In 1969, Diego Boninni, the captain of a commercial dredge operating in Punta Scario off the coast of Marsala, discovered underwater formations covered with Posidonia seagrass. Boninni showed some of his discoveries to Eduardo Lipari, a local whose family was connected to archeological excavations in the area. That same year, Boninni and Lipari took diver-archaeologist Gerhard Kapitan and British pioneer underwater archaeologist Honor Frost to the site of the underwater heaps. Frost and Kapitan returned to the area to further investigate what they had identified as ship ballast piles, evidence of ancient marine wrecks.
