You won’t find treasure-hunting in any of the Standard Industrial Classification ‘SIC’ code tables, and it certainly does not come recommended by any high school job counselor, but spin the career-o-meter enough times, and one finds a goodly number of folks flying under the radar as treasure hunters masquerading as salvage operators.
Some treasure seekers do quite nicely. Case in point is publicly traded Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc, who has dibs on gold coins in the wreck of the HMS Sussex worth as much as $500M.
Another player is Sea Search Armada, who is looking for the San José, sunk by the British on June 8, 1708 near Cartagena. Saint Joe was reportedly carrying big bucks — up to $10 Billion dollars worth of gold & silver coins. They’re hoping to raise the loot in 2009. Easy pickings…sigh.
…uh…the editor just reminded me that there should be at least some connection to gadgets & gadgetry in this post…lets see…oh yeah, these folks are using GPS, satellite photography, magnetometers, 538-nanometer blue-green lasers, SatCom, sonar etc., …all working together to transform the ocean floor into a kind of vast ATM.
7 Missing Wonders – WSJ, November 9 2007
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Treasure hunting sounds like a fun job. I’d rather be out searching for doubloons than sitting in an office. Avast, mateys!
I wish my high school guidance counselor had recommended treasure-hunting. That land-lubber!