishmongers from the market couldn't believe how many of the fish were completely mangled.
- [14:26]
Joe Panisi
I mean, clearly everything we did was for nothing. And so all these fish were beat up and we lost more than half of them. Then the rest of the, you know, fish they would send to cat food. So they would, you know, I think cats got more out of it. The people did for sure.
- [14:43]
Narrator
Year after year, Joe tried to get out of fishing, but his dad would just pull him right back in. Until Joe turned 18. And then he went and told his.
- [14:53]
Joe Panisi
Dad, I am never going to go fishing. I'm never going to be like you. I'm not going to do this.
- [14:59]
Narrator
No more dad. No more 1am fishing and no more storms. Him and his brothers packed up their things and moved out and into their own house.
- [15:11]
Joe Panisi
It was a six bedroom house and so we didn't know how to remodel it or anything. And so it was kind of in shambles. And we're living there and with sheetrock and two by fours sticking out. And so we're like, well, what are we going to do? I spent my entire youth telling myself that this is only temporary. And then I'm looking around at how expensive everything is and I'm looking at how people, you know, are kind of getting by with the jobs they're having. And at that point I really had to kind of come to grips with the fact that the only skill level I really had that could, you know, actually financially keep me, you know, you know, under in a, in a building and, you know, pay my bills and actually possibly one day allow me to feed some children and have a wife and all that was the fishing. Because that's the only thing that I was really good at and the only thing that I really knew that well.
- [16:12]
Narrator
So there you have it. Joe was a panizi, and that meant he was a fisherman. He and his brothers got a big steel boat and started fishing up in the Bering Sea off Alaska, making more money in a few months. Than they had in their whole life.
- [16:25]
Joe Panisi
Then finally we flew home and we had been sending our checks to our bank account. And the bank manager, when he saw me and my brother John outside the door of the bank, he came running from his desk to go open the door for a kid, 18, 19 year old kid, because we had a $350,000 check to put the bank.
- [16:46]
Narrator
As his business grew, so did his family. He got married. He had more than a half a dozen kids. Just like his father. He came back to fish off the coast of California. And now, where he used to see nothing but harshness and struggle in the fishing life, he saw its beauty.
- [17:04]
Joe Panisi
When I was a kid, I would have ran and won every Olympic trial there was not to go fishing. And now that I'm older, you know, there's just something that lures you back to the sea. I could be fishing and it could be pitch black, dark, and I'll walk out on the upper deck and I'm, you know, leaning over the rail and I'll see the phosphorus coming up under the boat, looks like it's on fire. And you know, sometimes you'll see dolphins swimming alongside you or the wind. And that salt air, I have to say that salt air is something that I don't think I could live without. I really don't. Because the minute I start smelling the ocean, I mean, I'm like a whole different person. So that's really hard to get out of somebody's soul, I guess, because I haven't been able to get it out of mine.
- [17:59]
Narrator
There was also something else that drove him that came from when he was just a kid fishing through the gates of hell.
- [18:05]
Joe Panisi
To this day, that is the one memory that I have when I'm fishing. And it's like when that net comes blowing out of the water like a giant whale. It's. It's the one thing you can never get out of your mind. And it drives you the rest of your life like a race car driver. And they see that checkered flag. That is the checkered flag for an American fisherman.
- [18:30]
Narrator
But as the government enacted more environmental regulations to protect the oceans, the checkered flag was getting pushed further and further away, especially for trawling. Gone were the days where Joe could pull up 30 ton of fish like his father, much less like his grandfather. So he was on the ropes. And then the 2008 financial collapse and a risky investment knocked him clear out of the ring.
- [18:52]
Joe Panisi
I was going to have a heart attack because I didn't even have like $10 left to put gas in my truck, you know, my house. I was like three house payments behind. I was getting letters from the bank saying they were going to take my home. Looking at my kids, feeling like, you know, I couldn't even have any pride anymore. I feel like, you know, I truly had destroyed my family and, you know, wrecked everything. And so then that's when I called my wife. And so I told her, I'm gonna fix this. I'm gonna fix it somehow. I don't know how, but I said, I'm gonna fix this.
- [19:24]
Narrator
He scrambled to keep his family afloat, but eventually he had to file for bankruptcy also.
