Two weeks later, he took the necklet to Christie's, the auctioneers, in Glasgow. The excited look on the expert's face, as she caught her first glimpse of his find, told Kenny all he needed to know.

The unique and beautiful object he fished up is like a spirally-twisted ring with two plain rods soldered on to the ends, for Bronze Age craftsmen could indeed do a kind of soldering. Torcs - from the Latin torquere, to twist - could have been either neck or arm ornaments. In fact, larger ones could have been worn as belts.

Kenny's torc had lost it's shape after centuries of buffeting on the seabed, but it's size suggests to experts that this was a neck-ring, with just a possibility that in an original, more tightly-coiled form it could have fitted on an arm.

Today, the torc has pride of place in the Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh, and Kenny and his crew-mate, Donald MacSween, have shared a cash award from the museum, paid through the official Receiver of Wrecks.

The Treasure from the Minch has found a new resting place, but many mysteries surrounding it have still to be solved.

Trevor Cowie, a curator at the National Museums of Scotland, described has sense of wonder on examining the piece.