Underwater Cultural Heritage and Shipwreck Salvage and Removal: The Synergy of Legal Regimes

• Pages: 1-8

LEX PORTUS VOL 9 ISS 6 2023

ISSN 2524-101X

eISSN 2617-541X

DOI 10.26886/2524-101X.9.6.2023.1

Underwater Cultural Heritage

and Shipwreck Salvage and Removal:

The Synergy of Legal Regimes

Andrii Omelchenko*

*Research fellow, Department of Maritime & Customs Law, National University Odessa Law Academy (23, Fontanska doroha St., Odessa, Ukraine)

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3199-9373

ABSTRACT

The article traces the peculiarities of the legal regimes of sunken ships as objects of Underwater

Cultural Heritage (UCH) in addition to those that have yet to acquire such a status due to the short

period after sinking. The current UCH regime fails to comprehensively address issues of maritime

environment protection. Furthermore, the dynamics of joining the Wreck Removal Convention

2007 require revitalizing states’ eorts to form a global regime for the removal of sunken ships,

in addition to extending the scope of application of such a regime to the open sea and Area. The

article examines the synergy of regimes of sunken vessels and notes the need for a global and

coordinated approach to protecting the maritime environment, including shipwreck removal, to

achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

CITATION

Omelchenko, A. (2023). Underwater

Cultural Heritage and Shipwreck

Salvage and Removal: The Synergy

of Legal Regimes. Lex Portus, 9(6),

7–14.

https://doi.org/10.26886/2524-

101X.9.6.2023.1

KEYWORDS

underwater cultural heritage,

UNCLOS’82, 2001 UNESCO

Convention, Wreck Removal

Convention 2007, jurisdiction, legal

regime, maritime spaces

The journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-

NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Introduction

The UNESCO publication of its Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural

Heritage (2001 UNESCO Convention) estimates that there are over 3 million shipwrecks

spread across ocean oors worldwide (UNESCO, 2007). These shipwrecks contain jewels,

weapons, and many cultural and historical artifacts. Modern technological progress makes

it possible to reach shipwrecks, study and reproduce the events of distant times, and acquire

knowledge about ancient maritime trade, shipbuilding, long-distance expeditions, etc. The

salvage of historical sunken ships involves numerous aspects: scientic, nancial, political,

informational, and organizational. They form a series of complex tasks and must have

a reliable legal basis. The 2001 UNESCO Convention and UNCLOS’82 provide such shipwrecks

protection as objects of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH). The 2001 UNESCO Convention

was adopted to complement the provisions in UNCLOS’82 for strengthening UCH

protection (Takahashi, 2023, p. 3). However, as the research emphasizes, it created a rather

complex cooperation mechanism between states (Šošić, 2023). The regional (European)

level of cooperation is represented by the European Convention on the Protection of

the Archaeological Heritage (revised) 1992 and Recommendation of the Parliamentary

Assembly of the Council of Europe on Underwater Cultural Heritage 1978, Convention for

the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean and

its Protocols. The national level is represented by domestic legislation, for example, the UK

Protection of Wrecks Act of 1973, the Australian Historic Shipwrecks Acts of 1981 and 1976,

etc. Furthermore, the legal regime of protection and study of historical shipwrecks interacts

with the regime of ships that sank at a later period, the salvage of which is determined