- [19:29]
Joe Panisi
You know, I had no working capital. You know, there was no way I could have launched my boat to do anything because I could not go to a fuel dock and write a bad check. I mean, I could wind up in jail because everybody knew I was flat broke. I just wanted. I wanted just to run away from everyone.
- [19:45]
Narrator
He escaped to the one place that he was free of everyone, his boat. Sure, he couldn't go fishing, but he could still work on it.
- [19:52]
Joe Panisi
My boat actually helped me a lot because I would work on my boat on the weekends, in the evenings, and I'd have. That was kind of like my therapy. I would go there and I'd wire things and fix things.
- [20:05]
Narrator
Then this one day, while he was replacing the hydraulic lines, he had this kind of crazy idea.
- [20:12]
Joe Panisi
I was thinking to myself, you know, if we could make, like a hydrofoil, that we could actually see the fish going into the front of the net.
- [20:22]
Narrator
He wanted to hook an underwater camera onto his giant fishing net.
- [20:27]
Joe Panisi
You know, then we can actually start learning how our nets work. Because I was trying to get rid of these small, juvenile fish. I was trying to let them go through the net and just keep the larger fish because it was such a problem, you know, and so not only that, but, I mean, who wants bycatch? I mean, these are all the worst evils that trawlers are always blamed for is destroying the sea floor and killing baby fish. Right.
- [20:50]
Narrator
The cameras on his nets could help increase his profits while lowering his environmental impact, because trawlers are kind of seen as the most destructive form of fishing, which is a big reason why there's so much government oversight. And as sophisticated as fishing had become over the years with GPS and sonar detection systems, Joe is pretty much doing the same thing his grandfather did, dragging a massive net along the ocean floor without really watching how it works down there.
- [21:16]
Joe Panisi
So that's always a big challenge is that every fisherman that's ever trawled a net has actually never seen one work. All you see is the results, you know. And so I was thinking about it and I was thinking, you know, if I was able to make a hydrofoil with a camera and a light and then I could put it in the net and it could swim inside the net and pan and videotape that way and then I could learn a lot more about how my gear works.
- [21:42]
Narrator
Joe went home and got his 10 year old daughter Nina to help him build it.
- [21:48]
Joe Panisi
So we took these round rings and we put them together and then we made a little bracket on the inside to hold the camera and the light. Then afterwards I took one of my work shirts and we made a tail like you would put on a kite.
- [22:01]
Narrator
And.
- [22:01]
Joe Panisi
And we just dangled a work shirt at the very back of it. And that's how we invented this camera that actually dangles inside the net.
- [22:10]
Narrator
His daughter named it the Fisheye. And it kind of looks like if you recycle the head of Wall E from the Pixar movie and put a couple of 20 inch rings around it like hula hoops. And then Joe scraped up a little gas money to take the boat out. He fired up the camera and lowered his nets. The first video was shadowy, so the second time they lowered the fisheye even further.
- [22:31]
Joe Panisi
That second video just blew everyone's minds. I mean, it was to see the seafloor for the first time and see the fish actually swimming in front of the net and going into the net and all the different colors. I mean, it was just shocking.
- [22:48]
Narrator
It wasn't just beautiful, it was informative. And it immediately started changing the way that Joe had fished his entire life.
- [22:59]
Joe Panisi
So here, now we got this, the fisheye, and we're able to start modifying our net because a lot of these fish have different shapes.
- [23:07]
Narrator
The camera actually helped him make more money fishing because he was becoming an expert at bunching and changing his net to capture certain fish while leaving other fish alone. But he also learned something about the sea floor.
- [23:18]
Joe Panisi
The more I looked at the videos, the more I started realizing that these fish, they don't need to be scraped up off the sea floor. You know, they don't need that. They, in fact, all that mud is a big negative thing. Plus it, you're burning more fuel. You know, we don't need to tear the sea floor up to catch these fish. And we started bringing in the, the nicest fish we ever caught. I'm the only trawler probably in on the entire continent that keeps every single fish we catch because my net is so good at sorting the fish. And so the cameras all did this for us.
- [23:56]
Narrator
So Joe was hooked. He was watching fish TV all the time. And unfortunately, so was everyone else.
