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Magnet fishers in New York find a safe with $100,000 in cash

"We call it the poor man's treasure hunting.”

via Ian S/Wikimedia Commons

Magnet fishing near Masters Bridge, Rugby. (Representative image.)

Magnet fishing is one of the more unique hobbies that people got into during the pandemic and it has remained popular even in its aftermath. The idea is simple: anglers drop a heavy magnet into a waterway and see what they can pull up.

It’s pretty common for people to find guns, knives, fishing tackle, scrap metal and even the occasional bicycle. The hobby is popular on YouTube, where there are hundreds of thousands of videos related to the topic.

The hobby is fun for those who get a kick out of finding buried treasure, but it’s also great for the environment. Anglers with magnets that can pull anywhere from 400 to 2,000 pounds have done a great job of removing dangerous waterway debris.

James Kane and Barbie Agostini threw a rope with a magnet into a river and pulled up a safe with an estimated $100,000 inside.

A couple who got into magnet fishing during the pandemic made an incredible catch in the Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens on Friday, May 31, that earned them a spot on the New York 1 News. James Kane and Barbie Agostini threw a rope with a magnet into a river and pulled up a safe with an estimated $100,000 inside.

"We pulled it out and it was big stacks of freaking hundreds," Kane told New York 1. "These are thick stacks—they're soaking wet, they're pretty much destroyed."

Agostini thought Kane was joking when he said there were stacks of money in the safe. “He showed me and once I saw the actual dollars and the security ribbons I lost it,” she said.

To avoid legal trouble, the couple contacted the police to ensure that the safe wasn’t connected to any crimes. "There were no IDs, no way to find the original person, in the safe. [The police] were like: 'Well, congratulations!'" Agostini said.

The police said they had never seen a discovery like it before.

Kane told New York 1 that they got into the hobby during lockdown. “We were bored during COVID lockdown and I’ve always had this itch to become a treasure hunter … so we discovered something called magnet fishing,” Kane said. He calls the hobby “the poor man’s treasure hunting."

Even though the money was soaked and covered in mud, the couple may be able to spend it.

They sent it to Washington, D.C., to be cleaned and inspected. "To clean it up takes 6 months to 3 years," Kane told The Project. But we believe this one's not gonna be that long."

One wonders why a safe with so much money wound up in a river. Was it stolen by thieves who ditched it because it couldn’t be opened? Did a jilted lover steal the safe from someone and throw it into the lake so it would be lost forever? Unfortunately, no one knows.

The couple also recently found 6 or 7 vintage guns in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn and a few grenades from World War II.

Do you have a treasure hunter deep inside you who wants to try magnet fishing? Clay Copeland, founder and president of Brute Magnetics, a magnet fishing equipment company in North Georgia, says it’s a relatively affordable hobby.

"Even our highest [priced] Brute Box is $200. There are not many hobbies you can get into and get top-of-the-line equipment for a couple of hundred bucks," he told Mapquest. "That was intentional on our part to open this up to a wide variety of people because it is such an interesting and fun hobby that you just never know what you're going to find."

Copeland says magnet fishing is a lot of fun for families with kids. He magnet fishes with his 5 and 7-year-olds regularly.

"When we throw the magnet out and bring it back ... just seeing that joy in their face when something is coming up, it's the greatest thing ever,” he said.

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Rue Mapp can still remember the moment she fell in love with the great outdoors.

"I grew up in an outdoor loving family," recalls Mapp over the phone. "We had a ranch in Northern California."

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Mapp's early days were spent walking those California country roads and hopping over to nearby farms filled with grazing cows and pigs. As her love for nature expanded, Rue began to explore more and more remote areas, traveling deeper and further into the incredible landscapes America has to offer.

Then, she noticed that not many people of color were doing the same, and she decided to do something about it.

Rue started Outdoor Afro — a nonprofit network built to connect the African-American community to nature and inspire outdoor leadership.

Initially a barebones blog, Outdoor Afro is now an organization of over 24,000 people in 30 states. They organize hikes, camping trips, cookouts, bike tours, and even outdoor dance parties. "There was a group in D.C. that did outdoor DJing," says Mapp. "So there’s a lot of creativity and expansion of what outdoors looks like."

"It wasn’t really about whether or not black people and people of color were getting outside," says Mapp. "It really came down to how we were."

Black communities use their local parks as much as anyone else, says Mapp. It's when you travel out to remote trails or into major national parks that you see a noticeable drop in diversity. She thinks this has everything to do with accessibility.

"Unless you’re in the know, you won’t know that you have to call into Yosemite a year in advance to get the prime spot, right? So there’s something about the proximity and the accessibility that helps people know how to get to those places, how to use those places."

