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Odyssey rivals join the treasure hunt
While Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa reaps the rewards of its finds, other companies take to the high seas.
By SCOTT BARANCIK, Times Staff Writer
Published November 14, 2007
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Tampa's Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. has been called America's only publicly traded treasure hunter. Deep Blue Marine Inc., whose over-the-counter stock trades via the lowly "pink sheets," begs to differ. Founded in 2005, the Midvale, Utah, company says it recently pulled hundreds of 18th-century coins off an undisclosed wreck in the Atlantic Ocean, is exploring several promising sites off Key West and soon will tape its own reality TV series. A five-minute promotional video featuring actor and investor James Brolin calls its slate of expert divers and researchers - seen striding toward the camera in identical blue slickers and khaki pants - the world's finest. "This is the team that's going to bring up the gold," CEO Wilf Blum tells viewers.
The fact that Deep Blue has yet to deliver a big payday means relatively little in the feast-or-famine world of treasure hunting, where investors routinely ricochet between hope and despair. Odyssey Marine, arguably the most successful company of its kind, survived years with little or no income before discovering the Civil War-era SS Republic in 2003. Today, its founders are multimillionaires thanks to stock options, and their success has spawned a handful of penny-stock copycats.
Odyssey Marine co-founder Greg Stemm doesn't see the upstart treasure hunters as competition. "All you have to do is look at the management, staff, track record and experience in the field to realize that we operate in a much different world than they do," he said in an e-mail. But the newcomers are marketing themselves aggressively, and none more so than Deep Blue.
Taken public via a reverse merger in December 2005, the company wasted no time trumpeting its arrival, issuing 15 news releases in February 2006 and booking actor Brolin on programs like The Tony Danza Show and CNBC's On the Money. In March 2006, company officials declared it would spend the summer recovering a centuries-old Spanish wreck that had gone down with an estimated $500-million in gold and silver, and claim a 20 percent stake of any booty. In April 2006, an independent research firm called Bridge IR Group breathlessly concluded that Wall Street investors should "strongly consider a stake in the company due to its severelypositively skewed payoff profile that is rare in terms of the enormous potential returns."
Little has turned out as planned, however. Deep Blue eventually abandoned the $500-million recovery due to doubts about the ship's identity as well as dangerous conditions at the dive site, CEO Blum said in an interview Tuesday. Unlike Odyssey, whose remote-controlled vehicles can descend more than 1,000 feet, Deep Blue uses human divers who cannot go down more than 150 feet. Bridge IR's report turned out to have been underwritten by an undisclosed third party for $7,000. Because it does not file detailed reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Deep Blue's finances remain opaque. Its stock closed Tuesday at 1.5 cents per share.
Blum, 55, has struggled personally in recent years. A real estate agent and land developer in Utah, he tried to capitalize on the "Y2K" pandemonium in 1998 by cofounding a company that made diagnostic software. Blum forecast that publicly traded Commercial Concepts Inc. would rake in $10-million in 1999; instead, it did just $260,000 in business. Blum resigned as president and chief executive. A subsequent shareholder lawsuit cost him $25,000.
In 2002, Blum filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy reorganization, claiming nearly $150,000 in business-related debts and only $4,000 in personal property. The case was dismissed after he missed two monthly payments.
Despite setbacks, Blum remained characteristically optimistic in a conference call with investors last month. Asked to forecast Deep Blue's stock price, then trading at 2.7 cents, he predicted it would climb to "well over a dollar" when the company starts selling some of its artifacts.
"Alls (sic) we gotta do is keep bringing up treasure, and we've proven we know how to find it," he said.
Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.