- [24:02]
Joe Panisi
In the mornings, even whenever I'm making breakfast for my kids, I would tell them, okay, guys, you can't have breakfast without a movie. So I'd always stick my laptop up on the counter and it would always be a fish video. And all my kids are sitting on the bar stools. They're like, oh, dad, do we gotta watch another fish video? And so, I mean, everywhere I go, I'd bring my laptop and I'd show all my friends, hey, you want to see some fish video? I'd be at a softball game up on the bleachers and going, you know, rooting for my kids teams. And then there would be a bunch of little kids on the bleachers. I'd ask the parents, hey, is it all right if they see a fish video? I mean, I've showed fish videos to so many people. But that night it was about probably one o' clock in the morning. By this time now, my wife had totally fallen asleep, so she was out. So I didn't have to worry about the light bothering her. So I put the laptop on my chest and so I had this one video that had not seen yet from my fishing trip from the day before. So I stick this video in and I'm watching it and I start seeing like these flashes. I had never seen these flashes before because all the videos I've seen, I didn't see anything like reflecting back from the light, you know? And so I start thinking that there's something different about this video, but I didn't know what it was. And so as the video is rolling, I see something go by and it looked like a hand. And I'm like, well, that's weird. And then I see some more flashes and then pretty soon I see a gold bar go by. And as soon as it went by, by that time it was like 2 o' clock in the morning. And I mean, I didn't even think. I didn't even second guess what it was. And I just jumped up out of the bed and I'm like, oh my God, oh my God. And I. So of course now my wife is pissed off because night after night whenever I'm home, I'm watching these stupid fish videos. That's driving her crazy. Now I'm like running around the bed and running. I'm. And I go over, I'm like, grots, get up grots, get up. I go, you got to see this. I go, this is, I go, this is a gold bar. I go, there's a gold bar underwater. I go, look at this thing, right? And so I, I play the video back for her and she's half asleep and, and she always kills me because she always will make comments like, is it going to make our life better? Is it going to put money in our bank? You know, are we going to be rich? You know, these kind of things. Overall, a lot of my crazy ideas and most of the time I have to answer her by saying no, but wake up anyway and look at it, you know what I mean? So she looks at the computer and she's watching the gold bar go by and she goes, does that mean we're going to be rich? That's what she tells me, right? And said, well, I don't know.
- [27:13]
Glenn Washington
Don't go anywhere, Snappers. We've got plenty more fish TV for you. And Joe's hunt for the gold bars. Stay tuned. Uncommon Goods takes the stress out of gifting with thousands of unique, high quality finds you won't find anywhere else. And the best gift for me during the holidays is anything that gives me time with my favorite people, like a whole escape room in a box. Maddox Interactive Treasure Hunt is an adventure filled with clues, artifacts, escape room style challenges. It's so fun. They've got so much other stuff, so don't wait. Cross those names off your list before the rush. To get 15% off your next gift, go to UncommonGoods.com snap that's UncommonGoods.com snap for 15% off Uncommon Goods. We're all out of the ordinary.
- [28:13]
Narrator
From.
- [28:13]
Glenn Washington
Snap Judgment's ever changing lair. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Golden Lure episode. When last we left Joe, he'd been in bed with his wife watching his very own fish tv and he saw some gold bars go by. It's not judgment.
- [28:36]
Joe Panisi
So she, she looks at the computer and she's watching the gold bar go by and she goes, does that mean we're going to be rich? That's what she tells me, right? I said, well, I don't know. So I get up, I was like 5 o' clock or 6 o', clock, and I go down and I start making pancakes for my kids. And then my son Dominic was the first one to come up and he comes, and he comes in the kitchen and he's like, dad, oh, thanks for making breakfast. And so like, oh, Dominic. I go, hey, you want to see something cool? And then my daughters Come in. I'm like, oh, dad, you have to watch your fish videos again. My oldest daughter, Nina. I'm like, nina, look. I go. I go, there's a gold bar in this video. I said, look. And anyway, so they all got a little excited, and then they start going, does that mean we're going to be rich? And then. So then what they started doing was, oh, they said, I'm making a Christmas list. So they all started putting them on the refrigerator. It was so funny. The girls instantly went to that. My daughter Sophie started it. It. And, oh, they wanted new cars. First thing they all put was they wanted a new house. He did not like our cramped little house, but. And that was okay. But the lists were quite long.
- [29:53]
Narrator
On the one hand, Joe wanted to figure out a way to start pulling up the gold bars, but on the other hand, he wasn't totally sure they actually were gold. So he went down to the docks and he ran it by some old fishermen.
