In a unique marriage of disciplines, Odyssey Marine Exploration combined the mining of ancient, dusty archives and application of advanced microchip technology to locate the remains of a shipwreck believed to be HMS Sussex. This warship, which was a technical marvel over 300 years ago, was lost in a violent storm in the Mediterranean, proving once again that Mother Nature holds the trump card in the struggle of man against nature.

Rather than using the North Star, sidereal sky charts and a magnetized needle for navigation, Odyssey's crew fixed its position from the signals of an artificial star, a global positioning satellite, and followed the clues left in the handwriting of long-dead sailors, scribes and secretaries to search the unexplored depths of the ocean.

Admiralty records, old newspaper accounts, and other archives in England, Spain, the United States and other locations were combed for information about the mission of HMS Sussex and her tragic loss with as many as 600 men. Odyssey located 16 ships' logs with eyewitness accounts of the storm, the fleet's sailing course, and the loss of the Sussex. Researchers also discovered letters from government officials and others. These accounts gave well-supported information about where the ship sank - and where the fleet admiral's body was washed ashore shortly after the sinking. This information helped Odyssey plot an area of the Western Mediterranean in which the ship was lost.

Four times, Odyssey crews conducted expeditions on the Mediterranean. The teams made a detailed bathymetric map of the sea floor in order to identify difficult terrain in the search area.

To locate potential wreck sites, the team towed long cable, attached to a side scan sonar "fish" two miles behind the ship. The cable length and ship's speed had to be precisely monitored to make the fish fly a precise altitude over the bottom. Acoustic signals from the fish were converted to a data stream that presented a two dimensional picture of the bottom, clearly indicating anomalies as small as 1 meter - even showing individual pieces of pottery and modern oil drums.

When a site looked promising, a precise fix was noted and later Odyssey deployed remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for closer examination. The search crews, as patient and dogged as the historians who searched the archives, endured hours of tedium, interrupted by the occasional excitement of a "find."

More than 400 square miles of deep ocean bottom were surveyed, with 418 possible "targets" identified. Odyssey inspected targets as deep as 3,000 feet below the surface - identifying geological features, aerial bombs and aircraft engines, rolls of wire, 55-gallon drums, and sunken ships of both modern and ancient origins. Roman wrecks and Phoenician wrecks over 2,000 years old were located as well as a "mystery" wreck of great age that has yet to be identified by archaeologists.

Of all the targets, only one site contained cannon. The site does not contain olive jars, typical of wrecks of Spanish ships of the same time. Of the 20 or more cannon found on top of the wreck mound, none were made of bronze, which were standard armament on both Spanish and French warships during this period. Visible artifacts and the size of this wreck site are consistent with Odyssey's research about the Sussex. As importantly, the site is within one mile of the location given by contemporary reports of the ship's loss by the Fleet Secretary.

Having found this site, Odyssey intends to return. The man-made star of a Global Positioning Satellite provides Odyssey's explorers with a precise fix, guiding them back to the site of a priceless time capsule.

The Company believes the information set forth in this Press Release may include "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and is subject to the safe harbor created by that section. Certain factors that could cause results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements are set forth in "Risk Factors," and "Business" in the Company's annual report on Form 10KSB for the year ended February 28, 2001, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.