The new economics of shipwreck recovery
Soaring metal prices + new technology are turning maritime recovery from a ‘lottery ticket’ into a predictable, repeatable process.
Today, we’re exploring the hidden world of maritime recovery — i.e., salvaging valuable goods (like gold and silver) from sunken ships.
Investors are often obsessed with building the next big thing. But sometimes, you can make more money rediscovering something old.
Maritime recovery has long been dominated by treasure hunters looting shipwrecks. But over the past few decades, this industry has become increasingly regulated, professional, and investable.
In this issue, we’ll also be discussing one startup that’s transforming the way maritime recovery is done: Oceyon.
Oceyon uses advanced technology to scale up what’s traditionally been a clunky process. In doing so, they’re lowering the costs (and risks) associated with recovering valuable goods from the ocean floor.
Along the way, we’ll explore:
A complex legal battle over a $20 billion sunken treasure,
The multi-million dollar research taking place in dusty naval archives,
Oceyon’s streamlined, cost-efficient approach to maritime recovery,
And how investors can participate in this industry through our dedicated SPV.
As you’ll soon learn, three trends are currently reshaping the maritime recovery industry. Oceyon is poised to take advantage of all three.
Let’s dive in! (sorry)
The hidden world of maritime recovery
The existence of shipwrecks isn’t exactly a big secret.
After all, ships have been trying – and sometimes failing – to travel between distant ports for millennia.
But few people realize just how many wrecks are out there. Fewer still realize the extraordinary value some can hold.
To understand the untapped value some wrecks can hold, consider the ‘Holy Grail’ of shipwrecks: the San José.
A Spanish galleon, the San José was sunk in battle off the coast of present-day Colombia in 1708. The ship was laden with gold, silver, and emeralds estimated to be worth up to $20 billion (!) at today’s prices.
For centuries, nobody knew quite where the ship rested.
That all changed in 2015 when the Colombian Navy stumbled upon the wreck. The government quickly got to work recovering the San José’s treasures.
The San José shows just how lucrative maritime recovery can be. However, the ship’s story also highlights the legal issues and ethical questions that have long plagued recovery projects.
Who owns the San José?
It depends who you ask...
As our issues on tokenization have discussed, establishing who owns an asset isn’t always an easy task.
But in the world of maritime recovery, ownership rights can quickly become an enormous debacle. Just consider all the claims being made on San José:
🇨🇴 Colombia asserts that the ship (and all her treasure) is the property of the state. Not only did Colombia’s military find the ship, but the wreck is within the country’s territorial waters.
🇪🇸 Spain asserts that, as a military vessel, the San José is Spanish property. Under international maritime agreements, warships have sovereign immunity and can’t be claimed as the property of another nation – no matter how much time has passed.
🇵🇪🇧🇴 Many of the metals on the ship were mined from present-day Peru and Bolivia using colonial slave labor. As a result, indigenous groups like the Qhara Qhara also claim that they should get a cut of the treasure.
To make matters even more complicated, the private maritime recovery group Sea Search Armada claims that it found the San José back in the 1980s under contract with Colombia, only for the state to back out of the deal. The two sides are currently battling it out in The Hague.
As the San José case demonstrates, maritime recovery isn’t just about recovering valuable goods – it’s also about making sure that you have airtight claims to keep them.
Today, the economics of maritime recovery are as much about legal compliance and due diligence as they are about physical salvage.
Shipwreck economics: Research, recovery, and returns
Maritime recovery is a systematic process. If you’re just trawling the ocean floor searching for random wrecks, you’ll end up wasting huge quantities of time and money.
While no two projects are exactly alike, an efficient maritime recovery process always involves three distinct phases: research, recovery, and returns.
Research
Research might seem like the least exciting part of maritime recovery – but it’s also the most important.
During this phase, historians pore through dusty archives and sonar experts scan the ocean floor. The goal is to shrink the search radius for valuable ships as small as possible, focusing on topics like:
Location – What is the most likely resting place for a particular wreck? Do survivors’ accounts conflict with the captain’s log? Have ocean currents shifted the wreckage?
Cargo – What is listed on the official manifest, and might have been smuggled? Are there durable goods like gold and silver? Do insurance documents confirm the cargo?
Provenance – Was the ship a sovereign warship or a private merchant vessel? Who can likely claim ownership today? Can these parties be negotiated with?
Recovery
Once the research phase has identified and confirmed a viable site, the heavy lifting begins: recovery.
The costs of recovering materials from a shipwreck can differ sharply based on the depth of the wreck. At a depth of just 100 meters (about the height of a 30-story building), the costs of recovery generally average around $3-6 million.
Equally important, however, is the type of technology used.
Machinery like mega-submersibles and massive hydraulic claws can be extraordinarily expensive to operate. And the traditional recovery process often takes months, resulting in costly bills over time.
Returns
Finally, once any valuable goods have been safely recovered from the ocean floor, the monetization process begins.
Even if you recover assets like gold and silver, selling them isn’t always a simple process. These metals typically need to undergo restoration and conservation following their decades (or even centuries) of exposure to saltwater.
While it’s often possible to sell such metal on the open market, the best prices typically come from working with private collectors or auction houses. Cultural artifacts, meanwhile, are often turned over to museums.
And at the end of the return process, there’s usually one more party who demands their cut: the government.
When governments allow private firms to recover goods from their territorial waters, they can sometimes claim up to half of the total value for the taxpayer (for a while, Indonesia even had a national law mandating a 50% government cut from salvaged maritime goods).
Between the high costs of recovery, the complexities of restoration, and significant government levies, the economics of traditional shipwreck recovery can be challenging.
To tip the scales back in favor of profitability, smart actors are increasingly using advanced technology to scour ancient shipwrecks – which is exactly the approach Oceyon is taking.
