Odyssey rivals join the treasure hunt

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.

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