When fishermen use dragnets to try and catch a particular species of fish, anything else that comes up in their nets--much of it lifeless and unprofitable--is called "by-catch."

There's a good chance that recreational divers will become the by-catch of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) whose battle against salvors is encompassing all shipwreck divers.

UNESCO calls its witch hunt a "treaty," whereby governments of various nations would be granted ownership of their abandoned shipwrecks and cargoes no matter where the vessels lie. For instance, a Spanish galleon, discovered by American salvors (or recreational divers) would lawfully become Spanish property.

Unfair, absurd, never happen you say? Don't count on it. Our very own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has joined the fray, siding with the UNESCO treaty. NOAA guidelines, that hinder salvage efforts by the RMS Titanic group, are nearly identical to UNESCO's proposals.

Once NOAA's guidelines are passed and published, divers can expect them to be applied to all shipwrecks, creating an impenetrable layer of bureaucratic regulations and red tape. In a nutshell, this pact would revoke the present admiralty law of salvage that has been in effect for hundreds of years. Millions of recreational and commercial divers do not need or want these restraints. Heavy penalties, including threats of fines and imprisonment, are the offspring of both UNESCO's and NOAA's proposals that would lock shipwreck divers out of all the oceans of the world.

Here's a true scenario of what recently happened and will continue to unfold if the UNESCO treaty passes: A Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Gregg Bemis, an American diver and Jutta Rabe, a German television producer, saying they disturbed the remains of the Estonia, a ferryboat that sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994 with a loss of 852 passengers and crew. In August, against the wishes of the Swedish government, Bemis and Rabe led a dive team to the site to videotape the remains of the vessel. After all, the wreck is in international waters. But that didn't stop Swedish officials, joined by Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Lithuania, Russia and Great Britain from drafting and signing a legal treaty declaring the site a final resting place for the ferryboat victims.

Bemis says all he wanted to do was try and find clues, through videotape, as to why the ferry sank. There are suspicions a bomb may have caused the sinking, not faulty locks on the bow doors. Now, Bemis and Rabe face prison sentences of up to two years if they travel to Sweden. The Swedish prosecutor has threatened to issue an international warrant for their arrest. But since the U.S. didn't sign Sweden's treaty on the Estonia, Bemis and Rabe can't be arrested here.

This scenario is exactly what would happen if the UNESCO treaty passes. First NOAA would go after the treasure salvors and then the recreational divers, who would become the by-catch of the fiasco. A porthole retrieved by a sport diver from a WWII wreck off the New Jersey coast would be called "unregulated salvage," a federal offense. With the law on their side, the feds would lock up the oceans and stifle entrepreneurial pursuits by commercial and sport divers. If these strict international rules and regulations had been in effect years ago, the Atocha, the Queen Anne's Revenge, the Titanic and other renowned wrecks would have remained undiscovered.

It's time for divers to fight back, just like they did in 1984 when the feds tried to replace the widely recognized red and white dive flag with the blue and while Alpha symbol preferred by the U.S. Coast Guard. If the feds had succeeded, they would have replaced a flag that took 25 years to promote with an unfamiliar one that had inferior visual impact on the water.

Divers banded together throughout the county and rallied for a common cause. They wrote to their congressmen, senators, admirals and even the president. Their strong, united voice was one to be reckoned with and the bureaucrats backed off. Now, it's time to unite again.

First be cognizant of this: UNESCO has met each summer for the past two years for what they call "a draft convention for the protection of underwater cultural heritage." The final meeting has been moved up from July, 2001 to the last week of March and the first week of April. It's do or die this time for the draft proposals and the delegations know it. If they don't reach an agreement, the initiative will die in UNESCO. Although divers will still have to battle domestic legislation, they will have slowed down NOAA by defeating UNESCO.

Act now! Start by e-mailing Bob Blumberg, the head of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO: blumbergrc@state.gov. Mailing address: Office of Ocean Affairs, Room 5805, Department of State, Washington, DC 20520. A letter to Blumberg's boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell, would also help. Our state senators must ratify UNESCO, therefore letters or calls to them will carry a lot of weight. Contact your congressional representatives too. Congressman Walter Jones opposes these strict regulations and supports divers in their efforts to preserve free enterprise.

For more details and suggestions, go to the Web pages set up by ProSea and the Institute for Marine Archaeological Conservation: www.prosea.org, and www.imacdigest.com. Both of these organizations are lobbying on behalf of salvors and recreational divers.

The S.O.S. is out. Heed it and help keep UNESCO from making us by-catch in a sea of red tape that has no business surfacing domestically, much less internationally. We cannot afford to be complacent. Unless we speak out en masse against this international effort to disenfranchise us from the very wrecks we've discovered, then our liberties will be forever lost.

Special note: For information, such as Mr. Blumberg's address, I contacted: Michele Aubry, Archaeology & Ethnography Program, National Park Service, 1849 C St., NW, Washngton, DC 20240.