A word to the wise, and the ethical--don't loot wrecks:

[Searcaigh]

When I lived in Saudi, BSAC divers were known as wreckers and most that I knew had more than their fair share of portholes and other artefacts from wrecks around the Jeddah area.

There was one person whose flat had so much stuff from the "Mecca wreck" that we always joked that if you wanted to dive that wreck it would be easier to flood his flat and dive there. As already mentioned above about not requiring a weight belt, he carried enough weight in the form of heavy hammer, chisel, small crowbar etc. to avoid wearing any weights.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

I'd much rather have scientists make that call even if your nick has Dr. in it.

//LN

That's nice, but your preferences don't govern how the rest of the world interacts with objects that would otherwise sit undiscovered on the ocean floor until their inevitable destruction by the sea. Which is not to say that all wrecks are equally fair targets, but as so often happens, the gross overreaching of regulators makes the whole concept suspect.

 

[Redshift]

Yeah, just imagine the historical knowledge that would have been lost but for the confiscation of a couple more old cannon.

/sarcasm

The knowledge comes mainly from the study in situ of the artifacts, although one cannot rule out knowledge from the artifacts themselves without them having been studied, can we?
And, if found to be common artifacts, it's possible for those who found them to be legally granted the permission to keep them. If valuable artifacts are found, they get paid for them. In 2009 a guy found some gold objects in Scotland and got ~$650000 for them, the market price.

 

[yardpro]

its no different than walking in the woods and finding general lees pistol...it's yours.

---------- Post added May 16th, 2014 at 06:25 AM ----------

without people being able to profit from the wrecks there would much less desire to find them int he first place. and many of the discovered sites would have remained hidden under the waves.


and really... what great secret can we unlock by scientists being the ones to find a cannon....

he.. guess what we found out... blackbeard had an iron cannon on queen anns revenge..... we can now cure cancer.....

 

[Wookie]

its no different than walking in the woods and finding general lees pistol...it's yours.

Unless you're walking in a forest in a National Park, State Park, National Forest, State Forest, BLM ground, National Recreation Area, or private ground owned by someone else. Which compromises 99.999999999999999% of the forests. It might be better stated that if you're walking through your own backyard and find General Lee's pistol, it's yours.

The same might be said of the oceans. If you're in State Water, or federal waters, or on a wreck that is still owned by the insurance company or was a warship or was chartered by the government or has historical or cultural significance, you're pretty well screwed. There are more than a few East Coast wreckers who will attest to the fact that NCIS will knock on your door, and will recover your artifacts.

Personally, I don't care. I can't see learning anything from a vessel for which plans are readily available, or which was obviously an armed merchantman in recent (later than 1500 or so) history. We know what they ate, we know what they drank, we know they had poor dental care and scurvy. But that's just me.

 

[Diver0001]

its no different than walking in the woods and finding general lees pistol...it's yours.

Bit of a nuance needed.

When a ship sinks there are several stages it goes through before becoming a derelict.

The ship has an owner and usually an insurance company
The cargo has an owner and usually an insurance company

All these parties have to figure out if something can and will be salvaged. Until that's all done then a sunken ship is like a car that broke down on the side of the road. you can't just haul it back to your house and call it yours.

If the owner of the ship/cargo and any stakeholders in salvaging have decided to declare it lost then the responsibility defaults within territorial waters to the country it's sunk in. Then the government decides what can be done. It might be opened for diving or protected for historical/archaeological reasons etc. The point here being that someone decided how that wreck will be used by divers and you have to know what they decided to avoid trouble. That's what happened here. The divers didn't follow the government's rules and were arrested for that.

In addition, some countries, like the UK declare all of its war wrecks monuments/graves and enforce UK law for monuments/graves regardless of where the wreck is. There are rules for these wrecks. You can usually dive on them but you can't move or salvage anything or photograph/film human remains. Other countries, like Canada have a "don't touch" policy for all wrecks under their jurisdiction, regardless of how silly it is.

Some ships, however, have been declared lost by all the stakeholders, they don't have any interest for a government and they're in international waters. These wrecks are really the derelicts and THAT is when it's like finding an old piece of junk in the forest. Salvage away.

So yeah. It's not all as simple as finding something in the forest and saying "finders keepers".

R..

 

[Redshift]

Some ships, however, have been declared lost by all the stakeholders, they don't have any interest for a government and they're in international waters. These wrecks are really the derelicts and THAT is when it's like finding an old piece of junk in the forest. Salvage away.

Although much more interesting for the divers coming after to actually see stuff instead of a bunch of holes.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

That's nice, but your preferences don't govern how the rest of the world interacts with objects that would otherwise sit undiscovered on the ocean floor until their inevitable destruction by the sea. Which is not to say that all wrecks are equally fair targets, but as so often happens, the gross overreaching of regulators makes the whole concept suspect.

I think most every archeologist on the planet would disagree with you.

Perhaps it comes from not understanding why people need to litter their homes with artifacts from wrecks ... once you've taken it, no one else who ever dives that wreck will ever be able to see it. Perhaps that's unimportant when you're diving in an area where there are hundreds of wrecks, and relatively few people going to see them. Out here it's frowned upon to remove artifacts from a wreck ... so much so that I remember several years ago a diver coming up with a porthole, and the boat operator being so upset that he made the guy go put it back on the next dive ... suffice it to say that diver didn't find a lot of support from the other divers on the boat either.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added May 16th, 2014 at 07:26 AM ----------

its no different than walking in the woods and finding general lees pistol...it's yours.

It depends on the wreck, I suppose. Some have historical value. Some are grave sites. Some reside within waters such as national parks where taking things are expressly forbidden. Some even require a permit simply to dive on them. Taking artifacts from these can range from unethical to illegal, depending on the circumstances.

In some cases, taking artifacts from a wreck can result in that wreck being placed off limits to divers ... particularly when it's in waters under the territorial control of a government entity or private party.

This wreck is one such ... it laid, essentially as you see it in the pictures ... for 75 years. Two people died there. It's in a national park, and the park service declared it a grave site. Despite that, within just a few years of its discovery, wreckers essentially dismantled it, taking whatever they could pry loose with a crowbar. The "f**k you, I've got mine" mindset amounted to little more than robbing a grave yard ... and for a time resulted in nobody being granted a permit to dive the site. Today, despite it being in cold fresh water that could have preserved it intact for divers to visit for the next century or more, it's little more than a chassis ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[drbill]

I'm not into wreck diving and I don't understand why others are so fascinated with it unless they dive wrecks of historic significance (or ones with valuable cargo). One of the few wrecks I dive frequently is an old Navy glassbottom boat (the Pisces) here in our dive park. It has historical value to me since its captain and owner "stole" a girlfriend from me way back in the 70s... just before his vessel hit our breakwater (hmmm). Mel Fischer took many of the artifacts off the wreck of the Valiant (1930) in adjacent Descanso Bay. I've never taken anything off any of the wrecks except pictures.

 

[Diver0001]

I'm not into wreck diving and I don't understand why others are so fascinated with it .

For me it's marine life and the story. I haven't had the opportunity to dive on many "unknown" wrecks but finding a wreck and then working on making a postive id is a lot of fun.

The other main reason I like wrecks is because they attact a lot of life. Some of the North Sea wrecks are the only places I know of that you can still see fully grown Atlantic cod.

R..