Old gold, new chumps

Slate has an article by Ben Mathis-Lilley about some guys who got screwed out of a lot of money:

In February of 2015, some members of an Israeli scuba-diving club had what is one of the most amazing possible human experiences: they randomly discovered a giant underwater ancient treasure, in the form of some two thousand gold coins that are a thousand years old. Then they had one of the most quintessentially depressing and common human experiences: some bureaucrats came along and ruined everything.
The divers in the port city of Caesarea, which dates back to Roman times, found the coins on the Mediterranean seabed. “At first they thought they had spotted a toy coin from a game, and it was only after they understood the coin was the real thing that they collected several and quickly returned to the shore in order to inform the director of the dive club about their find,” the Israel Antiquities Authority said.
Experts from the authority called to the site uncovered “almost two thousand gold coins in different denominations” circulated by the Fatimid Caliphate, which ruled much of the Middle East and North Africa from 909 to 1171.
It's only the last paragraph of an article about the discovery that delivers the real kick in the pants:

The find was “so valuable that it's priceless,” spokeswoman Yoli Schwartz told AFP, adding that the haul was now the property of the state, and that there was no finder’s fee.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat? No way! No way, buddy! I don't know what Israeli law or international maritime conventions say about this kind of thing, and I don't care; if someone discovers a giant ancient sunken treasure, they get to become a rich person. That is how it should work. 

Rico says that'll teach 'em to be honest... (Let's do the math. Ignoring the antiquity value, and figuring at least an ounce apiece, two thousand ounces on today's market is just under two and a half million US dollars. Dumb...)