When he saw the depth displayed on the sonar, Li Wei felt as if a basin of ice water had been poured over his head, chilling him from head to heart.
The shipwreck was located 600 meters below the seabed.
That area was already in the deep sea, and salvage operations could only be carried out with the help of professional submersibles.
Furthermore, the depth where the shipwreck was located was only one factor.
Secondly, more than half of this shipwreck was buried in mud, undoubtedly increasing the difficulty of salvaging it.
When Li Wei obtained the detection system, he had also considered becoming a professional treasure hunter.
After a period of careful consideration, he ultimately dismissed this idea.
Going out to sea to fish was different.
First, he had the detection system with him, so he was sure to find schools of fish, guaranteeing his income. Secondly, everyone on the ship was familiar to him, so he didn't have to worry about being stabbed in the back.
Moreover, he had a 33-meter-long Sea Monster. As long as he didn't court death, the chance of accidents was very low.
And who said you couldn't search for treasure while fishing?
The ocean not only holds vast reserves of mineral, chemical, and biological resources, but also treasures accumulated over thousands of years: "shipwrecks."
Since humans invented ships, they have never stopped exploring the ocean. There are more than a million ships that have sunk in the ocean, many of which were loaded with gold, silver, and jewels.
With his golden finger, he might encounter one someday; he just didn't expect that day to come so quickly.
This should be called, "Intentionally planting flowers may not make them bloom, but unintentionally sticking in a willow branch may make it grow into shade."
Looking at the seabed depth displayed on the sonar, Li Wei's heart felt as uncomfortable as if being scratched by a cat. He knew there was invaluable treasure on the seabed, but he just couldn't get it and could only watch.
Li Wei memorized this coordinate. To prevent himself from forgetting, he wrote it down in the nautical logbook again.
When the shipwreck went beyond the detection system's range, the purple-gold light disappeared from his sight. He felt that his desire for money had never been stronger than it was now.
However, Li Wei could only think about it in his mind.
Salvaging this kind of deep-sea shipwreck not only required a professional deep-sea salvage vessel but also a large amount of deep-diving equipment. The cost of just purchasing them was an astronomical figure.
Not to mention, even if you salvage them, these things might not necessarily be yours. When faced with huge profits, things like law and morality are all thrown aside.
If you really believed that, you'd be an idiot!
He remembered watching a documentary on Bilibili in his previous life about a company called Odyssey Marine Exploration, which discovered a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mercedes-Benz, which had been missing for over 200 years.
This was a giant sailing ship that set sail from Peru in 1804, loaded with thousands of chests of gold, silver, and jewels, intending to transport these treasures back to its homeland. While sailing in the Atlantic waters, it was sunk by a British warship, and the treasures on board sank to the seabed with the ship.
Since the sinking of the Mercedes-Benz, countless treasure hunters and governments from various countries had set their sights on this batch of treasure, but they had never had any success.
It wasn't until 2007 that Eagle Country's Odyssey company accidentally discovered the Mercedes-Benz while salvaging the Sussex and quickly launched a salvage operation.
Odyssey company took just over two months to salvage 600,000 gold coins and a small amount of silver coins from the seabed and chartered a plane "overnight" to send this batch of gold and silver coins back to Eagle Country.
But there was no airtight wall in the world; the news that Odyssey company had salvaged a huge treasure was quickly known by Spain, followed by a long period of wrangling and lawsuits.
The final result was that Odyssey company lost the lawsuit and returned all the gold and silver coins, and the Spanish government paid Odyssey company 2.6 million us dollars in salvage fees.
It could be said that it was like drawing water with a bamboo basket – a complete waste of effort.
As for the 2.6 million us dollars in salvage fees paid by Spain, it wasn't even enough to cover the costs invested by Odyssey company.
Therefore, when it comes to shipwrecks on the seabed, it's not whoever salvages it gets it; no one knows who it will belong to until the very last moment.
Unfortunately, the shipwreck he discovered was from a distant era and was already badly decayed, making it impossible to determine which country it belonged to. Furthermore, the shipwreck was within Eagle Country's waters, so salvaging it would definitely involve a lot of trouble.
As for secretly carrying out salvage operations, it was completely unrealistic, unless you could salvage the shipwreck by yourself.
As long as other people were involved, the news of the shipwreck would spread sooner or later; it was just a matter of time.
Heaven knows what would happen after the news spread.
The first to appear would likely be the Eagle Country government, followed by the tax bureau, which would smell the scent of money.
PS: Treasure hunting also requires paying taxes.
With the shipwreck treasure on Li Wei's mind, his focus on finding schools of fish gradually faded.
He directly piloted the Sea Monster towards destination number one.
When the Sea Monster returned to destination number one again, there were indeed significantly fewer black cod on the seabed.
They were more or less affected by the large waves.
On the deck, Jim, yawning, asked Jack curiously.
"Jack, didn't the Boss say we'd reach destination number one in two or three hours? I just checked the time, and it's already been over four hours."
"Who are you asking? And isn't it good for you to sleep a bit longer?"
"That's true. I hope the black cod in these cages today are as many as last time."
"Let's hope so. That way, we can return to port earlier."
"You two can chat later, we've arrived."
Hearing Buck speak, the two obediently shut their mouths.
When the Sea Monster reached the buoy, Buck quickly threw out the three-pronged hook, pulled the buoy onto the ship, the rope was pulled straight by the winch, and the fish cage was quickly pulled out of the sea.
After seeing the situation inside the fish cage, Jim immediately cheered.
"Now this is fishing!"
"..."
It was no wonder he was so excited; yesterday's catch was really poor. If the catch remained like this, he didn't know how long it would take to fill the fish hold.
Although this time's catch was not as much as the last time, it still made them very satisfied.
If they could maintain this level of catch, they could quickly return to the dock to unload.
Li Wei was already used to this. Most crew members had similar issues: they were willing to work themselves to death during a good harvest, but otherwise, they found even a little extra movement troublesome.
There were already much fewer black cod in this sea area. At most, Li Wei would need to deploy the fish cages one more time before needing to find a new place to fish.
The last fish cage was pulled out of the sea, and Jim and Jack's movements clearly slowed down.
The cheering had already disappeared three hours ago.
Jack signaled "22" towards the bridge.
"Throw the last cage back into the sea, we'll head back to port first."
After Li Wei wrote down 22 in his notebook, he picked up the walkie-talkie and said.
Jim and Jack's movements clearly sped up upon hearing this.
Li Wei was no longer paying attention to the situation on the deck. He had already taken out his calculator and started calculating the catch from this trip.
25+16+18+20+11+17...
Soon, he calculated the result.
100 fish cages, with an average catch of 19 black cod per cage, estimated at 7.6 tons, worth 50,000 us dollars.
The data he was calculating now was just an estimate; the actual amount would definitely be quite a bit more than calculated.
Adding the first batch of 10.8 tons of black cod and the second batch of 1.18 tons, they had caught a total of 19.58 tons of black cod in four days at sea, worth 129,000 us dollars.
After deducting costs, it definitely wouldn't be this much; the profit would probably be around seventy to eighty thousand us dollars.
Before discovering the shipwreck, Li Wei would have been excited by this number.
Now, he felt nothing.
It was like someone accustomed to delicacies being asked to eat plain food; they would definitely feel uncomfortable.
This was Li Wei's current state.
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