The lost city of Atlantis could be hidden beneath an undisclosed stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, a retired US Navy admiral has claimed.
Tim Gallaudet said he is working with researchers who believe detailed maps of the seabed contain features matching the legendary civilization’s ancient description.
Atlantis was described by the Greek philosopher Plato more than 2,000 years ago as a wealthy island empire with a capital built around rings of land and water.
According to the legend, violent earthquakes and floods swallowed the island in a single day and night. Plato’s Timaeus
‘We believe we found the region in the Atlantic. We have some proprietary bathymetry [underwater topography], and it’s very high resolution,’ Gallaudet told Jesse Michels on the American Alchemy podcast. ‘There are a lot of features that correspond to exactly how Plato described it.’
He said a well-funded researcher with a ship and a remotely operated underwater vehicle had expressed interest in hearing the team’s proposal.
But the location remains secret, with Gallaudet citing a nondisclosure agreement that prevents him from revealing the site.
Gallaudet’s account describes a possible search target, not a confirmed discovery of Atlantis.
The former Navy admiral shared a scan he said likely shows the lost city of Atlantis
Plato first introduced Atlantis in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 BC.
He described it as a technologically advanced society that existed 9,000 years before his time, placing it over 11,000 years ago.
Most historians and scientists have concluded that Plato’s account of the lost kingdom of Atlantis was fictional.
Gallaudet previously led the Navy’s oceanography work and served as acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and testified before Congress in November 2024 about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
He had hinted at an underwater investigation in an August 2025 appearance on the Danny Jones podcast, saying: ‘We actually have a special project I can’t talk about.’
He described plans to map an ancient underwater site, examine it with a remotely operated vehicle and try to date it, but did not identify the location.
It is unclear whether he was discussing the same site described to Michels.
In the interview on American Alchemy, Gallaudet said the team was using bathymetry, maps of underwater depths and terrain, that he described as privately held and very high-resolution.
Gallaudet previously led the Navy’s oceanography work and testified before Congress in November 2024 about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)
He pointed to the dimensions of the canal system in Plato’s writings, saying features in the target area ‘correspond to exactly how Plato described it.’
However, he did not provide the measurements or identify the other features being compared.
In the earlier Jones interview, Gallaudet said he wanted to ‘see some data on Atlantis,’ adding: ‘I have a few leads.’
The current effort is being led by an emergency-room doctor who spent more than a decade gathering geological and archaeological information, Gallaudet said.
He did not name the doctor, but described how the researcher began reading Plato’s original dialogues in his spare time before bringing in specialist advisers.
Gallaudet said he also connected the researcher with physicist Max Derakhshani to explore using an algorithm that analyzes three-dimensional terrain data.
He believes the technique could help distinguish natural formations from artificial structures, although he did not report results establishing that the seabed features were man-made.
An expedition would allow the researchers to investigate the site directly, rather than relying on its appearance in maps.
Later in the interview, Gallaudet said deep-sea explorer Victor Vescovo had also heard the team’s presentation and expressed interest.
Plato first introduced Atlantis in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 BC
‘We gave him the presentation on Atlantis, and he said, “All right, I’m in,”’ Gallaudet recalled.
He did not announce a confirmed departure date for the proposed expedition.
Michels suggested the Azores as a possible location during the conversation, but Gallaudet did not confirm that the team’s target was there.
The Azores Plateau is a large, triangular underwater highland in the North Atlantic Ocean that supports the volcanic peaks of the Azores archipelago.
Supporters of the Azores theory believe the islands are the surviving mountaintops of a vast landmass that sank beneath the Atlantic.
They point to the region’s position where three tectonic plates meet, the North American, Eurasian and African, as a possible connection to the catastrophic earthquakes described in Plato’s account.
Plato described it as a technologically advanced society that existed 9,000 years before his time, placing it over 11,000 years ago
Some also suggest that lower sea levels during the last ice age exposed a larger area of land that was later submerged, although this does not establish that the islands are the remains of Atlantis.
Gallaudet also argued that a rapid sinking of land could have submerged a city over years rather than millennia, although he did not disclose the geological mechanism behind that hypothesis.
The proposal rests on treating Plato’s account as a possible description of a real place, rather than simply a philosophical story.