- [30:06]
Joe Panisi
I go, my friend sent me this picture, said, what do you guys think this is? Every one of these old fishermen guys, they looked at it. They go in two seconds, like, oh, that's a gold bar. That's a gold bar. Who sent that to you? Whenever I left the docks over there, at that point, I was like, oh, my. I can't believe. I mean, I was just. I was just blown away. I'm like, how could this happen? You know, we're gonna be famous. We're gonna be rich. We're gonna have this huge, huge, amazing story. Like, you start seeing videos of Jacque Stow going down, and guys come up with jewels and big, giant gold bars, and this is gonna get nuts.
- [30:43]
Narrator
Joe began drafting up ideas for how to get the treasure. But there were some pretty steep challenges. First, Joe only had a rough idea of where the video was taken. But he needs so much more than that.
- [30:57]
Joe Panisi
I kind of think the challenge starts with actually even being able to find it, because when you're on a boat way up here on the top of the surface, and you have to do some work 1,000ft down, it's no longer that you could even keep a boat right over the top of that pinpointed area, because the boat's moving all over the place.
- [31:19]
Narrator
And at that depth, the challenges just become greater and greater.
- [31:23]
Joe Panisi
Like I was saying, it's about 57 atmospheres, you know, 14.7 pounds per square inch on at 33ft of depth.
- [31:31]
Narrator
So it's a lot of pressure.
- [31:33]
Joe Panisi
And the thing, too, is that the gold is so heavy, 1.7 times or so heavier than lead, if a diver.
- [31:40]
Narrator
Could even get to that point. To move even a single gold bar at that depth would require the power of Hercules. A rover could do the job, but it was illegal in the marine area. He could, however, build a rig to fish it out, to dig it out, no problem. But even after that, he'd have one more hurdle, which is that every time he takes his boat out fishing, he has to bring a federal observer with him.
- [32:08]
Joe Panisi
You have somebody standing over your shoulder watching every little thing you do. So when you bring the nets aboard and you release the fish onto the trawl deck, you, have somebody standing there watching. And even if we catch a rock, they make us throw it over the side. And so if there is a gold bar in there, I can guarantee you, you know, you're not going to be able to keep it quiet at all. And in fact, they would most likely make you throw it back over the side.
- [32:34]
Narrator
And it's not like they're just the mall patrol.
- [32:36]
Joe Panisi
I call them cops, but they're observers. But they. They do the same job. All they got to do is pick up a phone when you get in, and you can go right to jail for any little thing that. That they say. So they have tremendous power.
- [32:48]
Narrator
And Joe wasn't cleared for treasure trawling, and he actually had no idea how to feasibly, legally get the gold off the ocean floor. So he assembled a team of treasure hunters, and he showed them his footage.
- [33:00]
Joe Panisi
So they darkened the room, start closing all these blinds, and they turn on this big screen tv, and we start rolling the film. And when Dan saw the first gold.
- [33:09]
Narrator
Bar go by, Dan was a diving expert.
- [33:12]
Joe Panisi
All of a sudden, he just stood up and he turned around and he looked at me. He goes, that's a damn good day when you see something like that on a film. That's what he told me. And then from that point on, he was a whole different person. He had been diving his whole life. And he goes, nothing grows on gold. He goes, I'm telling you right now, I've been pulling gold out of the ocean from For a lot of years, especially working on the east coast. And he goes, it's just as shiny when it goes in as when it comes out. And he goes, and that's what you have right there. He was in shock, but he also.
- [33:52]
Narrator
Told him something else, something that actually scared him.
- [33:55]
Joe Panisi
He said, gold makes people crazy. He goes, he's seen it his whole life. He goes, they get, like, gold fever. And just looking at it he, you know, it just changes people. And he said that there's a lot of people out there that have this gold fever really bad, and you have to really worry about that. He said, you know, for me to be extremely careful, don't let anyone know anything. And he said, you're going to have to protect your family. I was thinking to myself, maybe I should be, you know, just destroying the. The. The card and, you know, because it was almost kind of a curse in a way, because I used to have. I used to be very wealthy. I mean, I was a pretty wealthy guy. And then all of a sudden, you go through these horrible lawsuits, and your life changes, and you lose all your properties, and your. Your kids are going down there, taking your tractor. They're coming home from school, and the bus is there. You're like, I was hoping they were going to come get it before you guys got out of school, but, you know, you just. You take these spirals down. And I was thinking, you know, well, maybe this is a way of kind of regaining, you know, some of my dignity.
