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Out of interest, does anyone know what the rules are on sending drones down to shipwrecks are? I know you can't physically dive some famous shipwrecks without p

Out of interest, does anyone know what the rules are on sending drones down to shipwrecks are? I know you can't physically dive some famous shipwrecks without permission because they're protected heritage sites but what about an off-the-shelf underwater ROV with just a camera (ie not salvaging anything)? I've always felt these drones would be a great opportunity for some interesting photography and given how deteriorated some well-known wrecks (the infamous RMS Lusitania for example) are these days it might be the last chance as well.

daniel-cussen 5y ago
They're underwater graves.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  Are the Pyramids of Giza, the Taj Mahal, and many other man-made structures of historical importance not inherently graves too? Fair enough when there's still survivors alive, but for really old wrecks I don't think anyone can reasonably claim to have been meaningfully harmed by such activities. If "it's a bit morbid" was a valid criterion for not recording something, then many of the most famous and historically significant photographs and films in existence wouldn't exist. Obviously the really famous wrecks like Lusitania and Titanic get exclusively professional attention and rightly so, but there's literally thousands of others which never will be recorded by professional archeologists and will soon simply be rust stains on the seabed. Not all of them necessarily represent tragedies either, for example there's a very interesting shipwreck in the Thames Estuary of a pirate radio ship called the Mi Amigo which was successfully evacuated and left to sink once the crew were saved. There's a lot of history there slowly rusting away which could be preserved in a sense. I realise some people might be squeamish around this subject but as someone with an interest in historic ships I think such remote photography expeditions would on balance be a good thing. Ethically speaking I don't think it's materially different from land-based "urban exploring" which sometimes deals with morbid subjects, the Chernobyl exclusion zone being one of the most well-known target of urban explorers but there's also lots of other examples.

daniel-cussen 5y ago

They're underwater graves.

BoxOfRain 5y ago
Are the Pyramids of Giza, the Taj Mahal, and many other man-made structures of historical importance not inherently graves too? Fair enough when there's still survivors alive, but for really old wrecks I don't think anyone can reasonably claim to have been meaningfully harmed by such activities. If "it's a bit morbid" was a valid criterion for not recording something, then many of the most famous and historically significant photographs and films in existence wouldn't exist. Obviously the really famous wrecks like Lusitania and Titanic get exclusively professional attention and rightly so, but there's literally thousands of others which never will be recorded by professional archeologists and will soon simply be rust stains on the seabed. Not all of them necessarily represent tragedies either, for example there's a very interesting shipwreck in the Thames Estuary of a pirate radio ship called the Mi Amigo which was successfully evacuated and left to sink once the crew were saved. There's a lot of history there slowly rusting away which could be preserved in a sense. I realise some people might be squeamish around this subject but as someone with an interest in historic ships I think such remote photography expeditions would on balance be a good thing. Ethically speaking I don't think it's materially different from land-based "urban exploring" which sometimes deals with morbid subjects, the Chernobyl exclusion zone being one of the most well-known target of urban explorers but there's also lots of other examples.