Why does the Convention refuse the commercial exploitation of underwater sites?
First and foremost, underwater cultural heritage is not “treasure”, but “cultural heritage”. A wreck is not only a cargo, but also the remains of a ship, its passengers and their lives. A submerged city is as precious to archaeologists and historians as Pompeii, as such sites give valuable testimony to historic events, such as the sinking of the Titanic, the discovery of new continents or the defeat of Kublai Khan off the coast of Japan. Commercial enterprises, in search of sellable objects, rarely document sites they exploit and focus on gold, silver or ceramic objects, as conservation is less costly. On several occasions they even dumped parts of the cargo recovered from a wreck back into the sea (destroying it forever), when they were not in a sellable state or in order to keep prices on the market high. In many of such cases, no documentation is made available to archaeologists, no thought is given to the site and its historical context, and much of the most valuable information is
