Over a year after the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage completed negotiations and 10 months after it was endorsed by the UNESCO General Congress concluded, some U.S. salvage companies, as well as the shipwreck diving community, breathed a sigh of relief because the U.S. had not yet either signed nor endorsed the Convention. Any complacency by those interested in the future of underwater exploration is premature.

If ratified, the Convention will adversely affect salvage and recreational shipwreck diving here and abroad. Its flat out prohibition against buying, selling or trading shipwreck artifacts is a virtual death warrant to any investor-financed shipwreck recovery operation and has a chilling effect upon recreational diving as well. Nevertheless, some underwater explorers have apparently concluded that the Convention is a done deal. This is a dangerously false assumption.

UNESCOs' endorsement of the convention is but one step in the international law-making process.treaty The Convention still has to be ratified by the respective legislatures of at least twenty (20) UNESCO member nations before it will become enforceable. Even then, the Convention can only be enforced against the citizens or vessels flying the flag of nations that have ratified and approved it. While this may appear reassuring, there remains a clear and present danger that the undiscovered shipwrecks lying beneath vast areas of the world's oceans--waters previously outside the jurisdiction or control of any individual nation-- will now be subject to claims of sovereignty and ownership by these countries. Moreover, some shipwrecks lying within a coastal state's territorial waters will now be subject to ownership claims by other countries that once owned the vessel.

Many of the national legislatures asked to ratify the Convention are raising serious questions as to its effect on both their sovereignty in their own waters as well as their international relations with other maritime nations. These countries are beginning to realize that restrictive laws that punish finders only encourage the clandestine looting of historic shipwrecks. With their general inability to police terrestrial sites, these governments can also appreciate the futility of trying to protect underwater sites that have yet to be discovered.

There is a brief window of opportunity to open a dialogue with these nations and their legislators and urge them not to ratify a Convention that destroys all existing incentives for the finders of historic shipwrecks to come forward with their discoveries. It is one of ShipREX most significant missions to enlighten these nations; to urge them to refrain from endorsing the proposed UNESCO Convention. ShipREX will work with the International community in developing a fair and equitable regimen that protects the rights of underwater explorers, thereby encouraging them to properly excavate historic shipwrecks.

ShipREX International, Inc. was created as a not-for-profit watchdog organization for the protection of the rights of the private sector salvors and sport divers. This newly formed grass roots organization is headed by industry professionals who have almost two hundred years collective experience in sport diving, professional shipwreck salvage, archaeology, conservation and admiralty law. Their previous influence and successful negotiations with government officials has been commended by many in the dive industry and respected in government circles. ShipREX International, Inc., through its many resources, will monitor the dive industries successful growth while maintaining the initiative of protecting the dive community's present rights to access shipwrecks.