Our cartoonist Rico Oldfield is old-school when it comes to wrecks. He believes that 'trinket litter' is fair game for sport divers, and that there is a conspiracy among a privileged few players to keep the wreck game for themselves
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High priests and holy wreck
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN LAST DECEMBER'S NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC challenged my intelligence for the last time! Bob Ballard, once a positive force in the world of marine archaeology, was again preaching that only the high priests of marine archaeology should lay their hands on "holy wreck", because the rest of us are clodhopping idiots. In this light, the remains of "his" Titanic were being violated by sacrilegious "recovery".
Climb into the ring swinging your mitts, and you have to be ready to take a punch. So, as a commercial-recovery professional with an enduring affection for the rights of sport divers, I am putting the gloves on!
My diving career started when the "hands-off" debate barely existed, thanks to self-regulation coupled with fair recovery of wreck regulations. This lasted until a minority lobby group started a campaign to limit what could be touched on the seabed.
Let's get one component of this debate clear: professional marine archaeologists operate in a highly competitive field. And it is a poor competitor in any field who, finding that he cannot challenge his rivals' professionalism, simply challenges their credentials.
Conservation is about maintaining things in their most favourable environment. Leaving historically and commercially valuable human artefacts to decompose gradually in the most corrosive environment on Earth - that's not conservation.
Shipwrecks are, sadly, a renewable resource. They rain down to the seabed regularly, not by divine design but by accident. They are, at worst, large-scale litter, and at best time-capsules sheltering treasures of human value. So when you hear cries to leave such sites to rot in the name of some preservation ethic, look for the hidden agenda.
This usually revolves around the preservationist's career prospects. If an agency or institution might employ you to study or preserve a historic site, it's in your interests to encourage exclusivity. That's why the most vociferous members of the "no-recovery" lobby all have professional long-term liaisons with such agencies.
To those hard-working academics who play by the same rules as everyone else, I apologise for what might seem a general assault on an area of valuable expertise.
The professional marine archaeologists in my own team belong to the proactive school of marine archaeology.
They see every wreck site as a time-capsule, not deliberately buried with a "do-not-open-until" date, but accidentally lost, and with any possible message for posterity in danger of being lost forever.
I fail to see the logic in any argument that proposes sacred status for sunken remains, other than in special cases such as military wrecks, where the sacrifice that has taken place in our names renders due respect necessary for generations.
Human remains are a critical element, though the sea has little respect for this argument. Sooner or later, it metabolises any such remains into other sea-life.
We are genetically programmed hunter-gatherers. The rights of the finder, through luck or skill, have always held some place in the values of every society. Some regulatory mechanism to prevent mindless pillage is valid, but this leaves ballparks full of less-sensitive "trinket litter" lying in wait for lucky sport divers.
The old Receiver of Wreck rules applied during my trinket-gathering phase. All my portholes and ships' lamps are owned legitimately, and I didn't have to buy them back from the Crown. Someone had to prove prior ownership and, if so, compensate my efforts as finder.
Anyone can win the Lottery, but to be a "finder" you have to go out and look. To look under water, you need to gain the necessary skills and equipment. I learned most of my wreck-hunting and recovery skills as a sport diver, and it taught me more about ethics and safety than any commercial course available then or now.
The elected bodies of sport divers have the power to claim authority for their members in any regulation that threatens to restrict access to opportunities rising from their special skills. Sport divers come from every commercial and academic background, yet their counsel seems absent from whatever started the "hands off" hysteria that binds divers and gags their leaders in aimless protocol.
Behold: Rico's Five Laws of Shipwreck:
1) Any human wreck or artefact on the seabed, if potentially recoverable, will in time be recovered.
2) Any restriction on access to said wreck governs not if, but when and by whom, anything recoverable will be retrieved.
3) The commercial value of any retrieved artefact will ultimately be realised by a private individual or group.
4) Any privileged group immune to restrictions will have privileged access to any recovery and its potentially profitable opportunities.
5) The poor Joe Diver who found the wreck first will probably get shafted!
Preservation of any human artefact under water is impossible. Conservation is the only option and this is possible only through disciplined recovery, by sport divers or professionals.
I challenge the motives of any "expert" who questions that, and so should you. As a Florida fisherman once said to me: "An expert? An 'ex' is a has-been, and a 'spurt' is a drip under pressure"!
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