Odyssey’s Shipwreck & Treasure Adventure
story and photos by Kayte Deioma
Update: As of September 3, 2006, Odyssey Shipwreck and Treasure Adventure has closed the New Orleans location and will be relocating to another city until the economic situation in New Orleans improves.
Odyssey’s Shipwreck & Treasure Adventure, located on the 2 nd floor of the Jax Brewery shopping complex, showcases the treasures raised from the SS Republic, a sidewheel steamer which sunk 100 miles off the coast of Georgia in 1865, and the technologies used to salvage the ship’s cargo. This latest New Orleans attraction opened just hours before the city was evacuated for Hurricane Katrina. Fortunately, it’s location on the bank of the Mississippi River in the French Quarter, protected these treasures, which had been lost at sea in another hurricane 141 years earlier and the museum was able to re-open in February 2006.
Exploring Odyssey’s Shipwreck & Treasure Adventure with the kids can get you out of the rain or heat for a few hours or all day, depending on how deeply you want to immerse yourself.
An orientation video sets the stage, introducing you to Odyssey Marine Exploration, a company that uses modern technology as well as marine archaeology and conservation techniques to track down the sunken treasures of history and legends. Using the high tech salvage ship the Odyssey Explorer and it’s unmanned remote exploration vessel, the Odyssey Zeuss, some of the world’s most preeminent underwater researchers team up to locate, salvage and preserve the artifacts from shipwrecks around the world. Although the New Orleans attraction focuses primarily on the SS Republic, it also gives an overview of shipwrecks through history and presents artifacts from other ships the Odyssey team has salvaged.
The SS Republic Discovered
In the SS Republic Discovered exhibit, you can take the wheel of the steam-powered sailing ship to steer it through rough seas. The vessel on the video wall responds to your steering and you can feel the resistance in the wheel as the waves fight against you. Multimedia displays explain the events leading up to the ship’s sinking and tell the stories of survivors.
Throughout the museum, interactive panels allow you to delve as deep as you want into the history of some of the world’s most interesting shipwrecks, but it’s the search and salvage technology that keeps young and older explorers mesmerized. For teens, the Navigation Game using side-sonar to locate a ship’s outline on the ocean floor has video-game appeal.
The Wave Pool
It’s hard to pull the little ones away from the Wave Pool, where they can pile a toy ship with Legos, sink it and raise it up again with a grabber claw like 
the ones that pick stuffed animals out of glass boxes in arcades. As 4-year-old Ethan Poynter from Jackson, Mississippi discovered after a dozen or so experiments, the ship sinks faster without the Legos. Ethan’s 2-year-old sister Cassidy, tried her hand at it as well, but she was more interested in helping her mom, Barbara, put salvaged artifacts back together with giant puzzle pieces on the Conservation Table, while their dad, Christopher Poynter, took the controls of an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) that was roaming a distant water tank full of treasure down on the first floor.
Remotely Operated Vehicles
To get the real sense of operating an ROV in deep waters, the controls are located in different parts of the museum from the vehicles they are manipulating. Looking at the video of what the ROV is seeing, you can navigate a deep sea vessel, or pick up coins with a remote control arm. In the display where the robotic arm is actually retrieving the coins, visitors can watch the fierce concentration of the person at the controls via an overhead video monitor. This is how the Odyssey team raised over 51,000 gold and silver coins from the Republic - one at a time.
Wind Tunnel
An interactive console teaches about marine weather, but to actually experience a hurricane force gale, you can step into a wind tunnel and get a taste of what 78 mile per hour winds feel like. Those outside the glass tube can watch the hair fly as a digital display above counts up the wind velocity. A note of warning: if you’re wearing contact lenses, you might want to keep your eyes closed.
Treasures of the Deep
In Treasures of the Deep, a variety of artifacts, both from the SS Republic 
and other ships, are on display. Audio handsets give descriptions of each piece by selecting the matching icon on a display panel. A large mass of coins brought up from the SS Republic in one chunk, is valued at about 1.5 million dollars. A glass case shows coins, bottles and other artifacts half buried in sand, replicating the conditions where they were found. These coins are replicas, but the ones that are polished up and presented in their own individual boxes are the real thing. Some of the items recovered from the Republic have been given to museums and others were sold to the public.
The gift shop is well-stocked with more information on undersea exploration, shipwrecks and replicas of discovered treasures.
Odyssey’s Shipwreck & Treasure Adventure
600 Decatur (2 nd floor of the Jax Brewery complex)
New Orleans, LA 70130
Phone: 504-561-5656
Hours: W-Sun 10-5
Website: www.shipwreckandtreasure.com