Deep-sea booty! $500 million in coins found

The richest-ever shipwreck haul was yielded by the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. Treasure-hunting pioneer Mel Fisher found it in 1985, retrieving a reported $400 million in coins and other loot.

Odyssey likely will return to the same spot for more coins and artifacts.

“We have treated this site with kid gloves, and the archaeological work done by our team out there is unsurpassed,” Odyssey CEO John Morris said. “We are thoroughly documenting and recording the site, which we believe will have immense historical significance.”

Odyssey stock shot up 80.9 percent Friday, closing at $8.32.

The company salvaged more than 50,000 coins and other artifacts from the wreck of the SS Republic off Savannah, Ga., in 2003, making millions. But Odyssey posted losses in 2005 and 2006 while using its state-of-the-art ships and deep-water robotic equipment to hunt for the next mother lode.

“The outside world now understands that what we do is a real business and is repeatable and not just a lucky one-shot deal,” Stemm said.

Other sunken treasures
In January, Odyssey won permission from the Spanish government to resume a suspended search for the wreck of the HMS Sussex, which was leading a British fleet into the Mediterranean Sea for a war against France in 1694 when it sank in a storm off Gibraltar.

Historians believe the 157-foot warship was carrying nine tons of gold coins to buy the loyalty of the Duke of Savoy, a potential ally in southeastern France. Odyssey believes those coins could also fetch more than $500 million.

But under the terms of an agreement, Odyssey will have to share any finds with the British government. The company will get 80 percent of the first $45 million and about 50 percent of the proceeds thereafter.

Odyssey also is seeking exclusive rights to what is believed to be an Italian-registered passenger vessel that sank during World War I in the Mediterranean Sea east of Sardinia, and to another discovered in the Mediterranean about 100 miles west of Gibraltar.

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