- [35:03]
Narrator
So Joe went home and talked to his wife.
- [35:05]
Joe Panisi
My wife was really concerned, especially with all that we had been through, you know, and, you know, she was just very scared. She was like, you know, if this is real, she said, you know, we might be. You know, we might be jeopardizing our family over this. And she. At that point, she was just scared, and I agreed with her.
- [35:26]
Narrator
But Joe wasn't quite satisfied with that answer. So he went to his friend Jolene, the first mate on his ship, and she told him the same thing.
- [35:33]
Joe Panisi
She was like, if people really found out, especially around the waterfront, you know, there's a lot of guys down there that, you know, for a few bucks, you know, they would do bad things. You know, we got our share of guys that have had hard lives, and they could definitely hurt you for a small amount of money.
- [35:56]
Narrator
It just seemed like too good of an opportunity. So, still looking for the answer he wanted, he decided he'd go talk to his father's old attorney.
- [36:05]
Joe Panisi
He's a very large man, and he used to be basically like a professional basketball player, and. But he's an attorney, and he's such an alpha male, I can't even tell you. He's like my dad, you know, very much in control at all times. I gingerly start with the subject. I wasn't trying to, like, be overly optimistic here, and I was just trying to say, hey, Dave, you know, there was some stuff I found on the sea floor, and I wanted to Kind of show you and then get your advice. But he was very into, like, exactly what is it, you know, Tell me, you know, in detail. What are we talking about? And then I'm like, well, what I believe here is that, you know, we're dealing with some gold bars on the sea floor. And he was like, well, it's like a moment of silence. And then all of a sudden, it was like a meteor hitting the planet. And, like, what? You know, it was just, hold everything. Hold all my calls. I want to see this video. Get it. Get the big tv. It's just like, oh, my God. I mean, he. He puts them all to test. Call this guy, call that guy. Email. You know, it's like all of a sudden, he's barking orders, and this thing just takes on a whole new life, you know? Although I'm. I'm happy because, like, this is, like, what I wanted, but at the same time, it's like, whoa, man, we just went to 1,000 miles an hour.
- [37:28]
Narrator
The lawyer called in a group of archaeologists, and they told Joe that the bars in the shipwreck were smelting gold, possibly from the mint in San Francisco.
- [37:37]
Joe Panisi
And they are so excited, and they're telling us, look, you know what? You have a large gold cargo here. This is a cargo. It's not just one bar. There's never one bar. And then they start telling me, you know, look, you know, this could be like a discovery of a century. You know that? I mean, this could be something huge. You don't even know. This could be billions of dollars laying there in the sand.
- [38:06]
Narrator
So Joe doubled down, and instead of saving, he started spending more money on airplane tickets, hotel rooms, and consultants.
- [38:14]
Joe Panisi
And I had. The fish markets were calling me, asking me why I was not fishing, why I wasn't fishing. And so I was getting behind in my bills.
- [38:24]
Narrator
But he was on the hunt for the biggest catch of his life. So with his footage and the expert testimony from the archaeologists, he and his lawyer headed into a meeting with the federal government to request a permit for exploration.
- [38:37]
Joe Panisi
They told me that they have no knowledge of any cargo, precious cargo like this, outside 300ft. So when they said that, then clearly they didn't. They don't. They have no knowledge of this wreck at all. I mean, they tried to keep, you know, like, a history of all these wrecks and locations. So this is clearly something nobody knows about.
- [38:56]
Narrator
At that moment, he felt his hopes rise.
- [38:59]
Joe Panisi
My hopes were that knowing them would. Wouldn't know what's down there also, and we could do this together. We could get permits and. And this could become a fun project. You know, everybody working together. But that was not how it went. I mean, this conversation went dark right away. You know, these guys are saying, look, you know, you touch anything on that sea floor, you're gonna lose all your fishing rights and permits, and you're gonna go to jail for a very long time.
- [39:25]
Narrator
He felt crushed, but his lawyer told him he still had one last shot.
- [39:38]
Glenn Washington
It's not over. Snappers. When we return, hear exactly what Joe's lawyer has in mind for how to get around the feds. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Golden Lure episode. My name is Glenn Washington, and when last we left, Joe, he had just had a meeting with the feds about a permit to recover the gold. And the meeting was not going well.
