Turkish engineer Denem Orhun accidentally found the underwater harbour of an ancient city as he was diving in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey's Dikili district during a summer vacation a year ago, Hurriyet Daily News reports.
At the time, the 39-year-old engineer, who works in the US, handed his images of the artefacts to an excavation team working in the ancient city of Pergamon.
It took researchers a year to determine that the columns spotted by Orhun were part of a harbour belonging to the ancient city of Atarneus, which dates back to approximately the fourth century BC.
Atarneus was the seat of government of the "tyrant" Hermias, a friend of the famous ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. The city was deserted in the first century BC, possibly after an outbreak of an unknown epidemic.
As for Othun, he can now apparently take pride in his discovery given that the area where he tracked the ancient harbour has already been declared a first-degree protected site, while the harbour itself has been dubbed "an architectural find".