After 30 plus years working and playing on the Gulf of Mexico, I have never come across a floating or partially submerged shipping container; however, there is some money to be made on something else, that believe it or not, is somewhat prevalent in the northern GOM, and I assume, other parts of the world as well. Seismic vessel tail sleds. Seismic vessels (usually 200-400ft) used for oil exploration will “drag” cables in excess of 5 miles in length behind them. At the end of those cables is a sled usually constructed similar to a small lake pontoon boat, usually strapped with a number of highly visible “Norwegian” buoys, a high intensity strobe, several radar reflectors and some sort of GPS beacon, transponder or transmitter, an electronics package that is used by the towing seismic vessel. This package is primarily used to give operators on the vessel the location of the sled while towing the cable, not after it has broken loose. Reeling in a six mile long cable(or less if something has gone awry in the cable) in heavy seas after a sled has departed takes hours, and by that time the seismic vessel is long out of range of the locating transmitter. Although more and more seismic fleets use chaseboats, which usually follow close behind the tail buoy and sled, which could possibly retrieve a “loose” sled, some fleets still do not. I have had three instances where I have profited from finding these sleds, or the remnants of one. First one, about 40 miles out of Galveston, I was on a sixty foot sportfisherman, we put a line on what appeared to be an almost undamaged sled, towed it to town, made a call, and a few hours later, a guy from Houston came down and gave us a check for 4 grand. He had a crane truck pick it out of the water and put it on a flatbed. Second time, off of the Mississippi coast, one night, calm seas, came across a radar target, put a light on it, turned out to be what was left of heavily damaged tail sled, grabbed the electronics package off of it(it was just heavily taped), then removed the buoys which sent it to the bottom. After making a call at the dock a courier came to pick it up, handed us five hundred cash, which was the reward on the beacon. We had tried to bargain for more, but the guy said, “if that is not enough, keep YOUR beacon”. Also the rep told us that sled had been lost for about three months. And the third was an almost identical to the situation off of Mississippi;however, this was off of North Padre Island. These companies, I believe, really want you to either tow it or sink it (I don't think any of the three I had business with weighed more than a ton), and they really appreciate the lat and long where you found it, which you would certainly have in your log. Any sailors that have had any sea time in the Northern Gulf, and I suppose in other offshore oilfields in other parts of the world have probably experienced one of these seismic operations (my knowledge is limited to the GOM). They start screaming on 16 if you get within 10 miles of ‘em, especially if your cpa will be less than that. And they just adore shrimp trawlers on AP with the “captain” either asleep or out on the back deck. They start shining some real "badboy" spotlights, start shooting flares, sending chaseboats, oh man, it can get exciting. One sure isn’t going to make a million like Kacper and his bud, but if any of you ever come across one, depending on the situation and your destination, you might make a few bucks for the fuel or bar kitty. You can usually always find some phone number somewhere on what you find. Even the lat and long may be valuable, I just never left one alone.