Odyssey to Begin Commodity Salvage from Shipwrecks

Odyssey Marine Exploration has four shipwreck contracts in place & has acquired rare shipwreck location archive for its database.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, pioneers in the field of deep-ocean exploration,  announce they have received project approval and salvage contracts from ship owners for a major multi-year commodity shipwreck program with a potential total recovery value of more than US$230-million based upon current commodity prices and related assumptions.

Odyssey has negotiated salvage contracts with ship owners that will award 90% of the net recovered cargo value to them for four separate deep-ocean shipwrecks carrying valuable commodities when they sank. There are additional valuable shipwrecks that do not require salvage agreements that can be added to the program and undertaken while Odyssey has a ship and equipment nearby.

Planning is underway to assemble the necessary ship and equipment for the recovery of these cargoes, which is targeted to begin as early as the second quarter of 2013. Search operations are anticipated to be completed very quickly with the recovery vessel so operations can flow directly from confirmation to cargo recovery.

In addition, Odyssey recently acquired a large private research archive that features a significant amount of primary historical data, including manifests, cargo contracts and other documents previously unavailable to the public or researchers. This huge collection of documents includes approximately 3,200 shipwrecks in Europe, the Americas, Mediterranean Sea, Asia and Indian Ocean regions. The cargoes listed include gold, silver, commodity metals and other cargo – some of which are not represented in Odyssey's own databases.