Underwater treasures

After lecture of "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson

I were thinking about underwater treasure hunting from perspective of ethics )

I mean on one hand we have Odessey, Mark Hatcher, Mel Fisher and others spending money on searching and recovering gold, silver and china from different boats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzSGK6qU7LI

on the other guys from archeological museums concerned about the heritage

http://muablog.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/so...ohn-broadwater/

Are the first Pirates

and the treasures should belong to governments

or maby they are brave explorers pushing the limits to find and recover stuff from water and deserve better press

cause gold stolen by lets say spain from south america does not belong to spanish government but to the finder?

I have very mixed feelings and I'm curious to hear Your opinion

ps. I'm not sure if this a good place for this topic, please move it to conservation if it better fits in there

Bart

I have had this discussion with friends many times before. However each time we have come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong with it at all.

Many significant artifacts that Odyssey have found have ended up in museums and the hand of governments anyhow. If they manage to make a buck along the way, well good for them. In reality I see it better that someone gets their hands on the goods then something being left at the bottom of the ocean forever, not to mention that many vessels that they have identified over the years have also given full closure to the families of lost ones that never made it home.

According to US Federal court they are "pirates" and will have to return 17 tons of gold and silver coins to Spain

My opinion is that you can keep whatever is found under international waters. In this Odyssey case, they lied to the government about the purpose of their work and even tried to change the name of the wreck to Black Swan...

Assume you mean the June announcement ?

Their share price took quite a hit when that one was announced :-

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/dynamic_chartin...;charttype=line

Ouch.

Paul C

Wow. that was a big fall in stock price.

I would consider livong as an outcast with 17 tons of gold on some remote island far away from US or Spanish government

Even with black eye patch and parrot on my arm

So lets assume I'm a pirate in spe

Yo ho ho ho and bottle of rum

mmmm - there is no place far away from the US Government - trust me I live on one of the so called 'Tax Haven' islands.

The IRS are have pretty aggressive powers and are not afraid to use them on their citizens - or to put pressure on offshore banking jurisdictions.

Odessey just spent some months here both finding HMS Victory and looking for another Spanish wreck here off our coast.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/art...torys-gold.html

They are currently trying to do a deal with the relevant governments to salve the Victory (at about 100m, or so they say).

The stunt that they pulled with the Spanish government pretty dubious to say the best.

Having said that the tactics employed by governments in such deals have not always been squeaky clean either.

Paul C

" ship was never abandoned by Spain" yea they just had the sentry duty around it for last 200 years.

It is so typical of governments to claim anything to be the "sovereign immune"

and that someone should give back goods recovered on international waters.

" ship was never abandoned by Spain" yea they just had the sentry duty around it for last 200 years.

It is so typical of governments to claim anything to be the "sovereign immune"

and that someone should give back goods recovered on international waters.

The thing is that AFAIK it was not on international waters but spanish waters... I wonder, if they ever give the coins back, how many will "disappear" in Spain passing through the government hands... I know my country!

Agree completely - Odyssey got screwed. IF the gold is somehow declared "never abandoned by Spain" (ruling so far is non-binding and in appeal) they should just say "okeydoke - go fetch it"...and toss it back overboard where they found it. Which I believe still hasn't been totally disclosed, aside from where it ISN'T (how far out from coastal waters...)

I'm not a fan of people stripping wrecks for portholes and stuff just to line their mantels at home, and certainly some care and empathy should be used around wrecks with remains (how many of them aren't going to have remains, though? Not like shipwrecks are just fun diversions for the crew....). But when a company goes to all the effort to do historical research, sonar surveys, etc. and eventually scores in the needle-in-a-haystack search for something that went down over 2 centuries ago, and then mounts thee not-inconsiderable costs of doing the actual deep-sea salvage work...sorry, they get to keep what they kill in my book. The original "owner" already wrote it off, unless they can show they had an active, continuing search to prove they never did "abandon" it. They'd have to show they never collected on any shipping insurance for that matter, too. (At which point the entity with the 'claim' would be the insurer, not the insured!) Even then - salvage rules may apply.

What about all the outfits that are re-floating logs that sank during the old lumber flotillas down the major rivers...or the ones that are cutting off old tree-trunks that have been sticking up from the bottom of deep man-made reservoirs for decades in nearly oxygen-free water? Are they supposed to "return them" to the original lumber mill or land owners who "lost them" in the first place??? And that's inside the U.S. - not out in what is well recognized by international agreement as no one's sovereign territory.

After that stunt they are not a good stock opportunity, that is for sure.

But wonder if main persons in company are still main shareholders, with any company like this is better to sell your own stock pretty soon.

Then as an employe even if a main one, you re not responsible with your private money.

@RTRSKI "re-floating logs that sank during the old lumber flotillas down the major rivers" -remember there is no money in that so governments are not so keen to look after some lumber to repair they falling budgets

There's actually quite a lot of money in it for the guys doing the lumber recovery. A lot of that old-growth long-leaf pine just can't be found anymore - it's totally gone or protected. A good log fetches a pretty penny, and the costs for floating them are not extreme - its just dirty and hard finding them.

The DM on our last liveaboard did some of the 'finders' dives in his time off the boat. I think he said he was paid $100 - 200 for just finding and tagging a log. If that's just the finder's fee, you can imagine what each log itself must be worth.

It's still not a lot of money compared to government budgets*, or a near billion-dollar gold haul, certainly, so I get your point. But the principal's the same, innit? Basically you're saying is governments follow 'situational ethics' if there's enough payout.

[*It's quite lucrative for the niche companies doing the work. I've seen that one of the primary recovery companies in the southern U.S. charges almost $300 for a toilet seat made out of the stuff. Flooring and lumber produced from the heart of 200 year old longleaf pine is both gorgeous and seriously expensive. I do a little woodworking - and I couldn't afford it. ]

Beautiful photos, thanks for sharing.

My 2c worth on this - is didn't Spain plunder the gold in the first place from South American countries?.

Maybe Spain should send it back to them in return for all the stuff they took without permission over the years they ruled those countries

Karl