- [40:18]
Joe Panisi
You know, these guys are saying, look, you know, you touch anything on that sea floor, you're gonna lose all your fishing rights and permits, and you're gonna go to jail for a very long time.
- [40:28]
Narrator
He felt crushed, but his lawyer told him he still had one last shot. Joe was gonna have to go out and get two things. The exact coordinates of the treasure and footage of the sunken ship. If the gold bars were really part of a shipwreck, then he could file what's called an admiralty arrest. It's a treasure hunter's loophole that would allow him to stake a claim to the gold in court.
- [40:53]
Joe Panisi
So this was difficult. This was extremely difficult, even trying to engineer all these different changes, you know, and trying to make this work so that I can get out there and try to get this footage. And I had to do it before anyone knows about this area. And everybody was worried about the federal government, you know, spying on us because we have a VMS that sends signals to satellites.
- [41:18]
Narrator
It's not just the electronic surveillance. It's the fish cop standing 20ft away from them, watching their every move the whole time they're out on the boat.
- [41:26]
Joe Panisi
So they track us everywhere we go. And so I just. I was stressed out. So that night, I remember before we left, you know, I was so nervous because we weren't really breaking the law. But at the same time, you know, we were right in the gray area. Had that federal observer known what we were doing, obviously they would be able to know the location of the area where we were working, and, you know, that was to be kept a secret.
- [41:54]
Narrator
The next day, he and Jolene went out as if they were fishing. They turned on the new camera system and then lowered the nets.
- [42:02]
Joe Panisi
These weren't like the other Cameras. These cameras actually. So you had a tether that went from the net all the way up to the boat. And we had real time video. So we left Moss Landing. But I'm not really doing a fishing trip though, so this was difficult to.
- [42:16]
Narrator
Avoid Tipping off the observer. He'd start further away from the site and then slowly make his way over. But Joe was also on the clock. The cameras could only record 12 hours of footage, so he'd have to be glued to the monitor the whole way and hope he got the images in time.
- [42:34]
Joe Panisi
We get up to the area where the gold bars are and stuff and we're at hung up and I'm trying to do it so that nobody really sees me. We start towing back and forth and back and forth and we're videotaping and we have these cameras rolling. So now in the wheelhouse, I'm actually able to see everything that's going on under the boat, which was the first time because I had not had real time video before. And at first we didn't really see anything. So we're going along and all of a sudden we see what looked to be three gold bars, one after another in the sand. They were very symmetrical. You know, they look like bricks. And there was three of them in a row and there was a little bit of sand over them. We're just like, oh my God. Oh my God. That's. I mean, they're man made objects. They look like bricks. You know, there's just. And you could see the corners and the edges of them. You know, they were just. I mean, it was. I mean, this is amazing, right? I mean, all this and the fact that they were laid perfectly in line. One, two, three. You know, and they were even straight and. And we were speechless. Jolie was just like, oh my God. Oh my God, I can't believe this. When we're watching this screen and then we go a little bit further and then we see a single, right? And then we go a little bit further and then we see another single bar.
- [43:58]
Narrator
They checked their GPS and wrote down the exact coordinates of the gold bars. But they still needed footage of the shipwreck.
- [44:05]
Joe Panisi
And so I started turning the boat. Turning the boat. All of a sudden Jolene and I were staring at. We have this large screen TV in the wheelhouse and all of a sudden we're staring at this big fat tube that's to going. Coming out of the sea floor, like about a 30 degree angle. And it's full of, you know, growth. It almost looked like hairs. You know, they're grown on it. All I could think of was, I mean, we were so speechless. We were stunned. I mean, all of a sudden, there's this thing. It looks like a cannon now, right? I mean, we had never seen this before. So obviously this was starting to make sense that, okay, well, if this is a wreck, then that's more likely a cannon, because it looks like a cannon sticking out of the mud, you know? So right after we saw this, Jolene and I were, like, jumping up and down the wheelhouse. We're like, oh, my God, we finally got something. I mean, because now nobody can deny that this is a cannon. I mean, this is. Has to be a cannon.
- [45:04]
Narrator
Now they had the location of the gold bars and footage of the shipwreck with clues that could allow James to lay claim to the treasure.
- [45:12]
Joe Panisi
And then at that very second, I looked over at the recorder, and I see we had. We had run out of space on our hard drive, and it was off. And I was just. My heart sank, because now to try to do this again, we had to get the net hauled back, and we were running out of time, and the weather was picking up.