Outdoor Afro started working directly with public parks to help ease that gap in communication and accessibility for more communities.

"We’re able to be a kind of entry point for people to see and experience places both near and far and really lower the barriers," says Mapp.

While she's always loved her work, it was recent political events that truly solidified Mapp's mission.

After the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Outdoor Afro set up "healing hikes."

"We hiked into the redwood basin and went along the stream trail," recalls Mapp. "I just realized we were doing what African-Americans have always known we could do and that is to take our burdens and lay them down by the riverside."

The 2016 election also helped Outdoor Afro focus on their mission.

"It helped us double down on joy," recalls Mapp. "Black joy specifically... We absolutely need to find joy again and hold that joy for one another because we’re in this together."

As Outdoor Afro continues to grow, so does its scope.

They now have 65 outdoor leaders who embark on vigorous excursions, like hiking Mt. Whitney, summiting Kilimanjaro, and taking a couple hundred mile bike ride along the Buffalo Soldiers trail. "It's not all kumbaya," says Mapp.

Outdoor Afro is not only built on the power of nature, but the power of community. It's mission is to help people realize they're not alone and there's a big, beautiful world out there.

Nature, she says, doesn’t hold all of these "-isms" over your head.

"When you go out in nature, it’s really the ultimate equalizer," says Mapp. "It doesn’t discriminate, it frees us of the judgment that we put on each other. The trees don’t know what color you are ... the birds don’t know how much money you have in your account. The fish don’t know your gender."

It's a small thing, but maybe one small step into nature can be a giant leap toward healing our divides.

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Their town's once-flourishing industry was collapsing. In fact, things got so bad, their native oyster was almost put on the endangered species list. It was a pretty big dilemma (and inconvenient timing), to say the least. But it only spurred the Croxton cousins' Rappahannock Oyster Company even more to find a solution.

They scoured the internet to see what other countries were doing, how they were producing their seafood. What they found was a more advanced, efficient technique that could help save not just their own business, but Chesapeake Bay's entire oyster industry.

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Rather than just gathering what oysters were left, the Croxtons turned to aquaculture, which is basically the farming and harvesting of anything that lives underwater.

Outside of aquaculture, gathering fish and oysters is just about that — gathering. Get, get, get. Fish, fish, fish. You collect as big a bounty as you can and you sell it for top dollar. The problem with that model is it becomes all about how much you can get, leaving little regard for resources.

In contrast, aquaculture is all about those resources. It focuses on creating a sustainable ecosystem where underwater plants and animals can thrive more naturally.

And when it comes down to it, oyster aquaculture can be a boon to both the environment and the economy.

For one thing, oysters are a natural cleaner and they act as an amazing filter for pollutants, such as nitrogen. "During its duration in the water, it's filtering 50 to 60 gallons of water a day," explained Ryan Croxton.

Promoting a habitat and life cycle that allows these oysters to blossom benefits Mother Nature (and our tummies) even more. "The oysters we grow actually increase the population of the wild oysters," added Travis Croxton. "You see underwater vegetation coming back, which provides sanctuary for marine animals."

When it comes to aquaculture and fish, however, the method does have potential downsides. Installing cages to farm the fish is necessary, and building them can damage a coast's natural ecosystem. On top of that, waste can accumulate in these structures and contaminate an area's water supply.

Aquaculture also has the potential to create countless new jobs. In the U.S. alone, aquaculture production hit just over a billion dollars back in 2012. But when you compare it to the $120 billion worldwide industry that it was valued at that same year, you can see there are still many opportunities for growth.

And it's already happening.

When the the Croxtons first started out, only a few businesses were doing aquaculture in their community. Now? Several hundred. "I've increased my workforce by about 30%," said Richard Harding, owner of Purcell’s Seafood Company. "We're a small business in a small community, so every job counts."

The best part? Aquaculture has the potential to improve food access for people all around the world.

A 2015 report by WorldFish shows how fish consumption is rising in developing nations — and future demand worldwide is only expected to increase in the coming decades. This means that aquaculture is going to play a pivotal role in making sure that everyone gets fed.

In fact, by 2030, it's already estimated that two-thirds of the global fish supply will be produced via aquaculture.

So yes, demand, populations, challenges — they're all rising. But, you know what? So is the know-how of the people addressing this issue. "Aquaculture is one of the rare things in this world that is a win-win for everything," added Travis Croxton.

The next time you grab an oyster platter, think about how that little gooey organism is helping change the world. Then, of course, think about how dang delicious it is.

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