First treasure from $17.5bn 'Holy Grail of shipwrecks' to surface next month after 300 years at the bottom of the Caribbean

Treasure from the world's most valuable shipwreck is about to surface for the first time since it sank in flames more than 300 years ago.

Spanish galleon the San Jose was loaded with gold, silver and emeralds valued today at $17 billion when a British warship sent it to the bottom of the Caribbean in 1708.

Now scientists in Colombia are just days away from retrieving the first artefacts since the wreck was first found lying under 2,000 feet of water in 2015.

Spain, Colombia, Bolivia and a US search company are all laying claim to the cargo, but lhena Caicedo of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History said the wrangling is on hold as the mission gets underway.

'We aren't thinking about treasure,' he told the Guardian, 'We're thinking about how to access the historical and archeological information at the site.'

Gold coins were also picked up on the video released by the Colombian government

A remotely operated vehicle reached a depth of almost 3,100 fee allowing new videos of the wreckage. Operators found the found it untouched by 'human intervention'

The 62-gun galleon was sailing from Portobelo in Panama at the head of a treasure fleet of 14 merchant vessels and three Spanish warships when it encountered the British squadron near Barú.

Spain and Britain were fighting the War of the Spanish Succession at the time and the Royal Navy was approaching dominance on the high seas when it sent the San Jose to the bottom.

Just 11 of the 600 men on board survived, and the ship's location remained a mystery until 2015 when the Colombian government announced that a team of navy divers had discovered it in the waters off Cartagena.

Colombian president president Gustavo Petro pledged that the 131-foot ship would be raised before his term of office ends in 2026 but the scientists are due to start next month retrieving some of the 200 tons of cargo on and around the wreck.

'The contents are really varied and we have no idea how the remains will react when they come into contact with oxygen,' Caicedo said.

'We don't even know if it is possible to raise something out of the water.'

A series of expeditions to the wreck has revealed an Aladdin's cave of coins, cannon, swords and gold ingots lying in the mud, and the Colombian military has been developing state-of-the-art salvage robots to assist in their retrieval.

The wreck lies in around 2,000 feet of water about 16 miles off the coast of Cartegena, but the Colombian government has not revealed precisely where for fear of looters

Colombian Culture Minister Juan David Correa said the first attempt would be a 'dry run' for retrieving the rest of the treasure and the ship itself

The equipment used for searching of the remains of the galleon San Jose submerged almost 3,100 feet under the Colombian Caribbean Sea. It was operated by naval officials

The Colombian army has revealed images of the wreck of the San Jose galleon, one of the largest of the Spanish Navy, sunk 300 years ago with its treasure off the Caribbean coast

The images offer the best-yet view of the treasure that was aboard the San Jose - including Porcelain crockery, pottery and glass bottles

Crabs wonder what the fuss is about as they stroll next to one of the ship's 62 cannon

The operation is expected to cost more than $4.5million, but the value of items recovered from the shipwreck could be 'incalculable', according to Correa 

Authorities have kept secrecy about the mission's location, but the scientific ship in charge of exploring the treasure was seen anchored at the dock of the ACR Bolivar naval base in Cartagena, Colombia

Recovering the ship and its bounty will be a challenge due to its depth underwater

A Colombian flag flies inside the scientific ship ARC 'Caribe' in charge of exploring the treasure of the Spanish galleon

But few wrecks of the San Jose's size have ever been raised, none of them in tropical waters, and retrieving the ship itself would be the biggest, most expensive and most complicated underwater recovery mission in history.

Alex Hildred is head of the research program for the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship which was raised of the south coast of England in 1982.

He said the success of the salvage will be at the mercy of currents, sea temperature, the type of mud it is sitting in, where the ship's cannon ended up, and even which animals have since made their home in it.

'It was also set on fire,' he pointed out.

'Lifting the ship and creating a museum will be really difficult, really expensive and incredibly challenging, and then everyone wants a bit of it. It's just a nightmare.'

American research company, Glocca Morra, claims it found the San Jose in 1981 and turned the coordinates over to the Colombians on the condition it would receive half the fortune once the vessel was recovered.

But this was countered in 2015 by Colombia's then-President Juan Manuel Santos who said the Navy had found the boat at a different location on the seabed.

Glocca Morra, now called Sea Search Armada, is suing for half the treasure - around $9 billion according to estimates - under the US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.

But Culture Minister Juan David Correa said the government's team had visited the coordinates given by Sea Search Armada and found no trace of the San Jose.

Complicating matters further, there are competing claims from the Spanish - whose Navy the vessel belonged to - and Bolivia's indigenous Qhara Qhara nation which says its people were forced to mine the gold and jewels, so the treasures belong to them.

'Not only for the symbolic issue but more for the spiritual issue. We just want our ancestors to be at peace,' native leader Samuel Flores told AFP.

The San Jose galleon was owned by the Spanish crown when it was sunk by the British Navy near Cartagena of the coast of what is now Colombia

It carried 62-guns, 200 tons of precious cargo and went down on June 8, 1708, with 600 people on board

The coins on board are similar to these specimens salvaged from a 1715 Plate Fleet wreck off the coast of Florida

Meanwhile, Colombia has hailed the find as a huge historic and cultural achievement.

Correa told Bloomberg last year: 'This is one of the priorities for the Petro administration. The president has told us to pick up the pace.'

The idea is 'to stop considering that we are dealing with a treasure that we have to fight for as if we were in colonial times, with the pirates who disputed these territories,' Correa, the culture minister, said.

'There are so many questions the San José could help answer,' said Ann Coats, an associate professor of maritime heritage at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.

'It would be nice if for once money wasn't driving things and a huge cultural collaboration could take place to study it properly.'