トレジャーハンターについて

ニューヨーク株式市場で合法な会社として活動しているOdyssey Marine Exploration社についての記事のアブストラクトです。

この記事を読んで私がおもったことですが、やはり商業的に沈没船の引き上げをするのは問題ありのようです。約１年前、スペイン沖でコインを積んだ沈没船の発見を発表し、一躍有名になったOdyssey Marine Exploration社ですが、未だにこの沈没船の所有権をめぐって裁判が行われています。また、発見当初は５億ドル相当の価値があると発表し、会社の株価が急激に上昇しましたが、後の発表では価値が４００万ドルと発表。誤った情報で会社の知名度を上げ、株の操作、スポンサーを探すことを行っているようです。この他にも特定の沈没船の発見を発表した後に実は別の船であったことなど、また、沈没船の特定、位置などもほとんど極秘のままです。

A REPORTER AT LARGE about deep-sea treasure-hunting and the Odyssey Marine Exploration company. One morning last October, the Explorer, a ship owned by Odyssey Marine Exploration, an American deep-sea treasure-hunting company, got into a tense confrontation with Spanish authorities in the Alborán Sea. In May, Odyssey announced that it had discovered, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, a colonial-era shipwreck that yielded seventeen tons of silver coins and several hundred gold ones—possibly the largest treasure ever recovered from the sea. The company gave the wreck the code name Black Swan and flew the booty to the U.S. In July, a Spanish Court, investigating whether Odyssey had plundered a national historical site, ordered that the Explorer be seized when it left Gibralter waters. The U.N. estimates that there are over three million shipwrecks on the ocean floor. With the advent of remotely operated vehicles (R.O.V.s), in the mid-eighties, more submerged wrecks and artifacts became accessible, and countries began to recognize the need to claim ownership of wrecks. In 2001, the UN adopted a Convention for the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage, which seeks to thwart the activities of treasure hunters by prohibiting the sale of looted artifacts over a hundred years old. The arrival of treasure hunters in the deepest parts of the ocean has also caused concern among nautical archeologists, some of whom have accused treasure hunters of destroying wreck sites in search of valuables and of selling salvaged artifacts to the public through auction houses, Web sites, etc. Odyssey, America’s only publicly traded deep-sea treasure-hunting company, which was founded in 1994 by Greg Stemm and John Morris, has sought to distinguish itself by working with archeologists and by forming partnerships with governments. Stemm says that Odyssey sells only the mass-produced items it recovers. Even so, the company, which has an average monthly operating budget of about $2 million, has conducted its salvage operations with great secrecy, and allowed few independent experts to examine the wreck sites or artifacts it’s retrieved. Describes Stemm’s education and background. In 1986, Stemm and Morris established a deep-sea treasure-hunting company known as Seahawk Deep Ocean Technology. Mentions Robert Marx. In 1988, Stemm and Morris began exploring the Dry Tortugas, near the Florida Keys. The following year, they found what they believed was a colonial-era Spanish treasure galleon, the Nuestra Señora de la Merced. After announcing their find publicly, Seahawk stock rose exponentially. Mentions David Moore. In 1991, the S.E.C. began an investigation of Seahawk, and the company subsequently issued a press release stating that the Dry Tortugas wreck was not the Merced. In late 1994, the S.E.C. charged Seahawk’s board of directors with fraud, insider trading, and inflating the value of artifacts recovered from the wreck. Stemm, Morris, and Daniel Bagley were charged with twenty-two counts of fraud and insider trading. They fought the charges in court and were found not guilty in 1997. Mentions Peter Bresnan. In 1994, after resigning from Seahawk, Stemm and Morris founded another treasure-hunting company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, which they took public in 1997. The following year, Odyssey began to search for the H.M.S. Sussex, which sank in 1694. In September, 2001, Odyssey detected an anomaly east of Gibraltar. Five months later, the Times reported that “a team of entrepreneurs and archeologists” had probably discovered the Sussex. The next day, Odyssey’s stock more than doubled. That fall, Jim McManus and two friends launched a Web site, Historyhuntersinternational.org, and, in August, 2006, they began posting their findings, which disputed Odyssey’s claim to have found the Sussex. On May 18, 2007, Odyssey announced the recovery of seventeen tons of coins not from the Sussex but from the ship code-named the Black Swan. On May 19th, the Times heralded “what may be the richest undersea treasure recovery to date,” and Odyssey’s stock climbed to an unprecedented high of $9.45 a share. The day after Odyssey announced the find, Spain’s American lawyer, James Goold, requested information about the identity of the Black Swan. After the History Hunters’ Web site was crashed by hackers, in late 2006, McManus started posting his findings about Odyssey on a Yahoo! Finance message board. Last September, Odyssey filed a libel and defamation suit against McManus. In early November, the Times of London published an article which claimed that Odyssey had estimated the worth of the coins recovered from the Black Swan at not $500 million, as originally estimated, but just under $4 million. Mentions James Delgado and George Bass.

引用元：http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/07/080407fa_fact_colapinto