What is Oceyon?
Oceyon is a Swiss startup focused on using cutting-edge tech to transform the maritime recovery process.
Through advanced AI and robotics, Oceyon is working to increase the speed and reduce the costs of maritime recovery. The company’s tools also allow for greater accuracy, lowering the risks of a failed recovery.
Oceyon was founded last year by Nicolas Bürer. A management consultant by training, Nicolas has since spent 15 years focused on entrepreneurship and startups.
Nicolas was previously a co-founder of MOVU AG, a digital platform for moving services in Switzerland. Nicolas helped guide the company to an acquisition by a major Swiss insurer three years after launch.
In addition to technology, Nicolas also emphasized Oceyon’s focus on ethics and compliance in recovery. These values are often overlooked by treasure hunters hoping to maximize profits.
🇬🇧 UK Residents: Nicolas will be speaking at our London Alternative Investing Meetup on Feb 25.
The evening will include a guided fine wine tasting led by Cult Wines.
Nicolas is joined by a team of industry experts, each with a core specialization in maritime recovery. Collectively, the Oceyon team has over 200 years of experience in fields like archival research, robotics engineering, boat management, salvage operations, and ESG & impact.
Leveraging that expertise, Oceyon is working to modernize the traditional maritime recovery process.
The company aims to do three things differently compared to industry peers:
Tech-driven recovery. Oceyon’s planned recovery process is unlike any other, utilizing 3D models, AI data analysis, and lightweight drones. Not only will this significantly quicken and cheapen recovery, but it will also dramatically de-risk the process.
Extensive research. Oceyon’s historical advisors have assembled one of the most extensive databases on precious metal shipwrecks in the world. This database is a significant source of alpha in identifying attractive targets – it’s like trading on audited financials in a market driven by rumors.
Strict compliance. Sloppy legal work has led some maritime recovery firms to lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of assets. Oceyon avoids that with ownership validation, transparent government contracts, and collaboration with some of the world’s leading maritime legal experts.
The bottom line: Maritime recovery has often been treated like buying a lottery ticket, with salvagers sinking time and capital into projects that only might pay off.
Oceyon is aiming to transform recovery into a repeatable, predictable, and sustainable process, one where luck isn’t a necessary ingredient for profitability.
The company plans to target wrecks with substantial bullion, reflecting the timeless value of silver and gold. However, Oceyon is also seeking to work with governments and museums to recover and preserve artifacts with cultural value.
Oceyon is actively scaling operations, with up to two targets in sight for 2026, and another four in 2027.
And for investors who’d like to back the next generation of maritime recovery, Alts is forming a special partnership to invest in Oceyon’s revenue-linked notes through a dedicated SPV.
Maritime I: Invest in our Maritime Recovery SPV
Oceyon has already identified several promising targets for recovery operations, including:
WWII vessels known to contain silver,
A copper freighter in the North Atlantic,
And two wartime wrecks in the Mediterranean.
Formal investment details will be unveiled week of Feb 9.
Here’s what we can say for now:
Capital will be deployed on a project-by-project basis.
Investments will have a milestone-driven structure tied to mission success. (Oceyon is targeting up to two missions in 2026, and up to four in 2027.)
Investors will participate in upside through a revenue share agreement.
This is one of most unique investment opportunities we’ve ever done.
Investment memo will be unveiled week of Feb 9. Accredited investors only.
Closing thoughts: Three trends driving maritime recovery
Maritime recovery is subject to a strong first-mover advantage.
Yes, these shipwrecks have been on the ocean floor for years. But there’s a finite amount of treasure out there, and there’s no consolation prize for getting to a wreck second.
And here’s the thing – this race is heating up. There are three major trends driving increased activity in maritime recovery today.
Each of these trends helps explain Oceyon’s overall approach, and why it’s important for interested parties to move quickly:
1. Technology has changed
Maritime recovery has a reputation for being extraordinarily expensive. Much of that reputation stems from the 80s and 90s, when this industry required giant, clunky machinery.
The landscape today is totally different.
Efficient, lightweight submersibles can change the economics of undersea operations, but most firms are still stuck on the old way of doing things.
One of the best examples of this paradigm shift occurred in 2022, when small drones were able to locate and 3D model the Endurance wreck 3,000 meters below the Antarctic ice. The mission cost a fraction of what it would have with older, bulkier vehicles.
2. Regulation is shifting
Governments have historically had a tricky relationship with the maritime recovery industry. Often unwilling to offer formal licenses, they would then step in and demand a cut of the value upon a successful recovery.
But that’s beginning to change.
Driven by environmental considerations and cultural heritage, governments are increasingly willing to form straightforward recovery partnerships with private parties.
The UK helped underscore this shift in 2011 when the government contracted a US firm to salvage valuables from the SS Gairsoppa wreck. The mission secured about 110 tons of silver, marking the transition to a period in which governments view firms as partners, not competitors.
3. Metals prices are soaring
Finally, prices of precious metals (which are some of the most lucrative valuables secured from wrecks) have soared in recent years.
In the past year alone, the price of gold has climbed over 70%. For silver, it’s over 130%.
Yes, these markets have seen near-term volatility. But there’s no doubt that maritime recovery investors have benefited from the secular drivers pushing metals prices higher.
For all these reasons, maritime recovery is increasingly interesting today – even if it is a timeless industry.
That’s all for today!
This Oceyon SPV could be something very special. Come discuss here in the community:
See you there,
Disclosures
This issue was written by Brian Flaherty and edited by Stefan von Imhof, with help from Nicolas and Birgit from Oceyon.
This issue was sponsored by Oceyon. It contains no affiliate links.
Alt Assets, Inc has no current holdings in any companies mentioned in this issue. We are in the process of creating an SPV with Oceyon.