Colombia will be smarter than Bahamas

Thanks for the Link. Looks like Columbia passed the Bill in the House and expects the Senate to approve it on Monday.
Panifilo, any comments?? I think you worked hard to make that happen.
 

Colombia Passes Underwater Cultural Heritage Law

By Tommy Vawter
Wreckdivers Blog

COLOMBIA – The Government of Colombia today passed Senate bill No. 125 of 2011 - which will regulate Colombia’s Underwater Cultural Heritage. The bill states that contracts can now be made with marine exploration companies to search for and salvage shipwrecks in Colombian waters, but also that they can keep as pay up to 50 percent of what they find in what the law describes as “criterion of repetition”. In other words, all items that are basically one of kind items that are considered historically significant will be retained by the Colombian government for public display in museums. Hundreds of thousands of Silver reale and Gold doubloon coins and Gold and Silver bullion as well as other common artifacts will be split between the government and the treasure hunters.

As explained by the Colombian Minister of Culture, Mariana Garces. The rationale for the project by the Minister of Culture is that Colombia has neither the technology nor the resources to do these kinds of explorations that are highly expensive. To Garcés, this law will rescue the riches submerged and leverage them for the benefit of all Colombians and citizens of the world that will be able to see them in marine or naval museums. "The spirit of this bill was to create mechanisms to access some heritage objects that would otherwise be unattainable.

On June 8, 1708, in the heat of battle, the British Navy hunted down the Spanish galleon San Jose and sank her. The San Jose lies at 230 to 250 meters deep, well beyond conventional SCUBA, and 10 nautical miles from the port of Cartagena. She is known as the richest shipwreck in history and her registered cargo alone is estimated to be worth 10 Billion dollars in today’s money.

According to some researchers in the treasure hunting community, there are approximately 1,100 ships that were sunk or wrecked between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the territorial waters of what is now Colombia. However, some academic historians that claim these numbers are closer to only 200 shipwrecks.

Colombia has 1,600 km of coastline on the Caribbean coast and 1,300 km in the Pacific side. While not all these shipwrecks were carrying treasure when they went down, it is estimated that some 800 tons of gold and 12,000 tons of silver are scattered among the wrecks. In today’s money that comes to nearly 176 Billion Dollars, or about 332 Trillion Colombian Pesos. This is based on the current spot price for both Gold and Silver, and does not take into consideration the market value of shipwreck coins and bullion which is often considerably higher. Also not figured into these calculations is that of unregistered treasure. The Spanish were experts at smuggling treasures back to Spain in order to avoid paying taxes.

This new law is not without its critics and detractors. The Attorney General's Office in the Senate insisted that the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act is unconstitutional.

For the academic and archaeological communities, the effects of this law are considered to be disastrous. Primarily because the law will now allow for the contracting of professional treasure hunting companies who are most adept at underwater exploration and salvage and who, along with the people of Colombia, benefit financially from shipwrecks. Additionally, all the legal free market trade in shipwreck artifacts and coins will undermine many years of effort by the archaeological community to disrupt the art and antiquities trade worldwide in a misguided attempt to stem the flow of looted illicit artifacts.

Academic archaeologists have been following the same basic strategy that U.S. President, Richard Nixon instituted to fight the “War on Drugs”. For their efforts we are now seeing an unprecedented rise in the destruction of archaeological sites, while looted artifacts continue to flood the market and the illicit antiquities market is now rated second only to the International Arms Trade in volume and income.

UNESCO, (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) stated, "Enormous concern about the destruction of underwater cultural heritage sites worldwide through commercial exploitation and plunder. The situation is alarming and the threat is growing every day in many countries of our planet". Ulrike Guerin, head of underwater heritage at the international agency, recalled that "the underwater heritage should not be sold because it belongs to all mankind" and claimed the 2001 Convention is an international legal instrument ratified by 44 countries, 16 of them in Latin America, where new members are expected soon".

However, it should also be noted that Colombia, as with other Latin American and Caribbean nations also stand with the United States, the United Kingdom and some 120 other nations around the world whom have either rejected the 2001 UNESCO Convention outright, or have just ignored yet another attempt by UNESCO to extend its jurisdiction into their sovereign waters.

