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Tampa Shipwreck Explorer Snags TV Series

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By WALT BELCHER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 28, 2008

TAMPA - A Tampa company that salvages shipwrecks will be the focus of an 11-part Discovery Channel series.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, known worldwide for its deep-ocean shipwreck exploration, announced Tuesday that it has signed a deal with an Emmy-winning documentary company for a series that would debut in 2009.

Film crews from JWM Productions are aboard two of Odyssey's exploration vessels in the Atlantic Ocean, company spokeswoman Laura Barton said.

Greg Stemm, Odyssey's chief executive officer, said the company's efforts to find and salvage shipwrecks should make for exciting television.

"We have the most experienced team of shipwreck explorers in the world manning our ships, and on a regular basis they make amazing discoveries in the deep ocean - things that have never before been seen by human eyes," he said.

Barton said the film crews will be following Odyssey during the summerlong 2008 Atlas Search, which involves five potentially "high value" targets (sunken ships) within a 5,000-mile area.

Barton declined to disclose what the targets are. She said that while conducting the searches, the crews often discover other sunken ships that have interesting histories, if not treasure.

The series also will look at how the Odyssey crew uses state-of-the-art technology, as well as the company's legal battles over salvage rights.

In 2007, Odyssey announced the deep-ocean recovery of more than 500,000 silver and gold coins, weighing 17 tons, from a Colonial-era site code-named Black Swan.

Spain and Odyssey are in a dispute over this find, which has been estimated at $500 million in value.

Spain filed claims in a U.S. federal court over the find, arguing that if the shipwrecked vessel was Spanish, or if the treasure was removed from its waters, then the treasure belongs to Spain.

It says the treasure came from one of its warships, the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes. Odyssey Marine insists the shipwreck was in international waters but has not given the location or ship's name.

In 2003, the company found the Civil War-era shipwreck of the SS Republic and recovered more than 50,000 coins and 14,000 artifacts from the nearly 1,700-foot-deep site.

"This series will give our viewers a front-row seat as Odyssey's archaeological and forensics teams search for sunken treasures and unravel the mysteries of long-lost shipwrecks," said John Ford, president and general manager of the Discovery Channel.

JWM Productions, founded by filmmakers Jason Williams and Bill Morgan, specializes in cultural, natural history, science and children's programming. Their work has been featured on Discovery, TLC, the Travel Channel and Animal Planet as well as NBC, CBS, PBS, TBS, TNT, CNN and by more than 85 international broadcasters.

Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at wbelcher@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7654.

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