The salvage of historical shipwrecks and how It wIii change due to the UNESCO convention on the protection of underwater cultural heritage

Six, Bastian Alexander

The salvage of historical shipwrecks and how It wIii change due to the UNESCO convention on the protection of underwater cultural heritage

Thesis / Dissertation

2009

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Institute of Marine and Environmental Law

Faculty

Faculty of Law

Abstract

For a long time most of the shipwrecks in our oceans were out of reach for scientists or treasure hunters. With technological progress this changed. Today there is virtually no spot left that cannot be reached, investigated, and from which objects cannot be recovered. In 1994 the company Ocean Engineering was able to locate the wreck of the bulk carrier Derbyshire in less than four days although it had only a very broad indication of the ship's last position and the wreck was located more than 4,000 meters below the sea. The same company needed only one day to find the cargo door of a Boeing 747 near Hawaii in deep water as well. 1 These examples show that access to the oceans today is restricted by cost alone.

Keywords

UNESCO

cultural heritage

Reference:

Collections

Masters

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