Some members in the academic archaeological communities have long attempted to vilify all treasure hunters, from your weekend Metal Detectorist, Arrowhead hunters on up to professional shipwreck salvors as looters, grave robbers, and destroyers of history. In their eyes, the treasure hunter is responsible for the destruction of archaeological sites around the world, motivated only by profit.

The simple truth of the matter is that many part-time treasure hunters are in fact amateur archaeologists with a deep appreciation of history and a strong desire to protect that history. As for the large successful professional treasure hunting companies, the treasure hunting industry has evolved from rag tag groups of adventurers of the 60’s into professional business organizations. Today, most of them either employ full time archaeologists on their staff or have arrangements with professional archaeologists to assist when needed. These folks are doing some outstanding archaeology and unlike most institutional archaeologists they often post their archaeological reports on-line for free, and for all to see.

There is a new paradigm emerging in archaeology with the passage of this law and Colombia is now on the leading edge. The Islands of The Bahamas is also in the process of implementing a very similar program to recover and preserve its underwater cultural heritage.

A similar and very successful model was first implemented back in the 60’s in the U.S. State of Florida, when treasure hunters first discovered shipwrecks of the 1715 treasure fleet in the shallow waters along Florida’s east coast. State archaeologists worked with the treasure hunters and established a permitting program, and this program eventually lead to the discovery of many other shipwrecks. As a direct result of the work of treasure hunters and the State archaeologists, the State of Florida is still receiving 20 percent of the treasure hunters finds today, and Florida museums across the state are filled with amazing shipwreck artifacts seen by thousands of residents and tourist every day.
 

The academic archaeologists must be fuming over this. Pretty soon the only way for them to get employment will be to work for a treasure hunting company.
 

Salvor6 said:
The academic archaeologists must be fuming over this. Pretty soon the only way for them to get employment will be to work for a treasure hunting company.
Click to expand...

It happened in Portugal in 1993
 

Arquenauticas is a Portugese treasure hunting company that has been excavating Portugese wrecks in Mozambique for the last 15 years. They don't recognize the UNESCO convention and don't recognize any claims by Portugal on wrecks in their (Moz) waters. Thats the way it will soon be all over the world.
 

Salvor6 said:
The academic archaeologists must be fuming over this. Pretty soon the only way for them to get employment will be to work for a treasure hunting company.
Click to expand...

Ugh! There's that 4 letter word!

Maybe if we paid them to sit behind their desks and be as productive as they have been in the past, they may not be as grumpy.
 

Time.

The parts of the argument that is left out are (1), the factor of time as it pertains to the cultural heritage, and (2), the natural degradation of the sites over time.

It does no one living any good to not see and appreciate the cultural artifacts that can be brought up now if they don't see the light of day for centuries. Generations of citizens will live and die without seeing and learning about the underwater cultural heritage that they could appreciate while they still live. That would also build an interest in (and public demand for) shipwrecks and history that is much more powerful than an archeological thesis and a bunch of artifacts in a drawer neither of which the public ever sees.

Secondly, these sites are degraded over time, and some catastrophically destroyed. They will never come back, nor will anything ever be learned from them.

Like a lot of things in life, waiting until things are perfect most of the time results in nothing at all being accomplished.

The argument about the illicit trade in artifacts is bogus. It will never be eliminated as long as people have money and they are interested in history. Let me say that the archies could motivate these same folks if they could simply come out of their privileged closets and relate to them - and us.

While maybe Mel Fisher's salvage of the Atocha wasn't perfect, it was darn good for the time. I had the privilege to speak with Duncan Mathewson a few times about it, and I feel that after centuries of hurricanes, there wasn't much more that could have been gleaned from the operation. The one thing I can think of is the locational precision, but that wasn't possible at the time and might not have resulted in much more either.

I say bring it up carefully, log the data, and display it. We'll all win.

Kudos to Columbia.
 

Salvor6 said:
The academic archaeologists must be fuming over this. Pretty soon the only way for them to get employment will be to work for a treasure hunting company.
Click to expand...

I would love to see Alexandre's face when he's told the only jobs available are with the treasure hunters!
 

Very Good...
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

lionfish...every where...on the wrecks...

⬅️ Previous Thread

MDing in Nicaragua

Next Thread ➡️

Top Member Reactions

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)

Latest Discussions

Back
Top