Barstool Sports Employee Takes 74 Ft Dive in East River For Mammoth Bones After ‘Hidden Treasure’ Talk on Joe Rogan Show
A Barstool Sport employee took matters into his own hands after hearing that a treasure trove of mammoth tusks had once been dumped into New York’s East River.
The recounting of the lore began during a December podcast episode from The Joe Rogan Experience.
Rogan was interviewing gold miner and bone collector John Reeves about his work in Alaska. During the conversation, Reeves mentioned that thousands of tusks had been shipped from Fairbanks, Alaska to New York City in the 1940’s for the American Museum of Natural History.
Reeves read from a report that stated that upon the boat’s arrival, the museum took a truckload of tusks but ended up running out of room to store the rest. As a result, Reeves revealed, the rest of the tusks were dumped into the East River.
Reeves shared the story in hopes that adventurous people would be inspired to search for the bones, which could still hold remarkable value today.
Rogan even extended an offer to appear on his podcast if anyone was successful.
The American Museum of Natural History has denied the claims in a statement on January 4th to local New York PIX11 News saying, “The American Museum of Natural History has no record of any such disposal, including no record of a paper published that alleges this.”
But that didn’t dismay Barstool employee Will Cotter known as Billy Football.
During a recent episode of Pardon My Take, Cotter discussed his adventure in the East River in search of the bones last Saturday.
“I talked to the first person I thought of who would be down for some sort of excursion to maybe look for these bones,” Cotter said.
“The mammoth tusks are worth a lot of money. So if we found one, it would be able to finance the trip,” he added.
He partnered with a friend who runs the YouTube channel Donnie Does along with Discovery star Dirty Water Don who financed the excursion.
“So on Saturday morning, 5:00 AM woke up, for bones and headed out on the water. And we ended up in the East River looking for bones. And, Donnie and I actually ended up being able to dive in the East River,” he added.
Cotter said the team behind the trip outfitted him in full dive gear although he was not formally trained.
“I thought we were gonna go about 20 feet deep right by the side of the shore. But basically NYPD pulled up on us and said that we weren’t allowed to tie up to the side of Manhattan… on the dock there, but because it was only for first responders and commercial vessels,” he recalled.
The boat then had to move farther away into the water which forced Cotter to dive 75 feet down.
“I went to the bottom, looked around, realized no one’s finding shit in this. The visibility was like less than 12 inches in front of me,” Cotter said.
Although the team didn’t find anything, Cotter considered the trip fun.
He also took a moment to pose with a fake bone from a Halloween decoration to commemorate the moment.
Watch above via Pardon My Take.
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