- [45:40]
Narrator
Joe thought about replacing the memory cards and setting up the net again, but it would look suspicious, and he knew it would tip off the observer.
- [45:47]
Joe Panisi
One of the things about fishing is you don't keep towing in the same areas, you know, and that's. That's kind of a sure sign to anybody that, you know, something's going on there.
- [45:57]
Narrator
Joe was so close. The gold was right there beneath the surface. But getting the extra footage could actually put him in jail. So he weighed his options. Take the risk and try to become a millionaire or just be a fisherman who goes home to his family at the end of the day. And then he thought about his dad.
- [46:15]
Joe Panisi
If my father would have seen that video, and he would have realized that, hey, there's much gold underneath this boat. I can guarantee you that he would have aggressively pursued this like very few people could have ever imagined. He was the type of man where he would. He would risk everything. I want to say I. I did end up like my father. And, you know, I noticed in this one picture that I have. I'm standing next to my dad. We're each holding up a fish, and I'm holding my son Pino in my arms, you know? And until I saw this picture the other day, I did not realize how much like my dad I really was. I will not be like my dad. I will not go and put my family into any more danger than you know, than I already have. I mean, the one thing that I always wanted was a big family. And, you know, I realized that instead of me focusing on taking care of my family, now I'm chasing this dream that, you know, I don't think it's ever going to come to reality. I don't think there's anything good that's going to come out of it. I'm like, I'm old enough. I'm wise enough to know that, you know, even though I know I can get that gold, but my gold is my wife and my kids.
- [47:43]
Narrator
So he called his wife and he told her, it's too risky coming home. And then he pulled up his empty nets and left the site. But the gold is still sitting there at the bottom of the ocean. And hardly a day goes by where he doesn't think about it.
- [48:01]
Joe Panisi
Actually, you want to hear something really, really funny is that I carry part of it in my wallet sometimes. I'll show people this little piece of paper I have right here, and I show people this little piece of paper. I'll say, this is. You need three things to know where this is. And without all three things, and you can't tell, but it's here in my wallet. See how beat up it is? These are coordinates here on this piece of paper. This is it right here. You can probably almost hardly see it, but you need three things to know where it's at. I always think to myself, too, you know, there is no safer place of putting anything in the Pacific Ocean or any ocean, really, because once you put it underwater and it's miles and miles offshore, and I mean, really, to find anything, you're. Even if you have a camera, you're like looking through a straw, you know, like. So if you had a light at the end of a straw and you're looking all around the bottom of the ocean, that's all you get. You know, you only get this little tiny view, and the ocean is so big. And I. And that's one thing that this whole thing taught me a lot about was here. I used to think that, okay, even lining up landmarks or GPS and all this stuff, but none of it means anything. None of it. Because you could be 10ft from it and not know where it's at. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's that easy. And you could spend your whole life being 10ft from it but not know where it's at.
- [50:03]
Glenn Washington
A very big thank you to Jopanese for sharing your story at the snap. And this story would not have been possible if not for the amazing gumshoe on the ground reporting work of Tara Duggan, Jason Fagone and Santiago Mejia, who first told this story for the San Francisco Chronicle. Check out a link to their story for so much more, including the Fish videos themselves. That's right, snappers. Click to snapjudgment.org org to see the goal with your own two eyes. The original score for this story was by Renzo Goriot. It was produced by Nika Singh. It happened again. Snap Nation. Now if you missed even a moment of this golden episode, subscribe to the Snap Judgment podcast to hear hear it all and get so much more extended remixes stories we couldn't fit in. Know what's happening in Snapland even before I do? Subscribe to the Snapchat podcast while you still can, because you never know what's happening next. And if you love Snap storytelling, storytelling made from the heart, the mind and the soul support it. Snap is brought to you by the team that would never need such a boon. They are completely free of any wrongdoing. Except, of course, for the uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, Topmosini Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Goriot, John Facil, Shayna Shealy, Marisa Dodge, Nicholas Singh, Tayo de Cott, Flo Wylie, Nancy Lopez, and Regina Berriotto. And this is not the news. No aces news. In fact, you could bury your life, trust, treasure, everything you've worked for and sacrificed for. You could bury it deep in a hole for safekeeping, only later to forget exactly which hole that was. Oh no. Oh no. And you would still, still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PR.
- [52:15]
Narrator
Sa.