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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;krispy, post: 698817, member: 19065&quot;]It&#039;s hardly plundering, taking by force, as the commercial salvage company isn&#039;t at confrontational war with the nations. These wrecks have been abandoned and those nations have not claimed nor made recovery efforts to retrieve their vessels, nor placed off limits the site of the wrecks which they were not specifically able to identify the locations of, at least not until someone else showed a profitable interest and success in doing so. </p><p><br /></p><p>Nations such as Britain and Spain, who possess the ships manifest logs, documentation of cargo and could trace current living ancestors of lost sea-goers to whom the gold, silver and other artefacts belonged to and which were lost on those ships have not used these tools which groups like Odyssey have done so in their research to locate lost ships cargoes. </p><p><br /></p><p>In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, bodies were attempted to be recovered and may still have been located underwater in the sunken vessels in the days following the attack, but others were not found and remain entombed in the sea. However, while organic remains at Pearl Harbor <i>may</i> still be present as the site is a memorial and place of respected burial from events which transpired in the recent past, it is not likely there&#039;s much there. There is an issue with the warm temperature of the water at Pearl Harbor as well as the opposite effects of temperatures in the North Atlantic. The Titanic is supposedly respected as a place of burial, yet there are reportedly dives there annually, some of which do not respect the underwater site looking for more fame and publicity locating aspects of the ship. There are attempts to protect the sea bed around the Titanic and to prevent future human desecration. </p><p><br /></p><p>Now about water temperatures, ships lost at sea long ago are very unlikely to bear any trace of human remains, especially the nearer to the surface they are and warmer the water temperatures at the site are. The only suspected wrecks of the ancient era that may yet reveal human remains (but so far have not, to my knowledge) are those laying on the bottom of the Black Sea, in the anoxic or oxygen depraved waters, so called &#039;poison waters&#039; which aide in slowing the rate of decay of organic matter. For this reason ancient ships made of wood in these waters are very well preserved. Bone and flesh may be found but so far have not been found. The warmer the water and the more oxygen rich the water is and the more abundt the sea life, the less human remains linger over time.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course there are many ethical issues to consider in recovery of wrecks and places of tragedy where people lost their lives. The closer we get to contemporary times the nearer we come to sensitivity to a given site and the respect &#039;owed&#039; to descendants and widowed/orphaned, et al. families has a huge impact. How much do we know of ancient Greek and Roman shipwreck dead or related families? Very little and underwater recovery and archaeology go on regularly. It&#039;s a different approach from the commercial of course but certain factors are not as pointed out and publicaly contested. As well the more difficult the scenario gets to sort out amongst the parties and their perspectives on recovery in contemporary sites. However, when we see nations citing international maritime law and seeking to gain back the cargo that another group recovered, it&#039;s less for reasons of cultural repatriation or for defending the rights of the families that might be traced back multiple generations. Yes 17th Century canons are valuable but they are not practical salvage for recovery and use in the 21st Century, They no longer serve a Naval defensive purpose beyond a historical role and are instead valued for history as highly as the precious metals cargoes are. Instead it appears those nations demanding the recovered items or profit taking from them are exerting their power and influence over foreign commercial enterprise. They can apply force, law and threaten imprisonment and financial ruin on recovery efforts in the name of repatriation. I think there&#039;s a lot of this sort of thing that occurs and is what the more successful groups like Odyssey have had to cope with to come as far as they have and to remain free and operable. I&#039;m sure they have curtailed their operations and negotiate extensively the deeper they get into this business and setting precedents with various nations. </p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s hard to say who is right in various finds, each one is unique, and especially difficult when perceptions are distorted in the media and international courts about who is doing what or disrespecting, profiting or intruding on/from wrecks. But it seems safe to say that when someone gets their hands on highly valuable precious metals and artefacts made from them, someone else is always going to find a reason or excuse why they should entirely have it instead of another or why they deserve to profit from anothers effort. That seems the nature of this, of greedy or selfish intentions, and as ugly as any salvage operation which intentionally would loot or desecrate a site. Of course looting happens happens and in some cases those nations and such protective laws should be applied to defend against this, but there is a limited amount of this at deep water sites due to the difficulty of reaching the wrecks. Hence the danger of pirates looting the salvage crews mentioned in an earlier post. I&#039;d wager though in the case of precious metal cargoes that manipulation of authority and law is more susceptible and in play than is fair application of the same laws and use of authority.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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