Along the coasts in Asia, metal salvagers and recreational salvagers alike are taking shipwrecks apart piece by piece. This is becoming a major issue as it is disrupting the local marine life, as well as destroying parts of history.
There have been international laws passed, protecting some aspects of the wrecks, but that is always hard to enforce as there are some that are in international waters. One of the laws passed in the UN was that unless it was abandoned, the county who's the owner of the ship has exclusive rights to the ship where ever it lies.
There are still some wrecks that are untouched, and one of them was discovered by Robert Ballard who is famous for discovering shipwrecks, his most famous discovery being the R.M.S. Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean. He discovered the HMAS Canberra near Salvo Island.
Ballard is an advocate of the preservation of shipwrecks so we can learn as much from them as possible, since eventually the wrecks will disappear from natural degradation. So by the salvagers wrecking these shipwrecks, they are destroying any chance of extra knowledge to be gained for their own personal gain. It is sickening to see this happening before our eyes.
Sources:
1) http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-16/the-race-to-save-dozens-of-wartime-shipwrecks-from-looters/9157016
2) Lost Ships of Robert Ballard by Robert Ballard
This article was very cool and interesting. This is hard to hear that people are trying to destroy marine life. I feel these shipwrecks house so much marine life in them that taking that away is taking away their homes. Ship wrecks like the titanic are amazing, I can't believe how they are still visible today.
ReplyDeleteI don't fully see the issue with salvagers digging up the shipwrecks. If it is about marine life then if the ships naturally degrade anyway then speeding up the process doesn't seem like a big issue. It would seem beneficial to remove the non-degradable metal and resell is as a method of recycling and reducing ocean pollution. As for the use of knowledge to be gained by the ships, one round of detailed pictures should be more than enough to learn how and why the ship crashed. Overall, I would say that the salvagers are performing an economically efficient service to the ocean.
ReplyDelete