wreck diving

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Normunds

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I would like to propose a new discussion about the legal and ethical aspects of wreck diving in your countries.
Starting with my country - Latvia - It appears that some people I have been in contact with ( who been diving to the wrecks already for many years and know coordinates) actually are demolishing wrecks - hunting for the color metal and items they could sell. On one occasion we dived to the wreck and discovered that some parts of it where fresh cut by autogenous ( that you know needs serious preparation).
Unfortunately until this day diving on wrecks is not much restricted and controlled by legislation which allows people to behave under water like savages. We do not have any official institution, which could somehow organize and control the issues related to underwater archeology.
I am going to post this as a new tread in general scuba forum.
I and I think I am not the only one would be very much interested to see how these issues are regulated and what do you all think about it!
Normunds
 
All harvesting of wreckage is illegal and all wrecks remain property of the crown. There must be written permission and the insurance companies also have a say. I suppose this is not a good time to mention that I have some brass portholes for sale?

:mean:

Cheers ears,

The Gasman


 
In the Great Lakes, the cold freshwater preserves wrecks far longer than in salt water. Corrosion rates are much slower and there are no shipworms to deal with. As a result and due to a lot of rocky reefs, this region has the best collection of wrecks in the world including numerous schooners and barques from the mid-1800's. Wrecks are the reason most people dive up here and consequently their preservation is a big issue.

Not too long ago it was common for people to plunder wrecks under the logic that "if I don't take it, the next guy will." To their credit, a lot of these divers turned their finds over to museums and a lot of fine shipwreck and maritime museums now exist.

Today however, it is a felony in all the Great Lakes states and provinces to bring anything up off a wreck without a license. You can go to jail for it. The mindset has changed remarkably and very few divers here would ever consider taking something off a wreck. Scuba divers will often report other divers who steal from wrecks. In several cases, divers even turned in their buddies. In Michigan, it's as simple as an anynomous toll-free call to the state's anti-poaching hotline.

The debate in the Great Lakes now is if it should be acceptable for archeologists to remove artifacts from a wreck to be placed in a museum for the benefit of the non-diving public or if nothing at all should be taken from a wreck by anybody in order to preserve the quality of the wreck for future sport divers.

I am also aware that there is strong support in Ontario for closing off all wrecks to diving outside of their monitored underwater parks. In addition, many of the state and provinces have protections for human remains on wrecks such as a ban on photographing them.


 
As opposed to saltwater and warm temps which would have any non-noble metal oxidized in 50 to 100 years.There is big stink raised on tech boards about this.Unfortunately no one seems to be rushing out to map and do a proper archeological surveyof the applicable wrecks.The guys who do dive these(and you know who you is)for the most part are very willing to assist anyone willing to get the training and spend the money to go dive these wrecks.They are usually situated in 180+ ft as anything shallower has been hit hard.While I agree with historical preservation there is also the Admiralty & Salvage laws that pertain to these wrecks as well to consider.
 
those who steal stuff from wrecks DESERVE to get bent.
 
Hi Mirage,
Take my advice - stop biching - If you have to say something - be constructive but it is not good to wish someone to get bent - even to the bad guys.
There are other ways how to deal with it.
I wish safe diving to all of as.
Normunds
 
I agree nobody DESERVES to get bent. But I also strongly agree that nobody should take anything from wrecks either. I love diving wrecks and love to "find" things but never would consider taking anything off the wreck. It's kinda hard for me to think of the non-diver and the museums because I think if you want to see what's in the water you should learn to dive and leave it there!
Ldreamin
 
For those of you in the US - be glad you don't have quite the same 'wrecking culture' as exists in the UK!

At the moment there is a lot of political activity to get diving on all wrecks banned. This is simply because of 50 years of uncontrolled plunder of wrecks. I have recently dived wrecks that I first dived 9 or 10 years ago, and have seen the deterioration myself. Unfortunately, politicians have decided, that there are votes in stopping divers plundering wrecks. There are a large number of ships survivors 'clubs' or 'associations' that are trying to get diving on 'their ship' banned due to the fact that divers now have a public immage of removing everything posible from wrecks. Unfortunately, the government is listening to them.

There have been some diving groups that have been quite consciencous in talking to survivor groups (article in this months 'Diver') for example diving on HMS Dasher (more than 400 people died when this aircraft carrier exploded and sank) - where they took video recordings of the wreck specially for the families of those that died. This was then completely spoilt some months later when another group dived the wreck and brought up large ammounts of brass having had no contact with the relatives group. When they found out, they were obviously not ammused. To a lot of the survivor and relatives group, it is the equivalent of grave robbing, since usually bodies weren't recovered.

With the state of the accessible wrecks (everything possible removed) divers are going for the deeper pristine wrecks to remove things. If there hadn't been the culture of destroying the wrecks then we would still have plenty of interesting wrecks to explore, and wrecks that were contravertial (HM Ships for example) could be avoided.

Whilst removing bits from wrecks is of questionable ethics, it does two things, firstly it stops future generations from enjoying the wreck, but more importantly, the more you have a wrecking culture, the more that all divers get labelled 'wreckers', and eventually people in authority will decide that it is unaceptable and start putting restrictions on it, as the UK government are trying to do.

There was recent talk by charter boat skippers in the orkneys (scappa flow) to ban crowbars, hammers and chisels from their boats, but this hasn't come about, simply because so many divers take them they would loose too much business if they refused them.

Sobering thoughts!

Jon T

PS - you just have to look at some of the Andrea Doria web sites to realise just what lengths people will go to to get something from a wreck - in this case it is china they want rather than brass fittings - how many people have died because they tried that bit too hard to get 'their' bit of china? 4 last year?

PPS in the wreck amnesty held recently, over 3 months, 14,000 items were reported as having been removed from UK wrecks! (this figure is from memory, and I will have to look up the accurate figure)
 
Hi Turnerjd,

After reading your post I can kind of see where todays situation in my country leads as in the future.
Unfortunatelly our government doesn't care about such issues and I think that it won't for the next years to come either.
N.

 
I've read about the situation in the UK and it's hard to blame the families or the government for their position on this issue given the strong evidence of wrecking that takes place. I have no problem with a worldwide ban on sport diving wrecks that serve as graves under 100 years old. Diving these wrecks is no different than tomb raiding and those who steal artifacts or god forbid -human remains- as souvenirs, ought to spend the same about of time in jail as any other grave robber. If we treat possession of shipwreck artifacts the same as drug possession, we'll quickly cut down on this problem. Divers who steal from wrecks should have their gear confiscated. I feel the same about charter boat captains who allow wreckers to use their boats. If these rules are enforced by law on all sport divers and boat captains no one captain's business will suffer. Maybe it's time to draft a new international treaty to rewrite the Admiralty & Salvage laws.
 
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